What’s in My Smart Fridge? | Samsung Family Hub Review

Smart Home Series: Post 03

Fruits and veggies and carbs oh my! What’s a smart home without a smart fridge to make your mealtimes just a smidge more lit?

When I first started thinking about what smart tech to fill my home with, this didn’t cross my mind initially. I had stocked up on at least a dozen other smart tech products before I linked up with The Home Depot to trick my smart home out even more! My smart home automation level went up a whole notch just by perusing their Smart Home Tool page where I stumbled upon the Samsung Family Hub Smart Refrigerator. There are different models of this fridge ranging in price, but we got the 4-Door French.

I didn’t even know I needed this in my life.

Watch the Video (and continue reading below):

WHAT EXACTLY ARE THE BENEFITS OF A SMART FRIDGE?

The Samsung Family Hub puts a modern twist on old, traditional uses in an attempt to preserve the relevancy of refrigerators in this age. Not only can you manage your food, the Family Hub takes it several steps further and helps you manage your life. It does this via smart device connectivity and its massive touchscreen that has apps and voice assistance built in. It’s kinda like a giant tablet in the sense that you can use it to control your smart home just as you would with a phone or iPad. Here are some ways I find this smart fridge useful!

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Peek Inside Your Fridge from Anywhere

How many times have you gone to the grocery store without a shopping list? You want to pick up everything you need but you can’t even recall exactly what it is you do need! Maybe you’re picking up ingredients for a recipe, and you want to know if you already have some of those at home already. Well, this fridge has cameras on the inside! You can pull up a live feed of your existing groceries on your phone while shopping.

It Keeps You Organized

As I mentioned earlier, a smart fridge puts modern spins on traditional fridge uses. For example, remember back in the day when you would leave notes for your family on the fridge? You can leave them digitally now. The touchscreen also creates a lot of opportunities for more high-tech food management. You can use the display to create shopping lists, set notifications for when food expires, and see the inside of your fridge (though I find it most useful to see inside it using my phone when I’m not nearby).

There are all sorts of apps to help you stay organized. Buy groceries with Instacart, pull up recipes with the Recipes app, or order in with Grubhub (there are way more app options; these are just a few examples). Pull up your calendar, to-do lists, memos, and digital whiteboard. If your kid or spouse is running late, they can send a message straight to your fridge letting you know. The name of the fridge says exactly what it’s most useful as—a family hub. It allows you to stay connected to your family by sharing schedules and posting messages.

Use it as a Remote Control for Your Smart Home

Amongst the tons of smart apps it has built in is the SmartThings app, which is particularly useful because you can use it to control your smart devices and appliances depending on your larger smart home ecosystem. Turn your lights off/on, adjust your thermostat, see who’s outside when someone rings the doorbell, turn on the washing machine, pull up a smart baby monitor, etc. It connects to WI-FI, allowing you to get regular updates and new features.

Stay Entertained in the Kitchen

Amongst the many apps it has are ones designed to keep you entertained. You can play your favorite music from a number of streaming applications like Pandora and Spotify so you don’t drain your phone battery. The fridge has Bluetooth connectivity so you can pair it to headphones or an external speaker if you like—but it has its own speaker system built in.

On top of music, you can mirror whatever is playing on your TV too! This can come in really handy depending on the layout of your home. For me, I don’t use it to watch television because we have an open floor plan and my living room TV is in my direct line of sight when I’m prepping food on the island. However, I do use the display to view recipe videos.

BEYOND THE SMART STUFF—HOW DOES IT STACK UP AS A FRIDGE?

So what about its usefulness as a refrigerator outside of the smart tech benefits? The design is different from my last fridge so I’m still getting accustomed to it. The only minor annoyance I had in the beginning is it doesn’t have the capability to pre-select how much water you want in ounces and automatically dispense it without having to hold your glass there. But it has an alternative I have found to be even better—automatic refillable infused water.

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Our 4-Door French model is broken up into 3 different compartments. The upper half is the refrigerator portion, the middle is the flex zone, and the bottom level is the freezer.

Upper Zone: The refrigerator portion is spacious enough for what you need and it’s pretty customizable. My favorite part is the autofill pitcher that you can use as an infuser. It automatically refills when you put it back and close the door, so you always have fresh, cool water when you need it. The infuser chamber allows me to experiment with infused water recipes that I never bothered doing before I got this fridge!

Middle Zone: With the flex zone, you can change the temperature based on what you want the settings to be—even wine or beverages. Let’s say you want to use the flex zone to chill your white wine, you can do just that and the adjustable compartments will allow you to arrange it to your needs. The drawer has a Smart Divider that sections off food to cool at different temperatures for flexible storage.

Lower Zone: The freezer has a top drawer and bottom drawer. You can slide dividers back and forth to adjust them as needed.

WHERE DID WE GET THIS?

So that’s it for my overview of the Samsung Family Hub Smart Refrigerator! Last I checked, it’s significantly on SALE at The Home Depot, so take advantage of it while you can. They will install it for you and move your old fridge to another part of the house (we had ours moved to the basement) for free. Or you can have them remove it from your home entirely for a small fee. They have price match guarantees so if you find this cheaper at any of their competitors, they will match it!

Tell me: How would you use a smart fridge in your daily life? Drop a comment below!

*This is Post #3 of my Smart Home series. Find the rest here!

*This post was sponsored by The Home Depot, but trust–all opinions are ALL me.

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