Smart Appliances Are the Future

Thanks to the internet of things, homes are smarter than ever. With voice controls or the swipe of a finger, homeowners close garages, dim lights and adjust thermostats. Appliance manufacturers continue to take note, adding smart appliance features that simplify cooking, cleaning and more. Find out what smart appliances can do for you.

Smart Appliances – Refrigerator

The kitchen serves as the heart of the home, which is the idea behind Samsung’s Family Hub refrigerator. Talk to this smart refrigerator from anywhere in your kitchen by asking Bixby what the weather forecast is during a busy breakfast or having her turn on Pandora jams while you cook dinner.

In addition to convenience, the Samsung Family Hub helps with food management. Create shopping lists on the 21.5-inch WiFi-enabled touchscreen. Three built-in cameras allow you to view your fridge contents while at the grocery store. You can even buy the groceries right from the refrigerator!

Next thing you know your fridge will be pouring coffee on demand… OH WAIT!

Smart Appliances – Built-in Coffee Maker

man with coffee using Home Connect on Thermador buillt-in coffee machine

The Thermador 24-inch built-in coffee machine with Home Connect allows you to preprogram up to eight personalized beverages with names so everyone’s favorite drink is just a button push away. And cleanup has never been easier. Using hot water and steam, the machine features a fully automatic rinse program at turn-on and turn-off, so your coffee machine is always ready for the next fresh-tasting pour.

Smart Appliances – Cooking

person using Whirlpool Scan-to-Cook app with connected oven

How many times have you wished you could turn on autopilot after a long day? Whirlpool can get you halfway there. Their Scan-to-Cook technology allows you to scan the bar code of your favorite frozen meal (we’re thinking pizza rolls) into the Whirlpool app – and ta-da! – the Scan-to-Cook compatible cooking device (microwave or oven) is ready to make the perfect batch of pizza rolls with the instructions sent right from your smartphone.

Smart Appliances – Laundry Room

woman with laundry basket in laundry room with LG washer and dryer

Monitor laundry on the go with the LG SmartThinQ® app. Select a cycle, start or stop the load and get notifications on the load’s status all from your smartphone. In addition, the appliances can be synced with voice assistants, so Alexa can do your laundry (kind of… she doesn’t fold). Get your smart washer and dryer today at Warners’ Stellian.

This listing only scratches the surface of smart home appliances. As the industry continues to evolve with rapid technology changes, the only question is “What will they think of next?”

Want to know how else your appliances can simplify your life? Talk to the appliance specialists at Warners’ Stellian.

GE Refrigerator with Keurig Levels Up Your Mornings

Single-serve coffee brewers have been steaming up the coffee industry quite some time. So many coffee lovers now enjoy the convenient pick-me-up afforded by the Buick of a coffeemaker parked in a space formerly reserved for kitchen prep.

According to a 2018 National Coffee Association coffee drinking trends survey, 41 percent of respondents who drank coffee said they used a single-cup brewer.

But how convenient can a Keurig be when you still have the same amount of steps?

  1. Add coffee
  2. Add water
  3. Brew

Until now…

GE Refrigerators with Built-in Keurig Brewing System

Brewing System 1

Single cups of coffee got a lot more convenient. IT’S PLUMBED, PEOPLE! Inserting a K-Cup becomes the only step of your morning coffee routine, as the refrigerator’s coffee dispenser supplies fresh, filtered water for every cup with no need to refill. One-step coffee. Game-changer.

Better yet, using your refrigerator as your coffeemaker means you can reclaim your coveted counter space.

Perhaps for this?

Perhaps for this.

Or this.

 

dogtreatmaker

The partnership evolved from the GE Café French-door refrigerator with a hot water dispenser (also cool for tea drinkers or baby bottle preparers) after current owners saw coffee brewing as the refrigerator’s natural progression and suggested it to GE.

If you want to talk about really fancy, your mobile device connects to the fridge so you can preset your brew time so the water in the reservoir heats up in anticipation of your groggy self impatiently pushing the button the next morning.

Genius.

Side note: Miele began selling a built-in coffee system years ago that had the ability to work with coffee pods.

Do you like single-serve coffeemakers, or are you a full pot kind of person? Let us know in the comments!

GE Dishwasher Jets Pulverize Bottle Residue

If you’ve ever tried to clean baby bottles in your dishwasher, the game-changing-ness of GE’s latest Profile Series dishwasher needs no explanation. This is probably the best dishwasher ever. OK, maybe I’m overreacting a little, but just bear with me. 

New, dedicated jets have been added into the top rack to clean dried milk from a baby bottle or, say, the spinach that gets stuck to the bottom of your smoothie jars in case you’re juicing or whatever.

maxresdefault

No use crying over dried milk, here.

