GE’s new sensible fridge provides a barcode scanner and an 8-inch pill

Have you at all times needed to scan your groceries at residence? If so, the most recent sensible fridge from GE Appliances is for you. There’s a barcode scanner constructed into the water dispenser that works together with an inside digital camera and an 8-inch pill that can assist you preserve observe of what meals you want and add it to your digital buying record.

The GE Profile Smart 4-Door French-Door Refrigerator with Kitchen Assistant is being introduced at CES 2026, which kicks off subsequent week, and is slated to launch in April for $4,899 — $500 greater than a comparable non-Kitchen Assistant mannequin.

This is GE’s first fridge with a full pill inbuilt, however not its first equipment with one — that accolade goes to GE’s Kitchen Hub, which was an enormous 27-inch pill connected to an over-the-range microwave.

The firm says this time they wish to use the expertise to handle particular ache factors, similar to sustaining your buying record, meal planning, and managing meals waste. “We’re integrating very purposeful technology into the product,” Amy Hite, product supervisor with GE Appliances, instructed The Verge. “We didn’t just put an iPad on the front of the door.”

The novel function right here is the built-in scanner, located under the pill and above the water dispenser. The thought is that you just scan your empty packages as you are taking them out of the fridge or pantry. This provides them to your buying record in GE’s SmartHQ App — full with model, taste, and measurement — ideally making it simpler to construct your buying record.

You may manually add objects by way of the 8-inch contact display screen, which, by being built-in into the water dispenser space, appears much less apparent than these on different manufacturers. Another choice is the brand new built-in voice assistant, “Hey, HQ.” The display screen additionally offers entry to recipes from Taste of Home and a meal-planning function, and you’ll add elements you want from a recipe to your record with a couple of faucets.

A digital camera contained in the fridge screens your crisper drawer, letting you test from the shop by way of the app should you’re operating low on spinach. It’s built-in right into a flush-mount LED bar above the doorways and has a bodily shutter.

Once your record is prepared, you possibly can order your groceries via Instacart within the app, test off objects whereas within the retailer, or export the record as a PDF. “The goal here is not to try and keep an inventory list of what’s inside the refrigerator but to actually allow easy shopping for you,” says Hite.

The firm plans so as to add AI-powered object monitoring to the digital camera to allow extra exact meals monitoring — a function Samsung’s Family Hub sensible fridges already supply. “AI vision is the future here,” says Hite. “There is a real problem with food waste, so we are trying to solve for that by helping you know what you have, so you don’t buy duplicates.”

The SmartHQ voice assistant is one other first for GE Appliances. In addition to including objects to your buying record, it may deal with duties like kitchen timers, dishing out a exact quantity of water, and answering questions in regards to the fridge, similar to “How do I change my water filter?”

HQ doesn’t discuss again; as a substitute, it solutions any questions on the display screen. However, there’s a speaker within the fridge, together with a microphone, that you need to use to stream music and podcasts.

“The voice control feature fills the gaps that are difficult to get to with our Alexa and Google assistants integrations,” explains Justin Brown, director of Digital Product Management at GE Appliances. He says will probably be out there on different home equipment sooner or later.

There are a number of apps, providers, and sensible audio system that may do some or all the above, however having all these capabilities built-in into one equipment — the fridge — and accessible to everybody within the family holds some attraction. However, being locked into one producer’s ecosystem and app feels restrictive, particularly for meal planning. And my experiences with the SmartHQ app up to now haven’t been nice.

There’s additionally the very actual concern round having a pill constructed into your fridge which may cease getting updates or break lengthy earlier than your fridge does. However, sticking tablets into home equipment isn’t a development that’s going away anytime quickly. Hisense simply announced a line of fridges and ovens with touchscreens that will even be at CES, and Samsung’s newest home equipment all function 7-inch or bigger tablets.

The different concern is that after corporations have screens in your house, they’ll begin pushing advertisements at you, one thing Samsung has already finished. The trade-off between the comfort these interfaces convey, and the shortage of management you finally have over them, is one thing we’ll be watching carefully.