Every Major Smart Fridge Brand Ranked Worst To Best

Smart refrigerators have felt like an inevitability since they were first introduced in the early 2000s. Touch screens and the ability to track and maintain your food supplies were touted as being easy to use, reliable, and life-changing. In reality, those early systems required more manual labor than most users anticipated, and manufacturers changed focus to devices that connect to Wi-Fi and allow for basic functions through an app. Of course, those connections work both ways, and manufacturers are also able to collect data on users, which in turn is used for advertising.

For some, that's too invasive, so nearly half of all smart appliances remain disconnected from the internet. Smart fridges are also generally more expensive than their standard counterparts — whether a smart refrigerator is worth it for you and your household depends on your situation.

Tech is kind of our thing here at SlashGear, and some of the fun in watching manufacturers race to a new frontier is in the innovative risks that are taken. With that in mind, we've done research into the major smart fridge brands and ranked them from worst to best. These rankings are the result of review scores from trusted sites like Consumer Reports, as well as customer ratings and sales data from major appliance retailers like The Home Depot, Lowes, and Best Buy. And while "worst" doesn't necessarily equate to "bad," we sought to rank both the quality of the brands' smart abilities, as well as that of the appliances themselves.

Beko claims to be the number one appliance manufacturer in Europe, running 45 production facilities across the continent. It's a Turkish company known for making reliable, if unremarkable, appliances; in fact, it landed right in the middle of our ranking of conventional refrigerator brands.

While Beko can be considered a major smart fridge brand, it's not exactly a recognized one over here in the States, and as a result, its products are mostly available via specialty appliance retailers — although some Beko refrigerators, ranges, and ovens can be ordered through Wal-Mart, too. Consumer Reports has reviewed four of Beko's fridges, and the lone Wi-Fi enabled model [BFBF30216SS] in that group received a respectable 76/100. That rating reflects Beko's refrigerator tech more than its smart features, though. Its HarvestFresh technology simulates the sun's light throughout the day to keep fruits and vegetables fresher for longer, while air distribution and FreshGuard filters keep odor to a minimum while also contributing to product freshness.

Beko uses the HomeWhiz app to control its smart features. HomeWhiz works with a number of European-manufactured appliances to allow temperature monitoring and adjustment remotely — a common set of features for basic smart fridges, but nothing special. Overall, Beko makes a solid but not exceptional fridge; however, the brand's smart capabilities and the fact that a third-party app is required to take advantage of those abilities leaves something to be desired.

Hisense started out as a radio manufacturer in China in 1969. Today, it's a global consumer electronics and appliance brand, perhaps best recognized for its budget-friendly TVs and appliances. The company also produces projectors, soundbars, and larger commercial products. The brand continues to grow in influence and market share. In the last 10 years, Hisense has acquired Toshiba and Sharp, two of the biggest names in television manufacturing.

Hisense's appliances are a lot like its TVs; they're affordable, well-reviewed products made to offer an alternative to high-priced, bigger-name-brand options. While a fridge with a touch screen built into the door is available in other markets, the Hisense French Door refrigerator [model #HRM260N6TSE] is the only smart fridge the brand makes that is available in the United States. Consumer Reports rates this model a 73, but that good rating is more reflective of a well-made appliance than a smart fridge with plenty of bells and whistles.

With notifications and temperature controls available through its ConnectLife app, Hisense's smart fridge provides Wi-Fi features without really pushing the boundaries with that branch of its refrigerator tech. Instead, it focuses on more practical ideas like 360-degree LED lighting, a variable-use middle drawer, and gallon-sized door bins that make it a solid investment for a good, affordable fridge with a little extra smart tech thrown in for good measure.

Fisher & Paykel has been designing products since 1934, although the New Zealand-based company was bought up by Chinese manufacturer Haier in 2012. The high-end appliances from Fisher & Paykel make for some great-looking products that fit into the brand's design philosophy of a "social kitchen" — aa place where food is made and families and friends engage and interact.

The problem one might find when trying to design a bespoke, trendy, visually pleasing kitchen is that a fridge that looks fantastic with your chosen style just doesn't work as well as it should. Several Fisher & Paykel built-in refrigerators ship with the ability to blend into any space seamlessly by way of mounting hardware that allows your cabinetmaker to provide panels that match the rest of the kitchen. The brand's appliances are also reasonably priced when compared to other professional-grade appliances from makers like Sub-Zero or Thermodore.

