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Not all smarthome devices make sense to buy.
Do you really need a smart pillow or a smart fridge?
No, you dont.
Because of that fact, your expensive refrigerator may not evenlast a decade.
You’d be better off buying a normal refrigerator and mounting a tablet to the door.
At least then if the tablet becomes obsolete, you might throw it out and keep the fridge.
Some offer touch screens to set preferences; others boast better water usage.
You’d save money too; smart toilets can cost anywhere between$900and$8000.
Smart Pillows Aren’t Even Pillows
Smart pillowsare an odd offering.
But they’re not inexpensive.
A smart pillow will often run in the $200 range.
But there’s a problem with smart pillows—they’re usually just an insert.
You may already own another gadget that makes similar sleep tracking promises be that anApple Watch or a FitBit.
Smart Water Bottles Are Completely Unnecessary
Smart water bottles exist on a basic premise.
“You probably aren’t drinking enough water.”
Samsung
Some will even tout the old wisdom of drinking eight glasses a day.
Worse yet, your body gets water from other sources.
You do, however, already have a mechanism to help with that decision making progress: thirst.
Kohler
As long as you are regularly drinking, especially when exercising, you should be fine.
And your body will tell you, through thirst, when you truly need to drink something now.
So paying extra for a bottle to tell you something your body already knows is entirely unnecessary.
REM-Fit
That last one is the problem.
The hardware in your house doesn’t have much intelligence.
When you speak to it, it reaches to the cloud, which ultimately gives the robot its personality.
Hidrate Spark
Unfortunately, as seen with Jibo and Vector, making robots profitably is very hard.
The companies behind both announced shutdowns, and when they go, so do the clouds powering the robots.
Jibo famously sang a final song as his personality died.
Josh Hendrickson / How-To Geek
Worryingly, you might still findVector for sale, although the listing is transparent about the shutdown.
Finding the Good Smarthome Tech
Valuable smart home tech does exist.
We lovevideo doorbells, for instance.
And for an excellent example of added features for minimal cost, take a look atsmart air filters.
When it comes to smarthome tech, you should take a look at a mixture of things.
How much does the smart version cost versus the standard version?
How long has the manufacturer been around, and how well does it support products?
What conveniences and features do you gain?
And what complications will you introduce?
No single answer to the above questions is always a deal-breaker or a good reason to buy.
