From ExtremeTech: If you own a microwave and use Wi-Fi, you’re probably aware that these two things don’t mesh well (pun intended). The impact of running a microwave while using Wi-Fi tends to vary depending on how much EM your microwave leaks and which frequencies your Wi-Fi network is using. If you’re on a 5GHz network, you may not see much interference, but a 2.4GHz system may choke and die when you cook a burrito, depending on the position of your hardware and the layout of your house. Microwaves and Wi-Fi, in other words, are not two things you would ordinarily combine.
Appliance manufacturers have been trying to find use cases for IoT-enabled refrigerators, toasters, and laundry machines for years, leading to an endless series of jokes about trying to surf the internet on a refrigerator. After years of attempting to sell consumers on the idea of an automatic fridge that can monitor individual zones of temperature and re-order frozen yams after you hate-eat the last bag to avoid food waste, GE has opted for a more straightforward approach: Stick Netflix on it. Seriously: The new Kitchen Hub is a 27-inch, Wi-Fi-enabled microwave with Netflix.
Before we dive into this, I need to be clear about which GE product we’re discussing. GE has announced a new version of its Kitchen Hub. This version integrates a microwave and offers features like AI-assisted computer vision to check when a dish has finished cooking. This product will not be available until late 2020. It can also function as a hub for Z-Wave-enabled devices and for GE’s smart appliance products.
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