How LG Is Making Smart Appliances Even Smarter

ThinQ app gives consumers much more control over their appliances

After the appliance repairman inspected my fridge several months ago for all of three minutes or so, he blurted “okay, I’m pretty sure it’s one of these two things that’s broken. But I won’t know until I open it all up. And by the way, I need to order the parts first and then come back. And I might need to replace both parts to figure out which one it was.” I reminded him that I told him the identical prognosis over the phone the day before. But this was clearly a case of him trying to grab a $75 visit fee that I could conveniently apply towards a fix. Sorry, but it used to be that when you called a repairman and explained the problem over the phone, the guy would come out and fix it. Since when did a scouting visit become necessary?

If LG has its way, situations like this will be a thing of the past. Last week, I visited with some of the company’s executives at the brand’s mega-sized Signature Kitchen Suite Experience Design Center in Napa, Calif. who are emphasizing the most-updated and very intelligent version of the 13-year-old LG ThinQ Smart Home Platform technology in most of their latest appliances these days.

I was always a little dubious of why I might ever need a smart toaster that I could control with a phone app. Apparently, so were the LG people. They instead were imagining – and achieving – actual useful reasons to have connected devices.

“Being able to connect to the products and be able to control them, monitor them, and get new feature updates for them through the ThinQ smartphone app is huge,” says John Russo, LG’s Senior National Training Manager. “This is an overall theme of the brand, and then also being able to do the service part of it through the app via connectivity to the device is really impressive – especially given that the computing in the control panels themselves is pretty impressive. It reports diagnostics back to the company, so our technicians know exactly what you're in for when someone comes out to fix an appliance.”

Imagine being able to see if anything doesn’t look right in your fridge’s electronics, before it becomes a bigger issue. Or getting the fridge fixed over the air, while you’re on the phone with LG. Or having a repairman arrive at your house with fresh parts in hand, and knowing exactly what to fix. But this smart technology does so much more. If I’m doing laundry, for instance, I always wait for the washer and dryer to finish their cycles before leaving the house. We had a flood once and I never want to go through that again. But with ThinQ, I can watch the machines through the app – and control them. I can turn down the heat in the dryer, power off the machine, etc.

Then there’s the kitchen appliances, some of which have touch screens on them. Last week, I saw a high-end Signature Kitchen Suite’s 30-inch Transitional Series Double Wall Oven with Gourmet AI tech inside which has a built-in high-definition camera that identifies food as it’s being placed in the oven and then suggests various recipes. If you select one, you just close the oven door and let it automatically prepare the meal. It also offers real-time remote viewing. This can be crucial to parents with busy lives who may put food in the oven and then get tied up on a phone call in the upstairs office. They can monitor what’s going on inside the oven, in real time. Some of the stovetops have smart knobs that let you toggle between the temperature and timer by using just one hand. Super convenient. The induction cooktop can also detect the iron content of your cookware, so it can give you the exact performance that you need for that specific vessel. Adds Russo: “We're the only brand that offers that technology – no one else can do that.”

All of these smart appliances can also relay energy usage data to third-party apps, if you want. “The technology is incredible,” says Russo. “When you dig into each category of appliances, there's some really impressive technology within each of the cooking, dishwasher, laundry and refrigeration categories that can be super useful. It's really grown a lot throughout the years.”

Trust me, I witnessed several more convincing tech capabilities during my visit. It leaves me feeling optimistic about the future of appliances, and I think LG’s technology is forcing competitors to up their game. As a result, consumers in the future will benefit with better-performing, more-efficient appliances – and by not feeling like they were shysted by a repair company.

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