When shopping for a refrigerator, what are some of the first things you look for? Perhaps it’s ample freezer space or shelves that gracefully fit gallons of milk and a stack of leftovers. Maybe you even look for a proper crisper drawer that excels at preserving your food. Certainly, these are all valuable features to keep in mind while shopping, but would you ever consider buying a fridge with a built-in, 21.5-inch tablet on the front of it?
Samsung is hoping the answer to this question is a resounding yes, considering its recently released Family Hub refrigerator boasts this very innovative (and over-the-top) feature. So, while it still operates like a traditional refrigerator, the fact that it also has an integrated touchscreen controller firmly plants this beast in rarified territory. But is its inclusion of the tablet a little too outrageous? While some may be quick to say yes, we took the Family Hub for a spin over the course of a few weeks at our Digital Trends headquarters to determine if Samsung’s latest model is indeed the wave of the future or too smart for its own good.
The future of refrigerator tech has arrived
To create the Family Hub, Samsung took its Four-Door Flex refrigerator and added not only the 21.5-inch touchscreen to the top right door but also cameras inside. The Four-Door Flex is already a bit unique, because it has one compartment that can either be a fridge or a freezer, depending on how you set it. With 27.9 cubic feet of capacity, it’s a big, black stainless steel beauty.
What’s in a touchscreen?
To be honest, when Samsung announced its Family Hub refrigerator and promised to send one our way for review, we were skeptical. What could possibly be the point of installing a massive touchscreen onto a refrigerator? Nevertheless, as stewards of honest appliance reviews, we kept an open mind. Not only is a touchscreen an ambitiously innovative addition to Samsung’s high-quality line of refrigerators, but it doesn’t take long with the device to see its immense value. It’s not merely a mechanism for streaming music while you cook; it’s much, much more than that. Sure, it does stream music via Pandora and TuneIn but the sum of its parts makes it one incredibly valuable tool for families looking to stay organized.
Connect and serve
Granted, this doesn’t come without a few quibbles but before we jump into those, let’s talk about what it does. Obviously with a name like “Family Hub,” Samsung’s futuristic food chiller is geared toward keeping families in sync and connected. To accomplish this, the fridge lets owners upload and manage their daily calendars by way of an application called Sticki. Whether they choose to configure their schedule on the fridge itself, or by way of the app, everyone using the fridge has the ability to stay up-to-date with their daily routines. A clever add-on, no doubt, but our time with the fridge showed a desire to interact more often with the smartphone application than the fridge itself due in large part to the fact typing on the fridge is a bit clunky. Perhaps having spent years typing on a smartphone predisposes us to preferring a phone keyboard to a vertical touchscreen, but doing anything more than creating a quick reminder felt like a chore.
To a further extent, there are far more efficient calendar apps than Sticki, though a centralized calendar is certainly a step in the right direction for Samsung. Merely having the ability to easily share calendars, post photos, or write notes from the application (which then shows up on the fridge) is an incredible way for a family to stay connected. Additionally, having access to stored grocery lists and snapshots of what’s actually inside the fridge make the Family Hub’s suite of apps even more useful.
Outside of Sticki, Samsung’s Family Hub also provides users with the ability to build shopping lists; however, there doesn’t seem to be a way to send these to your smartphone at the moment. A great feature, sure, but it would be nice to have the ability to send these to yourself on your way to the store instead of being relegated to writing it down or snapping a photo of it with your phone. You could reasonably still send shopping lists via Sticki, though if Samsung wants to make a family’s life easier, having to access a separate app for one action is a bit unfavorable.
A window into its insides
You know what’s better than opening your fridge to see what’s inside? Clicking a button on the door to get a snapshot of its interior without having to budge the door whatsoever. By making use of three high-quality cameras secured to the inside edge of the Family Hub’s left door, Samsung has created a way for owners to get fresh images of the inside of their fridge every time they close it. Furthermore, an innovative tagging system allows anyone to attach, for instance, a “5 Days” tag to a carton of milk to keep track of its expiration date. The downside? The tags don’t move if you move the carton. Nevertheless, this entire feature is still cutting edge in terms as far as refrigerator tech goes.
While this function performed admirably during our time with the Family Hub, it was the ability to access the images of the fridge’s interior via Samsung’s Smart Home Appliance app that really wowed us. From literally anywhere — though, most likely the grocery store — a simple load of the companion application allows for a quick view of what’s inside the fridge. No more “did we run out of milk?” questions or “are we sure we have the correct ingredients for tonight’s dinner?” Having access to the captured photos while on-the-go is as useful as it is innovative.
Odds and ends
Rounding out the touchscreen’s impressive slate of features is its compatibility with Pandora and TuneIn to stream music or radio stations, its inclusion of a full-featured web browser, along with the ability to leave handwritten notes on the tablet’s home screen via its Whiteboard application. Local weather access, Wi-Fi connectivity, and Bluetooth functionality are also standard fare with the Family Hub, though it’s worth pointing out the Bluetooth feature only works as a Bluetooth out function for its Pandora and TuneIn apps — i.e. you won’t be able to sync your phone with it.
The Family Hub also allows for TV mirroring with compatible Samsung TVs, so if you feel the need to catch up on Game of Thrones while cooking dinner, the Family Hub’s got your back. Unfortunately, we didn’t have a compatible Samsung TV in-house while reviewing it so we weren’t able to enjoy this (somewhat) useful feature. Still, having the ability to watch your favorite show, or simply have the news on in the background while you cook, is a welcome feature, even if it does feel a little odd.
Tech aside, how good is it at being a fridge?
The Family Hub excels at its ability to maintain a consistent temperature in its refrigerator, freezer, and patented FlexZone compartment. Furthermore, the appliance’s onboard touchscreen allows for easy customization of any of those three areas, as owners have the ability to set the fridge between 34 and 44 degrees Fahrenheit or the freezer between -8 and 5 degrees Fahrenheit. As for the FlexZone, this innovative fourth compartment features settings such as Meat/Fish, Cheese/Vegetables, White Wine, Soft Freeze, and Frozen, which allow for ultimate flexibility, turning the space behind the bottom right door into a fridge or freezer on command.
Cooler than the other side of the pillow
Boasting tech called Triple & Metal Cooling, Samsung took extra care in assuring the Family Hub correctly monitors its humidity to offer precise temperature readings at all times. To make sure this continues to be the case — even if someone leaves either of the doors open for an extended amount of time — the Family Hub features an intuitive temperature control panel which allows for quick adjustments of the fridge or freezer’s temperature, while also giving owners access to alter the Flex Zone.
During our time with the Family Hub, we wanted to see how quickly the fridge and freezer compartments have the ability to revert back to their normal temperature. To do this, we left the doors of the refrigerator and freezer open for roughly 15 minutes. After closing the door and being prompted of how much temperature was lost — 5 degrees Fahrenheit for the fridge and 6 degrees Fahrenheit for the freezer — we shut each door to see how long it took for the temperatures to right themselves.
What we found was that after losing around 5 degrees of temperature, the refrigerator took roughly 15 minutes to get back to its set temperature of 38 degrees. Concerning the freezer, we originally had it set to -8 degrees Fahrenheit and after it rose to -3 with the door open for 15 minutes, it took just 10 minutes to get the temperature back to normal. Perhaps the fact the freezer remains at a cooler temperature normally is the reason for it cooling down quicker but 10 and 15 minutes for the fridge and freezer to revert back to normal, respectively, isn’t all that bad.
