The fridge is one of the most important appliances in your home. It can keep food cold, which can save you time and money. Here are five reasons why the fridge is the best feature of the smart fridge.

  1. The fridge is always ready to eat: When you have a party or want to cook a meal, you don’t have to wait for hours for food to come out of the oven or microwave. The fridge will always be ready to eat, so you can get started right away.
  2. The fridge has a lot of space: You don’t have to search through a pile of groceries to find what you need. The fridge has plenty of space, so you can put all your food in one place and not have to search through it again later on.
  3. The refrigerator has an ice maker: This is great for when it’s hot outside and you don’t want to go out and get ice from the store. The ice maker will keep your food cold until it’s time to serve it up!
  4. The refrigerator has an oven: This is great for when you want to cook something big or there are a lot of ingredients involved in a recipe. You can put everything in one place and cook it at once!
  5. The refrigerator has freezer space: If you’re not using the freezer often, this might be something that’s worth considering! It has plenty of room for storage, so if you only use it occasionally, it’s worth considering!

In either case, neither is of immediate help when you come home from work and only find condiments inside. But a smart fridge can make you feel real stupid about it.

Smart refrigerators tend to offer automatic temperature regulation (I would just set mine to cold), integration with all your smart devices, and often the ability to peek inside the fridge through a camera or window—a particularly useful feature if you’re worried the milk and eggs are going to jump you and take your lunch money.

Keeping Empty Milk Cartons Cold in Style

Take the Samsung French Door Family Hub Refrigerator—wow, that’s a long name. Thankfully, it doesn’t have the ability to run away because it would take too long to call it.

Looking like a fridge wearing an eyepatch, this monolith features an integrated display where you can control all your smart devices, including the ability to check who’s at the front door if you have a compatible video doorbell. It would clearly make your fridge lord of all the devices in your house. Will they mutiny?

There’s even a built-in camera that lets you remotely see what’s in the fridge from your phone, in case you’re at the grocery store and want to check if you forgot something. Do you know how many times I would egregiously use this at the checkout so everyone waiting knew how fancy my fridge is? A lot of times. They would ban me from that store.

The Bosch 800 Series Refrigerator (that’s more like it) emits an alert if the door is open so the residents don’t suffer a slow death, and if you tap on the LG InstaView Refrigerator twice, you can see inside and watch your food’s secret fight club.

Smart vs. Not That Smart

If you’re not sure whether you need a smart refrigerator, it’s worth asking yourself an important question: Do I already own a refrigerator that works? If you do and it still keeps things cold (mine heats up and then eats the food), a smart refrigerator is probably not necessary.

Even if you’re in the market for a new fridge, a smart fridge is probably not something you need. They tend to cost up to thousands more than your standard, decent fridge. Yes, they conveniently help with recipes and grocery shopping, and features like a family hub that streams shows and displays notes could be fun for kids.

But is a smart fridge better than a regular fridge with a calendar and cute drawings held up by magnets? Not really.

More to the point, I already spend far too much time thinking about what’s in the fridge or gazing inside mindlessly as if I’m going to find the snack to end all snacks. A cool smart fridge that causes me to spend even more time around it is an enabler I don’t need in my life.

Now, if they make a smart fridge that says passive-aggressive things like, “Dude, it’s three in the morning,” then I’d be all in. But if they sound cool to you and you have the self-control to live with a smart fridge, check them out.