Samsung goes big with its smartest refrigerator

The smart fridge battle is heating up. LG showed off its Smart Instaview Door-in-Door Fridge Thursday here at the IFA trade show in Berlin.

FRIDGES that order groceries for you, buttons that tell you when your clothes are clean, and miniature robots that control your kitchen appliances were among the devices revealed in Berlin today that promise to make your home smarter.
The refrigerator has a translucent door panel that doubles as a fully loaded Windows tablet, complete with Cortana voice controls.

Rival manufacturer Samsung made a splash at this year’s CES with the Family Hub fridge. The 21.5-inch touch screen on the Family Hub integrates with your calendar, plays music and snaps pictures of your food while helping you track expiration dates. LG showed off the InstaView panel at the same show. While it looked like a touchscreen when darkened, the door panel on that first LG Signature fridge just turned translucent with a knock, letting you see the contents of your fridge without opening the door.

Now, LG’ combining that same translucent panel with a touchscreen of its own. Like the Family Hub, you can drag and drop icons over different foods. The icons range from a simple countdown timer to health facts you’d like to remember to personal icons so Grandpa can make sure everyone knows which mustard is his.

Better yet, the Smart Instaview fridge has full Windows 10. You can browse the internet, play music, watch videos and even give commands to Windows digital assistant Cortana. When we reviewed the Family Hub, voice control was one of the items on our wish list.

That said, we liked how well Samsung’s Family Hub worked. During my brief hands-on time with LG’s Smart Instaview, it froze up a couple of times. Now, the trade-show environment isn’t at all similar to a normal kitchen, and the model still has months before it’s released, so it’s much too early to judge. But responsiveness will be something we keep our eyes on.
 
Expect the LG Smart Instaview Door-in-Door Refrigerator to start rolling out late this year or early next year (including in the US), but LG’s representatives in Berlin didn’t offer many concrete details and wouldn’t speculate on the possible price.

In addition to responsiveness, we’ll be looking for more information about how it integrates with LG’s smart home products and apps. The Smart Instaview Door-in-Door fridge is an awesome surprise from LG. We’ll see how well it works in the real world, and we’ll note whether Samsung feels compelled to add features to the Family Hub in response.