LG's Alexa-powered fridge sends recipes to your oven
LG's ThinQ kitchen appliances can share tasks with each other.
Now that LG's Alexa-equipped refrigerator is no longer a novelty, the company is moving on to the next step: appliances that work in harmony. This week at CES, it's introducing a range of smart appliances that thrive on sharing information to help you get things done. The centerpiece is LG's next Alexa-capable fridge, the InstaView ThinQ. While its 29-inch transparent touchscreen, webOS platform and voice control aren't all that new, its integration with your oven is. When you choose a recipe (including those suggested by the fridge, which detects what you have on hand), you can send it to an oven with Alexa support to get spoken cooking instructions. This is ultimately a luxury -- your fridge likely isn't that far from your oven -- but it's good to have your recipes right where you'll use them.
The fridge can also add expiration dates to your food (no more expired milk), and handles many of the tasks you'd expect from an Alexa-powered device, such as streaming music.
Other appliances step up their game as well. The EasyClean oven can automatically start preheating to prepare for a recipe, and tell the QuadWash dishwasher to set its next cycle based on what you're cooking. If you're preparing a greasy lasagna, your dishwasher will brace for impact. And as you might expect, you can use both voice controls and a CLOi Hub Bot to keep track of what the oven and dishwasher are doing.
LG hasn't said how much these appliances will cost or when they'll ship, but it's likely they'll sit on the higher end. The aim of the new lineup is clear, though: The company is betting that this tight coordination will encourage you to buy an all-LG appliance set instead of cherry picking from different vendors.
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