[rdtwo]

Honestly I don’t think there is any innovation in the appliance space. The companies take the same components slap a new face plate on them or a led display and sell the same shit at different price points. In 2019 I’m still not sure that you can get a PID controlled oven or fridge and that should be trivially easy to implement.

[eurg]

Modern fridges have temperature sensors, per-drawer ventilated air-cooling, auto-detection of when particular high-thermal mass un-frozen food (i.e. a turkey) is added and start quick-freezing, and provide alarms when door or cooling fail. Also, energy efficiency for the EU A+++ rated units is really good.

And you get that already for the cheap units.

So, it's a freezer, it freezes, and it doesn't send a post to Facebook. The only complaint I would have is their loudness. Modern extra-slow compressors are often (perceived) louder than previous-gen units.

Also: given that even DIY ovens usually start with "get a cheap PID controller from e-bay", I doubt that commercial ones use anything else.

[rdtwo]

My fridge is modern but pretty simple. It’s really just a freezer with a vent that regulates fridge temps. It’s got some othe functions like defrost and seal warming but it’s a remarkably crude device

[qes]

Appliances, in my opinion, are a racket that artificially creates stratification among models to provide a variety of price points.

That said, very few refrigerators out of the large number of available models (many more than say dishwashers or clothes washer/dryers) have the same interior layout.

Even two nearby models from the same manufacturer with minor feature differences will have significantly different layouts, to the point that you can't just choose to get a fridge with or without feature X without also choosing between differences in the likely more important aspect of layout.