However, substance should be more important than style with any refrigerator. Consumer Reports review scores for Fisher & Paykel's refrigerators range from 68 to 31, and reviews mention their slow ice makers, poor shelf weight capacity, and limited smart capabilities. 

Design is the name of the game for Café, GE's bespoke line of stylish, distinctive appliances. The brand is marketed towards contractors and designers, with a rewards program for those tradespeople as well as suggestions for other brands' kitchen faucets, paint, counters, cabinets — even cookware. Café's appliances look great and are as reliable as their cousins over at General Electric, but seamlessly fit into a bespoke, personalized kitchen space. As such, the price tags on Cafe's products are significantly higher than those of most better-known brands, but for those who consider form to be as important as function, these appliances fit the bill.

This smart fridge brand offers some really handy upgrades to its products, including a water filler in the door that uses sensors to automatically fill your glass, humidity control that keeps veggies fresh longer, and customizable drawers for soft-freezing and storing things like pizza and flatbread. Consumer Reports only has one rating for a Cafe refrigerator, but it rated a 71 — a solid score that lands near the high end of Consumer Reports' overall ratings for GE fridges.

Cafe's smart fridges are highly customizable, many with multiple base finishes and hardware options, allowing customers to pick the perfect combination to match their kitchen. Built-in wifi connections or optional add-on wifi dongles allow users to receive alerts about filters or temperature issues, monitor and adjust temps in the fridge and freezer, and enable special settings through GE's SmartHQ app, which is compatible with Alexa, Hey Google, and more.

Dacor is a stylish brand that makes appliances that look as good as they perform. The company combines innovation with a desire to make a kitchen as beautiful as it is functional. Founded in California in 1965 and acquired by Samsung in 2016, Dacor is a high-end appliance manufacturer specializing in built-in ranges, cooktops, dishwashers, and refrigerators that blend into a kitchen seamlessly. Its products aren't cheap, but the quality and reliability of its appliances reflect those price tags. And they're more than willing to help with the design aspect of your kitchen — the brand's Dacor Defined online tool allows users to configure an entire kitchen around its appliances.

Dacor's IQ Control, the company's app for its smart appliances, uses Samsung's SmartThings tech to control its refrigerators wirelessly. The app can perform diagnostics, adjust temperature controls and alerts, and even cue up ice-making functions in case you forgot to grab a bag for that margarita pool party you'd planned for later in the day.

The brand's smart fridges aren't just tech-savvy — several of Dacor's built-in refrigerators have Consumer Reports ratings over 80, along with the respected CR Recommended badge. Smart controls aren't the only highlights in Dacor's smart fridges: other features include an adjustable temperature drawer, stainless steel paneling to maintain temps, and an internal water dispenser to give the outside of the fridge a flat, seamless look.

Many of us own a second fridge or freezer, and those backup/alternates are usually either older kitchen fridges we've replaced or a mini-fridge. I fit into the latter of the two categories, keeping a little wine fridge in my basement home theater. Before you make assumptions about my fancy lifestyle, note that it's filled with Coke, beer, and Vitamin Water.

Rocco makes one model of smart fridge, and it's not for your kitchen. In fact, "Friends shouldn't be exposed to the kitchen fridge" is one of the reasons Rocco gives for the company's very existence. Its Super Smart Fridge is a great-looking drink storage unit available in several colors, and its 50s-meets-modern aesthetic makes it as much a conversation piece as it is an appliance.

Rocco's Super Smart Fridge isn't all show and no go, either. This little fridge uses the same compressor that professional-grade fridgemaker Sub-Zero uses in theirs, and Rocco says it can hold 88 cans or 27 bottles of Bordeaux, stored flat on slide-out racks. Its internal camera allows you to see inside your fridge via iOS app to check what you're low on, and sensors even scan and track the beverages you keep in the fridge. It's a cool piece, and one of the smarter fridges we have on this list.

This German company started out in 1886 with a humble workshop for mechanical engineering services, and today, it has grown into a global powerhouse. Bosch's products range from power tools to spark plugs to thermal plants.

Home goods are another part of Bosch's business, and its appliances and kitchen gadgets are known for being reliable and dependable but also innovative and well-designed. Its smart fridges include several features that meet those high standards. From a FarmFresh System that keeps food fresher for a longer time to an ice maker that makes little ice pyramids to Wi-Fi connectivity with Bosch's Home Connect app, this smart fridge brand has all the bells and whistles one should expect from a Bosch product. Unfortunately, some cool Home Connect features, like a built-in camera, are no longer being added to its smart fridges.

