Their TVs suck too. The remotes barely respond and they’re bogged down with ad-riddled garbage to the point I had to set up a parental lock just so I wasn’t force-fed trashy, outdated reality TV at 300 decibels when I power the damn thing on. Or worse, when the power goes out and it decides to blast at 3 AM. Unfortunately I didn’t make the choice to buy this thing.

Their phones are also locked down proprietary horse arse. I don’t understand the people who repeatedly pick the brand, but oh well.

I'm not a huge fan of my Samsun monitor either actually. There's a lot of stuff in there that I don't want or use, and most of what is in there feels pretty half-assed. Will definitely be trying another brand when it comes to replace it.

Agreed. Bought a washer/dryer set and the washer literally shit out in a year, with repairs costing as much as the purchase. Fuck them.

All electronics are garbage now it's almost like they want you to buy a new one every year.

Any company that pushes this shit doesn't deserve your money. Don't buy their TVs.

the hype was to keep track of groceries

Most of my groceries are in the pantry not the fridge. This tech was always for people who have a kitchen that is for show and never used.

But why have a screen at all?

Everyone should know this. Share it.

To display ads.

Especially lately. The screens used to just be for controlling the pump or letting the station show a silent ad or two for products in their convenience store. Or community ads.

NOW THEY BLARE RANDOM ADS AS YOU GAS UP YOUR VEHICLE.

It's bliss after hours when the gas station is about to close and the ads stop. You can pump up in peace. Although when the ads crash the pump, have fun paying for gas.

Only in banana republic would customer be less valuable than ad revenue

Normal ones, yes, even 3rd world countries:

have counters only (minimalism).

This is actually why I got a Costco membership. 90% of gas stations in my city have a TV screen now and fuck that noise.

Yeah a small screen showing time, day, weather, moon phase, sunrise/set, moonrise/set and daily/weekly schedule would be awesome. I have friends who keep a weekly meal/social schedule on their fridge and when I was staying with them mid move it was really convenient to have what's going on so prominently displayed

I haven't been able to get home assistant working but I imagine it has something for home displays like that with a fair amount of customizability

Ads and the news are two things I absolutely don't want on my refrigerator. This is a large eye level object in the room that days begin in. They're putting ads there because they know its a really convenient place to display useful information.

Just open the fucking door.

Well I suppose that would be sort of a useful feature especially if you could access the camera remotely while shopping but if you think about it that camera angle is impossible.

If only there was some less ridiculous or wasteful way of keeping a calendar on a fridge, like a white board or something. Its too bad in the history of fridges that there was no way to keep a calendar on it, its just impossible to

I agree. Speding an additional $1000 for that feature is so much better than a piece of paper and a Spongebob Squarepants magnet.

Yeah at a reasonable price I think a fridge is a decent place to put a display surface. It's an early point of failure but with some consumer and longevity focused thinking that's resolvable. I don't need it enough for the costs but if done well with a focus on the consumer's needs and wants it could be quite nice. Mind you that condition means fat chance but still, a display telling me what I'm doing today and if I need a jacket would be really convenient in the kitchen. Give it a bus tracker and I think people would really love that.

Honestly I hate how much of tech these days ignores asking if it's solving a problem

An expensive motor that breaks, or decides to close on you when you're looking inside, or...

Is that part of existed it would either close after 10 seconds and try and cut you in half, what would leave the door open for 5 minutes before doing anything.

This it’s why there is nothing “smart” in my house.

Sorry, this is just a funny statement.

I wonder how are you posting that comment...

Are there even any dumb TVs anymore? The current lineup from CES 2025 is LG (OLED), Samsung (OLED), and TCL (MiniLED) which have great image quality options, but I'm fairly sure all are using a "smart" platform.

TCL doesn't bother with software and uses Google TV. Samsung uses Tizen which is linux with another junk UI, though less painful than Google. LG uses webOS which I've heard UI side is better, but its still a junk UI on linux.

Even the $3000 Samsung TVs have ads if you connect them to the Internet. Noone is safe

Literally the only reason my LG TV is hooked up to the wifi is so I can show my wife stuff from my Android phone. For everything else we have an Apple TV.

I can't see any good reason to allow a fridge access to the internet.

I mean if it doesn't make sound I'll get the cheap "smart" fridge and just cover up the screen, if it's a high quality fridge besides the screen, no problem.

All the terrible touch features they're adding to cars these days makes me think a brand new car today would go obsolete before a 10 year old used car with 100k miles. New cars are unrepairable because of how complicated they are.

...drinking my beer! Or eating my lunch for tomorrow. Or half a birthday cake.

Could've just said "eating my lunch", it's obviously a beer and half of a birthday cake.

The FBI called to help, maybe they can sort things out for you too. Thought they'd be busy with other stuff right now but I guess they need these Apple gift cards to upgrade my security...