Tines on the upper rack are topped with a blue node that sprays water up into its hard-to-reach area. You load the bottle or other tall, narrow opening cylinder on top of the tines and the water will directly spray into the bottom of the containers.

Or if I’m to explain it in another way:

peanutpeanutbutterandjelly

But why stop there?

Silverware jets obliterate yesterday morning’s peanut butter-covered knives and side jets say adios to that stuck-on enchilada mess left on the casserole dish.

best-dishwasher

For those of you keeping score at home, GE touts 54 percent more cleaning jets than any other dishwasher in the industry – 102, total.

Not only is that a big number, but the wash arms reverse and vary speed to ensure better coverage. It’s also a really good way to confuse the mess left on the plate: just when it thinks you’re coming at it one way…BAM! REVERSING JET!

GE profile dishwashers

It also doesn’t hurt that it’s really pretty.

GE Profile Series PDT750SSFSS

Sleek stainless and hidden controls, because it’s modest like that.

GE Right Height Washer and Dryer

It’s the reason I was set up with my now-fiance: height. He’s tall, I was told. But I digress…

I’m not the only one who thinks height matters. GE just got taller.

GE’s newest laundry innovation acknowledges that only 60% of consumers buy the washer dryer pedestals recommended to front-load laundry owners to prevent uncomfortable bending and hunching when loading and unloading.

white laundry pedestal

The RightHeight washer and dryer’s built-in risers raise the machines 7 inches off the ground, making it just under 4 feet tall. A traditional laundry pedestal will raise the top of the machine to about 4-½ feet tall, which GE argues limits the function of the top of the machine to storage space instead of a folding surface, as illustrated below:

laundry-pedestal

*Disclaimer* Laundry-doing man & well-behaved child sold separately.

There are a lot of other features that are worth considering, but my favorite is single-item wash, promoted like this:

“Ditch the environmental guilt with this uniquely designed cycle that offers great wash performance for single items.”

In my house it’d be more like:

“Stop feeling like a failure for never getting around to the laundry and just wash outfits on demand!”

Perhaps most importantly, the RightHeight washer and dryer come in fun colors that either match a beautiful, trendy laundry room or grant respite from a hideous basement dungeon area like mine. Introduce some tall and handsome to your dark laundry room 😉

Best Bosch Dishwasher Features

The appliance that hands down gives our customers the most headaches are their dishwashers. They don’t clean, they’re loud, they don’t always fit my big dishes or enough of them at a time.

Note: if this sounds familiar, it might be time to stop making excuses and start making plans for buying a dishwasher.

Certainly there a lot of cool features that dishwasher-makers are coming out with, but we have to give props to a brand that focuses on being the best in those three areas that cause the greatest heartache. Bosch dishwashers are the quietest in their class and are often recognized for their cleaning power. And the newest generation of Bosch dishwashers tweaked the design to free up even more space for dirty dishes.

Bosch Dishwasher Cleaning Power

It’s a novel concept: a dishwasher that washes your dirty dishes so well that you don’t wash them yourself before loading. It’s a bad habit that many can’t shake.

The enclosed dishwasher room at the Bosch training facility is cozy on purpose to amplify every sound a dishwasher makes.

bosch dishwashers

This room was small, so you could really hear the difference a decibel makes.

On a recent visit, we put every imaginable mess on plates that you’d usually soak or rinse off before handing them over to the dishwasher (peanut butter, jam, egg yolks, syrup, etc.).

But they came out clean every time – by no accident of course. This is how they are designed and tested. But it was especially fun to witness this process.

Bosch Dishwasher dBA

Our best Bosch dishwasher in terms of sales registers at 47 dBA, a sound level between hand washing and typing. (FYI, the quietest Bosch dishwasher is 38 dBA, which is scientifically equivalent to a tree falling in the woods when no one is around.) Translation: they’re super quiet.

They achieve this stunningly silent operation through a combination of insulation, water jet trajectory design and quiet-focused mechanics.

Some Bosch dishwashers are so confusingly silent, engineers added InfoLight to beam a small red orb onto the floor beneath to indicate that it was, in fact, running. TimeLight goes a step further to beam the time remaining. Unnecessary? Probably. Cool? You betcha.

Bosch Dishwasher Rackmatic

We’ve all experienced the anxiety of “will it fit?” And I’m not just talking about your skinny jeans in January.

Bosch’s RackMatic design totally gets that the tallest stemware is a favorite for allowing the largest “just one glass of wine” pour. And the tallest cookware (roasting pans, cookie sheets, frying pans) are the ones we least like to tackle by hand.

The unique V-shape of Bosch’s rack means never having to hand wash. Simply  lower or raise the RackMatic rack to accommodate all the awkwardly shaped wine glasses and pans you want.

What dishwasher features are most important to you?