10 Smart Devices That Will Improve Your Kitchen

Smart home tech is slowly but surely infiltrating every room of the house, promising to take away the more mundane everyday chores and therefore make it easier to spend time doing what you enjoy. One of the rooms to see the biggest improvements in recent years is the kitchen, with a slew of new smart devices launched with better connectivity and useful features. Almost every kitchen appliance can be upgraded with smart tech to some degree, but working out which ones are worth shelling out for can be tricky. No matter whether you're a baker, a grillmaster, or even just prefer to keep your kitchen endeavors limited to a regular morning coffee, there's a smart kitchen gadget out there that might just be a game changer.

It's worth noting that many of these smart home gadgets come with a significant price premium over traditional appliances, so before splashing out, be sure you're happy to pay a little extra for the added features. Nonetheless, if you can justify the investment, these smart kitchen devices are among the best in their segments right now.

Depending on what meat you're cooking, the consequences of eating some that's even just a little undercooked can be pretty nasty. A meat thermometer is therefore essential for anyone who's partial to a grill or roast, and the Meater Plus is one of the best smart thermometers. The thermometer itself is wireless and comes with a simple stainless steel design, but there's no screen to display temperatures.

Instead, all readouts are displayed via the companion app, which also gives users a list of recommended meat temperatures alongside the reading. As well as the internal temperature of the meat, there's also a separate sensor that keeps track of the temperature inside the oven or grill you're cooking with. The thermometer will detect when the meat is done by calculating when it's set to hit the target temperature, factoring in carryover heat to avoid overcooking. This all does come at a steep price. The Meater Plus retails for $99.95, but few other thermometers are quite so sleek.

Thanks to the commercials, it's known as "Brad Pitt's Coffee Machine," but the De'Longhi Dinamica Plus is a genuinely impressive bean-to-cup coffee maker with plenty of smart features. Users can customize everything from coffee type to milk frothiness and temperature, either via the 3.5-inch touchscreen or smartphone app. The app also offers additional features for discerning drinkers, like setting the exact amount of coffee to be produced in ml. Assuming a cup is already in position, you can produce drinks directly from the app without getting up.

This is especially handy if you're the kind of person who can't function without their morning coffee but also never leaves enough time to make it. Simply start the machine through the app when you wake up, and by the time you get to the kitchen, it should be ready. Smart kitchen tech usually comes with a steep premium, and the De'Longhi is no different – at a retail price of $1,649.99, it's a serious investment but worthwhile for hassle-free, barista-style coffee.

The rise of smart kitchen tech has even stretched to the microwave, with Panasonic's NN-SV79MS incorporating Alexa compatibility for hands-free cooking. It requires an Alexa smart speaker to function, but assuming you already have one in your kitchen, the microwave can respond to more than 100 commands. As well as simply turning it on and setting a run time, you can ask it to do things like defrost veggies or heat up a cup of tea, and it will automatically adjust its timer.

Another innovative feature it packs is the Genius Sensor, which measures the humidity of common foods and will automatically sense when they're done. It features options for melting butter or cooking potatoes, leaving owners to focus their time on preparing other parts of the meal. With all its smart tech, the Panasonic NN-SV79MS is, predictably, on the pricey side for a microwave. It retails for $299.99, but can sometimes be found discounted on Amazon.

Air fryers are one of the hottest kitchen gadgets at the moment, and the Proscenic T22 is a feature-loaded option that's one of the most hassle-free thanks to its built-in recipes. Selecting a recipe on the app brings up a list of ingredients and the required cooking time, so all you need to do is put the ingredients in the fryer and leave it to do the rest. There's also a custom recipe option for frequently cooked meals that aren't already in the app's recipe book.

The fryer's basket capacity of 5.3 quarts makes it family-friendly, and the Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa compatibility means busy parents can use it with their hands full. It's worth noting that a common complaint about the T22 is that the presets tend to be a little on the stingy side, and sometimes an extra few minutes' cooking time produces a better end result. Still, that's a fairly minor quibble considering the air fryer's competitive $129.00 retail price.

Those of us who prefer a cup of tea in the morning over a coffee still have plenty of options when it comes to smart drinks tech, such as the Govee smart kettle. It can be controlled using Google Assistant or Amazon Alexa, and there's also a smartphone app so you can boil the kettle without needing to get up from whatever you're doing. The app also enables you to set timers, so when your alarm wakes you up in the morning you'll have boiling water ready for when you get to the kitchen.

