This post is sponsored by Home Depot. All thoughts and ideas are my own
Back again this week with some more smart home tech from Home Depot! Samsung’s line of Family Hub smart fridges are one of my favorite pieces of smart home tech, because they live in one of the most used rooms in the house. Refrigerators are such a central part of every house, so it makes sense to make them smart and internet enabled.
So what can it do that a normal fridge can’t? A lot of things actually, but here are my 6 favorite.
1. Calendar
I use my calendar religiously. Every appointment, workout, or project gets added. It’s nice to wake up each morning and be able to see what I have for the day on the fridge. If you like you can even use the Morning Brief feature that will display and talk about the weather, your upcoming schedule for the day, which food in your fridge is expiring, and even the news.
We’re in the kitchen a lot, so it’s also been really helpful having both my wife’s and my calendar integrated into it. We can see what’s going on and plan out our days.
Prior to getting the fridge, my wife only used paper calendars to write down all of her appointments and meetings. The problem was that we would often double book days of the week, because I never knew what she had to do.
Having the calendar on the refrigerator has gone a long way in getting her to start using the digital calendar, which makes my life much better.
2. View Inside
I’ve gone to the grocery multiple times and wondered if I should pick up more milk, yogurt, etc. The Samsung Smart Hub Refrigerators let you peak inside from anywhere using your phone, or even from another Smart Hub Fridge. We have another Smart Hub fridge in our garage that we use for all of our extra food, so we can check whats in it from the screen on the one in our kitchen.
3. Play Music
It sounds simple, but because of our Samsung Smart Hub Fridge, we play music in our kitchen almost every morning. It has this big screen that lets you control it plus displays the album art, and our kids absolutely love it. When you add the visual element to it, it just changes the whole feel of it. You can change the music from the fridge or from your phone, and it supports Spotify, Pandora or IHeartRadio.
I know what you’re thinking. A phone could play music too. All I can say to that is that it’s somehow different. We never listened to music in our kitchen before getting this refrigerator. There’s something about it that just makes it more enjoyable.
4. Internet
The fridge has a full web browser in it, so you can access just about anything you want. This is great for recipes, or for my son to binge on the Hot Wheels YouTube Channel.
My son had a minor addiction to using the internet on the fridge, so if you decide you want to limit anyone’s access to the fridge, you can require password control to control any of the apps or features on our fridge.
5. 5. See Who’s At Your Front Door
5. 5. See Who’s At Your Front DoorYou can integrate Ring’s Video Doorbell with the Samsung Family Hub Fridge, to see who’s at the door when anyone rings. A little screen shows up displaying the video of who’s at the door and you can even hit a button to have a full conversation with them through the fridge!
6. Morning Brief
The morning brief is an awesome way to start the day. I hit the app and start making my coffee as it reads off and displays today’s weather, my appointments for the day and reminds me of any foods that are about to expire.
7. Better Ice
The ice this fridge makes is softer than your typical freezer made ice. If you ever chew on ice, you know there are absolutely different grades of chewability, from the teeth shattering hard ones to the pellet ice that absorbs whatever its floating in. The Samsung Family Hub Fridge‘s ice falls somewhere between the top of the line, chewable, pellet ice some restaurants have and normal refrigerator ice. I couldn’t find anything on what they do to make it better, but it almost seems like it’s more aerated than other ices. Whatever the reason, I definitely prefer it over the ice from any other freezer I’ve tried.
Those are my favorite features and apps, but it can do SO MUCH MORE. Here are some additional apps and features.
Mirror Phone or TV
You can mirror the screen from an Android phone or Samsung Smart TV onto your fridge. We use a Samsung TV, so I can watch anything I could on my TV on our fridge.
Find Recipes with Tasty
There’s an app called Tasty that has hundreds of recipe videos you search by type of food or even things like “keto friendly.” I like to scroll through it with my son, so he can find new dishes for us to make. He’s become more of a picky eater the older he gets, so I’ve found by including him in the cooking process, he’s willing to try a lot more.
Shopping
There are a lot of services to shop from on the fridge as well. You can set up Amazon Dash buttons to make reordering your favorites easier, get a pickup from Uber, reorder your Nespresso pods, get your groceries delivered with Instacart, or get some takeout food with Grubhub.
White Board
White BoardIt’s like having a massive iPad to draw on!
Shopping Lists
You can create lists of what to shop for at the grocery and share it with your roommate or significant other.
What’s Expiring
After opening the View Inside app, you can point at different foods in your fridge to name them and set a reminder for when they expire.
Control Other Smart Devices
You can control any other SmartThings device including other Samsung Family Hub Refrigerators.
Digital Coupons + Deals
Set your location to see deals and coupons from your local stores.
If you want to check out more details about the Smart Hub fridge we have, you can check it out here. We absolutely love it, and they have 7 different styles in both the stainless and black stainless steel colors to choose from.
Check back next week for my autonomous mower review!
