Smart appliances have become one of the appliance industry’s favorite talking points. Refrigerators can suggest recipes, washers can connect to apps, ovens can be controlled remotely, and dishwashers can send alerts when a cycle is done.
That sounds useful on paper. But new research from Curion suggests many shoppers are not nearly as excited about connected appliances as manufacturers might hope.
In a national poll of 5,610 U.S. adults, Curion found that consumers are still making appliance decisions the old-fashioned way. They want products that last, make sense financially, and do not turn a basic home purchase into another software-dependent device that might become annoying later.
The headline finding is pretty blunt: long-term reliability and price/value dominate the appliance buying decision. Smart features, meanwhile, ranked near the bottom.
According to Curion, 45% of respondents said long-term reliability was their single most important purchase driver when buying an appliance. Another 27% chose price/value. Together, those two factors accounted for nearly three out of every four consumer decisions.
Smart features were the primary purchase driver for just 2.7% of respondents.
That put connected features eighth out of 11 options, behind factors like brand trust, energy efficiency, ease of use, and warranty or service support. More respondents chose “none of the above” than chose smart features.
For an appliance industry that has spent years adding screens, apps, notifications, sensors, Wi-Fi, and ecosystem integrations to everyday home products, that should be a pretty loud warning sign.
One of the more surprising parts of the Curion research is that younger shoppers do not seem much more interested in smart appliances than older shoppers.
That runs against a common industry assumption: younger consumers grew up with smartphones, streaming, smart speakers, and app-connected devices, so they must naturally want connected features built into refrigerators, ovens, washers, and other major appliances.
Curion’s data does not support that idea.
Among consumers aged 18 to 34, only 3.0% chose smart features as their primary appliance purchase driver. Among consumers 65 and older, the figure was 1.9%. That is not much of a generational divide.
Younger shoppers were much more aligned with everyone else. They chose reliability and value first. In fact, Curion says 51% of 18- to 34-year-olds named reliability as their top purchase driver, while 25% chose price/value.
That suggests the appliance market is not simply waiting for older consumers to age out before smart features become a major selling point. At least based on this poll, younger buyers are also asking the same basic questions: Will it last? Is it worth the money? Will it be easy to live with?
Those are not anti-technology questions. They are practical ones.
The Curion report also suggests consumers are not merely indifferent to connected features. Some appear actively skeptical of them.
In open-ended responses, shoppers expressed frustration with appliance brands overcomplicating products that many people still view as basic household tools. Curion highlighted several comments from respondents, including:
“Stop thinking that everyone wants all the bells and whistles.”
“Get rid of the digital things that always break.”
“I don’t understand the need to have so many appliances be smart.”
Those comments are important because they point to a deeper issue than feature awareness. The problem may not be that consumers do not understand smart appliances. It may be that they understand them well enough to decide they do not need them.
That also helps explain another interesting finding from the research. “Fear of complexity” ranked dead last among barriers to upgrading, at just 0.9%.
At first, that might sound like complexity is not a problem. But Curion’s interpretation is more nuanced. Many consumers may have already filtered complicated products out of consideration entirely. In other words, they are not saying complexity is their top barrier because they are not seriously considering those products in the first place.
For brands, that is a different kind of challenge. It means smart features may not just be failing to persuade buyers. In some cases, they may be making products feel less durable, less repairable, or less trustworthy.
Energy efficiency also ranked lower than many brands might expect.
Curion found that only 3.0% of consumers named energy efficiency as their primary appliance purchase driver. That does not necessarily mean shoppers do not care about energy use or utility bills. It may mean efficiency has become an expected part of the product, rather than the main reason someone chooses one appliance over another.
That is an important distinction.
Buyers may still want an efficient refrigerator, washer, dryer, or dishwasher. But when forced to name the single most important reason for purchase, they are still choosing reliability and value first.
For manufacturers, that creates a messaging problem. Efficiency ratings, connected energy monitoring, app-based optimization, and sustainability claims may help support a purchase, but they may not be strong enough to lead the pitch on their own.
When consumers were asked which appliance brands felt most aligned with their lives, many pointed to established names such as GE, Whirlpool, and Maytag.
One respondent described those brands as “traditional, reliable, quality, homey, and real.”
That is not the language of cutting-edge tech. It is the language of trust.
For a category like appliances, that may be exactly the point. People do not replace a refrigerator or washing machine for fun. These are expensive, necessary products that sit in the home for years. When they fail, the disruption is immediate and annoying. A broken dishwasher, oven, or washing machine is not just a minor inconvenience. It can change the rhythm of a household.
That gives heritage brands a real advantage, especially if consumers already associate them with dependability and serviceability.
It also puts pressure on newer or more tech-forward brands to prove that their features do something useful, not just something novel.
The lesson here is not that consumers hate technology. That would be too simple.
Plenty of smart home categories have found real demand because they solve obvious problems. Smart thermostats can help manage heating and cooling. Smart doorbells can improve awareness at the front door. Robot vacuums can take over a repetitive chore. Smart lighting can add convenience, automation, and ambiance.
The difference is that those products usually give people an easy-to-understand benefit.
With smart appliances, the value proposition is often less clear. A phone notification from a washing machine can be useful. Remote oven controls may help some households. A connected refrigerator can appeal to a very specific kind of user.
But for many buyers, those features may not outweigh the concerns:
That last question may be the most important one.
Tomás Gilbert, Curion’s director of strategic market insights, summed it up directly: “The lesson isn’t that consumers reject technology. It’s that a feature only matters if it does a real job better than what they already own. When it doesn’t, it reads as one more thing that can break.”
That line captures the bigger issue. Smart features are not automatically bad. But in appliances, they have to earn their place.
For years, the appliance industry has treated smarter products as the obvious next step. The Curion data suggests that may be true for manufacturers, but not necessarily for consumers.
The next wave of appliance innovation may not need to be louder, flashier, or more connected. It may need to be more boring in the best possible way: longer-lasting components, clearer warranties, easier repairs, better service, simpler controls, and prices that feel easier to justify.
Keren Novack, Curion’s president, said brands need to understand what need a product fills before bringing it to market, and whether that need is strong enough to convince someone to replace what is already in their home.
“Before a brand brings a product to market, it has to know what need it fills and whether that’s genuinely worth a consumer replacing what’s already in their home. The brands that win the next chapter of this category won’t be the ones with the smartest appliances. They’ll be the ones consumers feel most confident bringing through the door,” Novack said.
That is a useful way to think about the future of the category. The winners may not be the brands with the most connected appliances. They may be the brands that make buyers feel confident that the product will do its job for years without becoming another piece of tech to troubleshoot.
For the smart home industry, that is a reminder worth taking seriously. Convenience matters. Automation matters. Better interfaces matter. But in the appliance aisle, reliability still matters more.
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