An AI refrigerator is worth buying first for freshness, not for the big screen. If you cook often and throw away a lot of food, ingredient recognition and expiry reminders can help. If you rarely cook, you are mostly paying for features you will barely use. For orientation: roundups list the Haier Seeker at around 18,999 yuan, while 6,000-yuan models such as the Ronshen Damingxiang 605 also offer AI temperature control. Samsung's flagship Bespoke AI is listed at 149,900 New Taiwan dollars on Samsung's Taiwan site.
What recognition really does, and what it does not
Haier says its AI can recognize more than 200 ingredients. In everyday use the picture is messier: stacked or hidden food gets misread, and recipe suggestions do not always match what is actually inside. The camera sees what goes in, not what has been sitting there for a week. Expiry reminders linked to an app are genuinely useful. For thawing, Casarte cites five minutes as the fastest time for its AI model — a vendor claim for a specific case, not a promise for every cut of meat.
The more solid value is in freshness itself: separate temperature and humidity zones, even airflow, and targeted cooling keep vegetables and meat fresh longer than an old single-temperature fridge. Whether that difference is worth the premium depends on how often you buy fresh ingredients and how long they sit. If you shop twice a week and use everything quickly, high-end freshness tech makes little difference.
Costs that only show up later
A connected fridge with a camera brings three follow-on costs: privacy — the interior camera and usage patterns are processed, so check what goes to the cloud and what can be switched off; updates — a device that depends on software needs a reliable update mechanism, and a bad update can do more harm than in a dumb appliance; and the screen — if your phone is always in your pocket, you will rarely watch videos on the fridge door, and should not pay roughly 2,000 yuan extra for that.
Who it suits, and who it does not
It suits families who cook often, store lots of fresh ingredients, and already live in a smart-home ecosystem such as Haier's or Mijia's. It does not suit people who rarely cook, have a small kitchen, or whose old fridge still cools well. The decision rule: choose first by volume, zones, and energy efficiency, and treat AI recognition as a bonus. If recognition is the only reason to buy, skip it. And if the old fridge still works well, the biggest mistake is replacing it just for the AI.
