These 4 types of smart homes, I advise you not to follow the trend

Before buying, I thought my life had entered a smart lifestyle, but when I moved in, I realized that I had become the 24/7 network administrator of my home

I don't know if you, like me, were also mesmerized by the futuristic "whole house smart" videos on various platforms when you were renovating. Pushing open the door, the entrance lights slowly lit up like flowing water, the living room curtains silently slid open to both sides, and soothing jazz music flowed along. The gentle voice butler greeted you: "Master, welcome home, the indoor temperature has been adjusted to a comfortable 24 degrees." At that moment, anyone who had just squeezed out the decoration design in their pocket would have a misconception that as long as they gritted their teeth and smashed tens of thousands of yuan to install a whole house smart set, their quality of life could undergo a qualitative leap.

However, ideals are science fiction films, while reality is often a sitcom. I have only been staying for half a year, and many of the devices that were hyped up in the experience hall not only did not allow me to enjoy the convenience of technology, but also made me doubt my life every day in various crashes, disconnections, and accidental touches. The elderly at home don't know how to use it, the child triggers an alarm by pressing randomly, occasionally changes the router WiFi password, and has to re pair more than 30 devices in the house one by one, until 1am. After paying the real "intelligence tax", I finally realized a heart wrenching fact: many so-called smart homes are not solving life pain points, but creating trouble out of thin air. After installation, you will realize that there are four types of things that are really unnecessary to buy.

Many people consider smart lifting clothes racks as standard equipment for balconies. When I bought it, the salesperson hyped up the features: remote control lifting, stop when encountering obstacles, dual core drying, ultrasonic air drying, even equipped with ultraviolet sterilization and full-color ambient lighting, and the price doubled and increased. In practical use, the so-called hot air drying power is so small that it can blow two rows of wet clothes for two to three hours, and water still drips under the clothes. Not to mention power consumption, the drying efficiency is not as good as buying an independent heat pump dryer or relying on the big sun on the balcony. As for UV sterilization, as long as the clothes are stacked together, they won't penetrate, it's purely a psychological comfort lamp. The funniest thing is the lifting operation. Every time I dry clothes, the remote control never knows which sofa seam it's stuck in. It's even more torturous to pull out my phone and click on an app for a three second advertisement. The most common action used by the whole family is still to stretch out their arms and directly push them up with their hands to trigger a responsive rebound. Since we still rely on manual pushing in the end, why spend more than 2000 yuan to buy a machine that integrates a bunch of useless functions? What's the plan?

Take another look at the smart bathroom mirror in the bathroom. Comes with LED beauty light strip, real-time weather forecast, Bluetooth speaker, and time display. When I want to listen to music while taking a shower, the sound quality of the speaker is even more plastic than that of a radio; When the mirror is fogged up, I want to press the defogging button, but my fingers often touch it with water vapor and malfunction; The time display is slow by two minutes every day, and the WiFi often disconnects and flashes red light. After two weeks of freshness, the lights didn't turn on and the songs didn't play anymore, leaving only an ordinary mirror covered in fingerprints that had to be wiped twice a day. The problem with similar devices is that after the novelty, they will eventually return to manual mode.

In order to show off the "one click away" or "one click home mode" when friends come to visit, many people install smart electric curtains in all rooms of their homes, regardless of their age. But real life never follows a predetermined script. You set the curtains to automatically open at 7:30 in the morning, but on weekends you feel like sleeping in. The sunlight mercilessly hits your face on time, not even giving you a chance to turn over; When encountering thunderstorm weather, the sensor suddenly "sizzles" and automatically pulls up in broad daylight, which is terrifying; The living room is only three or four meters long, and it only takes two seconds to take two steps and pull it. Now I have to shout loudly at the air sign: "Little X, open the curtains in the living room halfway! ”If you encounter your family members still resting and dare not speak loudly, you can only look for your phone in frustration.

As for smart flower pots, they are the pinnacle of formalism. Known for soil moisture detection, light monitoring, automatic water shortage alarm, and remote APP water pump drip irrigation. The water tank was pitifully small, requiring refilling every three days; The pipeline is often blocked by scale and moss; The sensor corrodes and loses accuracy after being inserted into the soil for two weeks, and it pops up on the phone every day reporting "severe water shortage". Originally, the green ivy could survive for two months without being cared for. Serving this smart flowerpot is even more tiring than serving the master. In the end, the green ivy did not die of drought, but drowned alive due to continuous water leakage from the pump. Devices that are linked for linkage often only package simple actions into complex processes.

