Smart devices are turning out to be a poor investment
Smart devices are turning out to be a poor investment
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86 comments
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This person prioritized buying the new hotness over researching longevity, and they got burned.
Amazon and Google's products are not where I would invest my money if I was concerned about long term support. Both of those companies have a solid track record of killing stuff off.
Buy that stuff if you want, but don't be surprised if something gets killed off in 3-5 years.
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The problem is that non-smart stuff (or at least stuff that doesn't require a cloud connection) is hard to come by. For example:
- cars - (nearly?) every EV and most other new cars connect to the cloud for no good reason
- TVs - can't find a "dumb" TV in the 50"+ category; I'm still looking...
- refrigerators - "dumb" fridges still exist, but there's not a lot of variety; we wanted a French door fridge, but couldn't find one without the smart crap with the ice maker in the freezer section (an ice maker in the fridge is just asking for problems); we had to get a side by side
- lightbulbs - at Home Depot, I could only find the crappy store brand or their smart bulbs, nothing in between
And so on. It's increasingly difficult to find decent, long lasting stuff. Almost everything is going to be incredibly insecure in 3-5 years once software support stops, and then it'll be irresponsible to keep it any longer.
At this point, I don't think you can really blame the consumers, manufacturers seem intent on driving this "smart home" nonsense. Sure, have a tier for that product, but also sell a version without it.
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The cost of the parts necessary for the network connectivity is nothing in comparison to the money all that data brings. That's probably why it's happening everywhere.
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Also planned obsolescence.
Your smart device is out of support and no longer receiving security updates. Buy the new version to get new features and improved security!
Or if the smart device circuit board breaks, charge so much for replacement parts that the customer just buys a new device.
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One more thing. TVs
You might want to consider buying a smart TV and simply not connecting it to WiFi. That’s what I did.
If you buy a TV with CEC support, it will effectively be a dumb monitor that feels like a 1 remote smart system.
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That's a workaround, but IMO it has issues:
- doesn't signal to manufacturers that I don't want the smart crap
- may have ads or whatever built-in, even w/o ads
- if anything happens to the circuit board, the TV is worthless (high repair costs); "dumb" TVs are much simpler
What I really want is a massive monitor, but apparently I can't have that...
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The signal is arguably sales vs activations.
And as for ads, I have a new Samsung QLED connected to CEC devices. I literally never see the TV’s UI. It feels like a computer monitor. CEC bypasses all the input selectors and UI that they would normally use to prompt stuff. It’s worth checking out. CEC is kind of rad and give the end user back a lot of control.
Commercial displays are also another choice if you don’t want smart crap. Although, those dumb displays can actually cost more because the manufacturer isn’t able to monetize the TV with apps and ads.
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The smart features help keep the cost down. I’m absolutely that you should never connect a smart TV to the internet. I learned that the hard way when a config change on my router slowed the UI on my Samsung TV to a crawl. Unplugging the Ethernet fixed it. Afterwards I switched to Apple TV and have been overall happy since.
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Thoughts on fridges and lights.
Fisher Paykel has a lot of options for french door fridges with ice in the freezer.
And for automated lights that can be independent of the cloud, you might want to look at switches instead. There are lots of options there that can run offline. I like Lutron’s stuff, which has pretty solid cloud service support, but can still run timers and automations offline.
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86 comments