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CES 2025 is right around the corner, which means that most tech companies are on the cusp of major releases to their lineups. Following what I predict to be a trend this year, Hisense announced this week that they are pushing their own smart platform that will cover all of their appliances. Moreover, the place you’ll most likely access this smart platform is on your television, which is the primary way most people know Hisense. Over the last year, I've had the chance to try a number of features that Hisense is promising in other brands, and many are more useful in theory than practice. Hopefully, however, small changes Hisense is making to each feature will show better results.
Hisense’s platform, called “ConnectLife” will offer a 3D view of your smart home on Hisense television sets and allow you to access your entire smart home from the platform. I was struck, while listening to their presentation, how similar this felt to Samsung’s promise at last year's Consumer Electronics Show. Last year, Samsung announced that it was integrating SmartThings, its smart platform, into their TVs with a similar 3D view.
As someone with a Samsung TV, I was excited about the integration of SmartThings, a platform I also use. However, I can’t help but notice that in the time since CES 2024, I have only used the television as my hub once, and that was simply because I was reminded in the menu it existed and wondered if it had changed since January (it hadn’t).
In truth, I don’t know that I believe people will stop the program they’re watching to switch over to the hub interface and take the multi-step action to find the device they want and activate it, when, with a few swipes of your finger, you can do so more quickly on your phone, or ask your voice assistant for help. I don’t think it's going to make a difference for Hisense, either. While it makes perfect sense to integrate TVs and hubs in theory, it just isn’t all that useful in practice.
That said, Amazon seems to have figured out a better system. While it doesn't have the same interface, all Fire TVs act as hubs given their Alexa integration. This feels like a much more practical integration of smart tech, since the voice assistant can be used to control the TV itself if you lose the remote, but also removes the need for a smart speaker in that room. The TV simply replaces the speaker.
Every smart device you purchase requires an app and/or hub. In all likelihood, that hub only works with devices from that brand. In rare cases, like Google, Apple, and Amazon, those hubs can also integrate other brands, so we call them "multi-hubs." A trend I see evolving is that more brands are trying to turn their one-brand hubs into multi-hubs. Brilliant, Hubspace, even Aqara all allow other integrations using different connection technologies like Matter, Zigbee or Z-wave.
Hisense is going in another direction. Their app, ConnectLife, will work with Hisense brands so you can control them. However, if you want to control other brand devices through Hisense, you can link the Hisense app to Google Home (Google Home works with almost every other brand), and through Google Home, you can bring those integrations back into ConnectLife.
If you already use Google Home, this is just another integration into an app you already have, so no big deal. But if you're not using Google Home and want to use Hisense as a multi-hub, it would require you download both apps. Again, you can just download and use ConnectLife if all you want to control with it are your Hisense devices. The thing is, there appear to be integrations that allow you to control Hisense devices with Alexa or Siri. If you're already using a multi-hub with Alexa or Siri, it makes more sense to connect your Hisense devices to it, rather than to the Hisense multi-hub on your TV or phone.
If that sounds overly complicated, that's because it is—unnecessarily so. That's why, on some level, it's better to simply let existing multi-hubs handle integrations instead of trying to be a multi-hub.
As part of the lineup of smart appliances it plans to roll out this year, Hisense introduced two new smart refrigerators: a jumbo side-by-side (promised to be the largest on the market) and a “FreshVault” French door fridge. These fridges will offer a meal planner that pulls from an AI-powered technology known as “Dish Designer." Dish Designer, a duel effort from Microsoft and Hisense, can utilize your family preferences in combination with what is in your fridge to help craft menus for you.
Personally, the ability to analyze what is in your fridge and utilize those ingredients in meal planning is exciting to me. I sometimes forget what is in my fridge, and despite being a good cook, am often unable to decide what I actually want to eat. These menu assistants can legitimately offer help by suggesting an endless array of ideas. I rarely use the recipe suggestions that I get from other smart appliances, like my Brava oven or Brisk It Grill, but neither of those utilize my preferences or what ingredients I have on hand, if they work. Hisense promises otherwise.
An app that does already make suggestions based off my preferences and what I have available is Samsung Food, which uses AI and cameras in their fridge to assess what you have and make meal-planning suggestions. I haven’t tested either Dish Designer (which will deploy sometime around Q2 next year) or Samsung Food (I’m eagerly awaiting my fridge), but I have talked to a number of people who own Samsung fridges with these features enabled. Most of them aren't using the meal planning, and the reason seems to be that the technology isn't great at identifying what's in the fridge, so the recommendations aren't accurate. The in-fridge camera can't see everything if the fridge is full, food in paper wrapping or plastic can't be identified, and labels have to be turned the right way to be perceived correctly. Hisense's press release doesn't imply they'll have in-fridge cameras, so I'm unsure how they'll take into account what food you have on hand.
To Hisense’s credit, the technology that will best help reduce food waste isn’t AI based, but engineering—there are vacuum-sealed drawers, adjustable bin sizes, and ultra-thin foam insulation to extend the life of your ingredients. While using AI seems like it could lead to really useful meal planning in the future, so far, it doesn't appear to have met the mark and will only do so when it can get more accuracy on personal taste and inventory.
One high point is the announcement of the LuxCare Mini Washer-Dryer Combo, which promises to be fast, efficient, and quiet. All-in-one machines aren’t new, but they’ve never been particularly well-reviewed. However, that has changed in recent years with smart-enabled combo machines from LG, GE, and Samsung. These all-in-ones allow people in small spaces to purchase washing machines. I know three people with new combo machines, and all speak highly of them. It’s reasonable to believe that the additional AI technology that’s been added to these machines, allowing them to treat fabrics differently based on sensors, has made a sizable difference on how well the machines work in practice.
I'm excited for any brand to invest in more smart tech, but it has to make sense in practice. I love Hisense's enthusiasm, and as it happens, their TVs. I love ideas like the combo washer/dryer, which create more accessibility. I have to hope that other ideas, like the TV as hub, AI-based meal planning, and expansion into a multi-hub are executed better here to make the results more useful than previous attempts by other brands.