Some products claim to be "high-frequency interaction centers", but in fact, they can only be used a few times a year at home. For example, smart magic mirrors installed in the foyer or dressing room claim to be able to analyze your weight and body fat, provide dressing advice, and scroll through morning news when you wash up and change clothes in the morning. But the reality is that modern people go to work in the morning like going to war, brushing their teeth, washing their face, putting on their clothes, and rushing towards the subway station. Who has the leisure to stand in front of the mirror and click on the screen to watch the stock market? Moreover, the screens of these devices generate severe heat, and if the system is not upgraded for two to three years, it will lag and eventually shut down, causing dust to accumulate. Even the transparency of ordinary mirrors is dragged down by the internal display module.

For example, fully voice controlled kitchen appliances such as voice ovens and voice range hoods. When cooking, the range hood in the kitchen roars loudly, and the pan is filled with stir fried onions, ginger, and garlic, sizzling and smoking. You stand beside it and shout at the top of your lungs, "Little X oven! Preheat to Baidu! Fire up and down! Twenty minutes! ”The range hood drowned out your voice, and the oven froze for a moment before coldly responding, "The network signal is weak, please try again." At that moment, you were flustered and the dishes in the pot were almost burnt, wishing you could slap yourself twice. Why bother arguing with a machine when it only takes 0.5 seconds to reach out and twist an old-fashioned mechanical knob? Devices with extremely low usage frequency are cumbersome to operate and often not as direct as traditional physical interactions.

The original intention of technology is to make people more worry free, but some home appliances force themselves into a pile of complex systems in order to sell at a high premium, putting the cart before the horse. The most typical example is a smart refrigerator with a touch screen. Drawing pancakes in promotional videos: watching short videos and recipes while cooking, intelligently identifying the shelf life of ingredients and pushing expiration warnings. You will know how anti human it is to buy it and try it once. After buying groceries and carrying plastic bags back home, exhausted to half death, who has the patience to stand in front of the refrigerator and manually input the category, weight, and shelf life of each tomato and pork? When cooking, your hands are covered in flour or oil stains, and the capacitor screen slides and becomes a mess; Not to mention that Android tablet chip often has extremely poor performance. Two or three years later, it freezes into a slideshow and occasionally lights up on its own when walking through the kitchen in the middle of the night. The dark blue light can scare people half to death.

Another major disaster area is the overly intelligent smart toilet. The radar sensing is too sensitive, even if you just pass by the bathroom door to get a mop, it will "pop" enthusiastically and open the lid, and also come with a water self-cleaning device; Just as you walked away, it slowly covered up again. What's even more deadly are those toilets with densely packed buttons that can only be adjusted by using a mobile mini program. My parents stayed in the bathroom for two days and felt like they were facing a big enemy, afraid to touch or press the wrong button, fearing that the nozzle would spray water all over them. The simplest physiological relaxation that humans have experienced for thousands of years has been designed to create psychological pressure similar to taking a driver's license exam. After intelligentization, it becomes even more complex, with redundant functions that are difficult for the elderly and children to learn, clearly deviating from the direction that technology should be.

After a year of tinkering, dismantling several devices, and returning several gateways, I finally drew a clear line between "intelligence" and "intelligence tax". True intelligence is never about screens and voice everywhere in the house, nor is it about having to take out your phone and tap the screen three times to solve something that can be easily done with your hands. Good technology should be invisible, silently integrated into your daily rhythm, appearing exactly when you need it, and having no presence when you don't need it, instead of forcing you to learn, network, and maintain it all day long.

If you are preparing for renovation or are also being wildly influenced by the smart home list of major bloggers, why not first hold onto the essential minimalist three piece set: smart door lock, sweeping robot, and bathroom human sensing night light, which have been verified by countless households and can truly free your hands. At the same time, be wary of the overlapping consumption of fake demands. For those that can be solved with a physical switch, resolutely do not add screens; Things that can be done in just two steps do not require a special increase in budget to make up for the so-called full scene linkage. More importantly, prioritize the use of family members. A good home should be a safe haven for people of all ages and a place to relax and unwind, rather than a technology testing ground that could potentially shut down or go on strike at any time.