As far as I can tell Electrolux is the only manufacturer selling "dumb" laundry kit in the US these days… which is probably part of why everyone's favorite LG shills (Yale Appliance) does their best to ignore them.
I'm no dishwasher expert and I guess they did their homework but over a period of 10 years, how can be cheaper to remove the local functionality, add a wifi chip, redo the manuals, and pay for the datacenter costs?
Also I seriously doubt the hosting costs are more than a rounding error for a multiple-hundred-dollar appliance.
Ok but...
> then think if they already have that they can save some cents on buttons.
Isn't this a rounding error as well, on a >500$ appliance?
How can we have at the same time dishwashers with no 7-segments display because it's too expensive and other brands with wifi on every model? It cannot be just for costs, there ought to be marketing reasons behind this.
Seems like the "top control" range, which I can't even see in other countries, might be what's presenting the problem to the author.
I don't GAF about appliances being dumb, but I agree it's not a great thing if you have to use smart controls. Provide both and we're all good IMHO.
I recently bought a Bosch and regret it for some of the same reasons as this article. I probably should have got the Miele but CR ratings were slightly higher for Bosch, the repair rates in different places were similar, and the cost was slightly less for the Bosch.
I'm ok with networked appliances but think every function should be operable at the minimum level of networking required to implement that function.
So, a specific washing or drying program shouldn't require any networking, so should function without any networking. Checking the status of a cycle on you phone can be done locally through something like Bluetooth, so it should operate with that and no wifi. Remote monitoring requires internet of some sort, so that's fine.
What makes me furious is requiring a phone app to run something like a delicate or rinse-only cycle.
Funny, that is a single physical button on my Siemens dishwasher.
But as I said before - not really something I care about either way.
I have a Bosch Series 6 dishwasher here in Australia. It has physical buttons for all the stuff he mentions - Machine Care (self-cleaning), HalfLoad, Eco, and Delay start.
I did connect it to wifi which allows me to ... do the same stuff from their app. It's next to useless in my use pattern of "load the dishwasher, run the dishwasher". Literally all it adds is the ability to more easily set the machine to run later, which I don't care about.
I love Bosch stuff and will continue to buy it, certainly their series 6 and 8 stuff that's made in Germany - great quality and reliable IMHO.
Honestly it seems like there's just been a poor design decision here, to export the full set of controls to an app rather than on the machine, rather than some sort of fundamental sin. It certainly raises questions of what happens if/when they drop support, but another poster below mentions that the app works locally after initial cloud setup. Maybe just avoid this model...