Consumer Reports rates Bosch refrigerators as good, but not great, with scores in the high 70s for two of its more popular smart fridges. The fridges themselves are well made, but Bosch's Home Connect is one of the less exciting smart appliance apps for the time being, having dropped some of the features that other brands on this list still employ.

One of the best known brands on our list is General Electric. The company has been in business since its incorporation in 1892, and innovations like the room air conditioner, electric range, and hermetically sealed domestic refrigerator were all born from GE and its subsidiaries.

GE's innovations weren't limited to new products, either — the company's first smart oven was released in 2013, and by 2016, it introduced Alexa connectivity and Dash Replenishment to a full suite of connected appliances. Smart fridges from the brand have garnered reviews from Consumer Reports that range from the mid-70s down, with plenty of options for different styles and price ranges.

General Electric's current generation of smart fridges connect to the GE SmartHQ app, allowing users to customize temperature settings and activate Turbo Cool and Turbo Freeze, maintaining food freshness even after multiple or prolonged open-door events. Other abilities include turning on the ice maker and pinging your phone if your water filter needs replacement. Some models can even schedule hot water to be ready for your coffee in the morning, while others have built-in filtered, auto-refilling pitchers that can be easily removed or dispensed from via spouts.

Korean manufacturer LG has a fascinating history — it evolved from a cosmetics and chemical company into Goldstar, a company known for its affordable radios and televisions. In 1995, old brand names Lucky and Goldstar became LG, and shortly thereafter it acquired Zenith, the one-time largest home appliance company in the U.S. Today, the company is known for its appliances, computers, home audio equipment, and TVs — the latter of which has some hidden features you might not be using.

LG also happens to be the company that produced the first smart refrigerator at the turn of the century. When the Internet Digital DIOS dropped, a $20,000 price tag and limited functionality kept it from becoming immediately popular. And while LG's vision of what a smart fridge can do has evolved, its willingness to change its products to reflect its new visions has not.

Aside from basically inventing the smart fridge, LG was one of the first to try putting a touch screen onto a refrigerator with its InstaView fridges; these days, it makes a double-door InstaView that reacts to a double-knock by turning the light on inside the fridge, allowing users to browse the selection inside without opening the door. Its ThinQ app notifies owners about usage and maintenance, and can help the manufacturer diagnose the fridge when repairs are required. And its smart fridges are some of the best-reviewed by Consumer Reports, with many receiving CR Recommended badges.

Samsung is known for its phones, appliances, TVs, and more, and its SmartThings network is one of the more popular IoT networks on the market. I recently discovered that my new TV and existing dryer are connected when I was watching wrestling and got a pop-up notification that my laundry was finished. Necessary? Not really. Useful? I mean, it beats multiple trips downstairs to check on the dryer. Despite Samsung's 2023 announcement that it will no longer be selling "dumb" appliances, these are the little benefits we'll see from the brand that has made some of the most interesting, tech-heavy smart fridges on the market today.

Samsung's smart fridges are about as smart as a fridge can get, and many are bestsellers at several retailers, but we'll highlight one of the brand's more interesting new features — its AI Family Hub+. It's a system that allows you to see inside the fridge without opening it, either on a screen built into the refrigerator door or on your phone. That's not all — it's functionally a big tablet as well, allowing you to manage the family calendar, stream music, check a doorbell camera, and more. Tapping a Samsung Galaxy phone like the S24 on the Hub's side enables easy screen mirroring to your fridge's 32-inch screen. AI Vision Inside can recognize 33 fruits and vegetables, and the AI Family Hub+ can then suggest recipes, plan meals, and even shop via built-in Alexa support.

Several different sources and websites were used to develop this ranking of every major smart fridge brand. Trusted references like Consumer Reports and Popular Mechanics were consulted, as well as sales rankings and customer reviews from popular retailers like Best Buy, Lowes, and The Home Depot. While Amazon is normally consulted for our lists, the online retailer's best-seller list is mostly made up of mini-fridges and components, likely due to the cost of shipping a fridge and people's desire to experiment with a large appliance before purchase.

These hard numbers were paired with my own experience shopping at several nearby retailers for a smart fridge recently. Apps for several of the brands' smart fridges were downloaded for a quick test drive, and smart features were compared between brands before a final ranking was reached.