“Smart” Washing Machines are Dumb

I wouldn’t put too much stock into that article. Yes, it’s a good idea to avoid the “smart” machines, but the article has some misleading advice:

While Whirlpool’s warranty and coverage leaves much to be desired, GE and LG have policies that better support the customer’s right to repair and prevent waste.

GE and LG are notoriously less repairable because their parts keep changing and after the warranty ends you’re unlikely to find replacement parts. So they need good warranties just to stay relevant. Whirlpool may have a short warranty but they have a reputation as one of the very few brands that rarely changes their parts and you can get parts from decades old out-of-warranty machines. Whirlpool parts are common. I had a Whirlpool dryer die after ~22 years. I called an appliance repair shop. They won’t come out and look at a machine for free, but one thing they said over the phone when I mentioned it was Whirlpool was that there’s a very good chance parts will still be available, unlike most other brands. So they came out and indeed they could get the motor and belt and whatever else I needed. But it turned out the cost of repair was higher than the cost of replacement. Had i been available I probably could have just bought the parts and fixed it myself.

The concerning privacy implications of Wi-Fi-enabled smart washing machines greatly outweigh the supposed convenience of starting a load remotely.

The more interesting feature is probably getting status so you can turn off the buzzer and get a more pleasant signal on your phone wherever you are and remove your clothes before they wrinkle (as opposed to wasting energy with a end-of-cycle spinning). But I agree that it’s overall a bad trade-off to have washers and dryers on the network. If I could have a FOSS bluetooth app that has no WAN access, I would go for that. But that’s not on offer.

BTW, I bought a vented dryer (yikes!) because the only eco-respectful ventless dryers for a non-astronomical price were “smart” (thus privacy-abusing). I had to choose between privacy and the environment and chose privacy by buying a used vented gas dryer. It’s a shame when privacy and environment are at odds.

Another reason to avoid “smart” washers/dryers: not all functions are available on the physical control panel. So when your phone gets old & out of service and the app is pinned to certain versions, you would actually lose control over some of the functionality.

My washing machine is in a remote part of the house where I can't hear the alarm. The only thing a smart wallet could offer me that is compelling is a notification when it's done. But I could get the same result from a power monitoring smart outlet