There's an argument to be made that most people could probably live without ever having a smart kettle, especially considering it retails for $79.99 and other kettles do just as good a job at boiling water for less than half the price. But, if you're fully committed to the smart home lifestyle, the extra few minutes in bed might well be worth the added cost.

Despite its name, the Anova Precision Oven is a lot more than simply a conventional oven – it also features options for baking bread and sous vide dishes thanks to the adjustable steam levels inside the cooking chamber. The steam is generated from water housed in a built-in tank and can be adjusted from 0% to 100% humidity to suit different cooking styles.

With the sous vide function, humidity is maximized but the temperature is kept relatively low, below boiling point, to simulate sous vide conditions, but without the need for a bag. This enables users to sous vide bulkier foods that would normally be too large to fit in a bag, like family-sized joints of meat. It works fine as a conventional oven too, and like most of the other smart kitchen products here, can be controlled through Google Assistant or Amazon Alexa. It retails for $699.99 on Anova's website.

Bakers looking to add a dollop of smart tech into their home kitchen might want to consider the GE Profile Smart Mixer, which uses a variety of sensors to ensure consistency when following recipes. A built-in scale is handy for keeping tabs on exactly how much of an ingredient goes into the mixing bowl, and a torque monitoring system can detect changes in a mixture by measuring the strain on the whisk motor. Enter the type of recipe you're making through the app and the mixer will detect exactly when the mixture is at optimal consistency.

The mixer can also be controlled via Alexa, although its functionality is limited. Most people will probably find it easier to use the manual controls, especially since you'll need to be near the mixer anyway to add ingredients. The voice control might be a little redundant, but the other tech features make it a worthy candidate to long-standing rivals like the KitchenAid line, even if the $799.00 retail price makes it quite an investment.

It might not be the first place tech enthusiasts look to upgrade their kitchens, but switching to a smart faucet comes with a number of benefits. U By Moen is one of the leading smart faucets, with hands-free control thanks to Amazon Alexa and Google Home integration. On a basic level, being able to turn the tap on when your hands are full is always useful, but the Moen is also able to dispense exact measurements of water or heat it to specific temperatures, all through voice commands.

Smart tech is no good if the product itself doesn't deliver on the basics, but the U By Moen gets those right too. The retractable nozzle can extend across the whole sink, and the choice of spray settings makes cleaning trickier kitchen items less of a hassle. The faucet itself looks high-end, but it comes with a suitably high-end price tag, too: several styles are available to choose from, starting from around $450 on Amazon and rising in price from there. That's a lot to ask for something that is, at the end of the day, still just a faucet, but it's potentially a useful kitchen addition for those who can justify the initial outlay.

Smart kitchen tech doesn't have to cost a fortune, especially if you're just looking to find ways to eat healthier. The Etekcity Smart kitchen scale makes it easier to track nutrition levels by displaying readouts for things like fat, sugar, and sodium levels on the screen beside the scale as you weigh a food. It's a little bit of a clunky system, since those readouts are dependent on you opening the corresponding smartphone app and inputting the type of food you're weighing first, but it's still better than guessing a portion size and hoping for the best.

With the weight measured, the scale can also sync with Fitbit to automatically track your caloric intake. Again, this is a little flawed — most of us don't measure all of our food before eating it, but for those on strict diets, measuring portions is potentially a useful way to keep tabs on the intake of junk or snack foods. The Etekcity is much more attractively priced than many of the other gadgets here, too, retailing for $39.99.

It might only be justifiable for the most dedicated smart home tech enthusiasts, but for the ultimate smart kitchen, even the humble toaster can be upgraded. The Revolution R180S features a touchscreen with settings for various types of toastable items, from waffles to bagels. When it's not in use, the screen can be customized to display either a digital or analog clock. Leaving the screen aside, the actual heating elements of the toaster are also claimed to be a step above a standard machine, with a design that minimizes energy use and cuts down on toasting time.

As much as it might be an improvement for serious toast or bagel fans, the smart toaster is ultimately a bit of a waste of money for most people. But, if you can justify its $349.95 retail price – yes, $350 on a toaster – it's certainly a unique way to improve your kitchen.