this post was submitted on 18 Sep 2025
622 points (99.1% liked)
Technology
75300 readers
5650 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Why would your refrigerator have a screen?
Why would you buy such a refrigerator?
I recall the hype was to keep track of groceries or some such gimmick. I feel it to be unnecessary tech. How convenient that it shows ads. In any case, do not buy a Samsung appliance. They are total shite and will break down on you. Fridges, washing machines, dishwashers. All garbage. The televisions are fine.
Their TVs suck too. The remotes barely respond and they’re bogged down with ad-riddled garbage to the point I had to set up a parental lock just so I wasn’t force-fed trashy, outdated reality TV at 300 decibels when I power the damn thing on. Or worse, when the power goes out and it decides to blast at 3 AM. Unfortunately I didn’t make the choice to buy this thing.
Their phones are also locked down proprietary horse arse. I don’t understand the people who repeatedly pick the brand, but oh well.
I believe with their phones, it is because the hardware is honestly solid compared to much of the competition. Samsung phones (ESPECIALLY during the TouchWiz days) haven't been known for having the best software.
Their TVs on the other hand, a lot of that is because they put underpowered SoCs in the TVs. Their high-end OLEDs are quite good, but that doesn't fix the fact that Tizen is still a little clunky. Samsung LCDs on the other hand, unless you spend over $2,000 on one, tend to be junk, mostly because the backlights are too dim to accurately reproduce content except in a dark room, or because the backlights fail out too soon. You can get much better performance out of something like a TCL or Hisense for the money, as long as you have trust in those brands... being Chinese and all.
Samsung makes good screens they don't make good TV's.
I'm not a huge fan of my Samsun monitor either actually. There's a lot of stuff in there that I don't want or use, and most of what is in there feels pretty half-assed. Will definitely be trying another brand when it comes to replace it.
To keep track of groceries? Just I don't know, LOOK inside the fridge. Oh the cabinets and drawers don't have screens, just slap a few of them on there to keep track of that shit too! Why stop at the fridge?
Agreed. Bought a washer/dryer set and the washer literally shit out in a year, with repairs costing as much as the purchase. Fuck them.
Samsung Washers haven't had a great reputation. A lot of people I know still recommend purchasing something like a Kenmore or Maytag, or Speed Queen. I have an LG Washer which has been pretty solid, but, yeah... repair costs if you go through a company versus doing it yourself can be insane.
My 10 year old LG Washer, to repair recently, would've cost around $550-$600 for Diagnostic, Repair, and parts if I went through a service center. That is the cost of a new machine. What I needed were new suspension springs (10 years of wear & tear), and a new Sump pump as the motor housing started to leak. About $100 in parts and a half hour of time. Through the repair company, the labor would've been half the cost. The parts? The other half.
Yeah, the suspension is what went out on mine, their part, has to be ordered through them. The repair guy was nice and literally told me that 3/4s the cost was literally the parts because they could only do manufacturer. What's infuriating to me is the fact that older washers didn't have auto balance or suspension. Everything was welded to the frame. Yeah sure it would bounce around a lot but you could easily just stop the washer and rebalance it. My parents washer and dryer were handed down from their parents and lasted 30 years with no issues.
Got my MILs ancient range/washer/dryer,all obviously from the 80s. Never gonna sell them; never gonna toss them. Parts are cheap and a YouTube video can show you how to install them. They're old enough that all the anti right-to-repair garbage hadn't really reached it's peak yet.
Gotcha. Yeah, my longest lasting Washing Machine was a Maytag or GE that ran from the mid-80s all the way to about 2005. It only died because the wash tub bearings (or whatever they are called) started to fail and leak the wash water everywhere. The wash motor was also extremely loud just before that happened, so it was either already struggling against failing parts, or, it too was failing. It survived a house move as well. Electronically, there was no computer. It was just a dial controlled machine with various cycles tied to certain positions in the dial.
After that I had a Kenmore, which died after about a decade. It, too, developed a leak in the wash tub that couldn't be fixed effectively without effectively buying a new machine.
The LG still works today, over 10 years later.
Funny you mention the suspension going bad. The manufacturer price for suspension rods for my washing machine was $230. I was able to source the part online for about $30. All I had to do was toss in some new grease on the joints after taking the top of the machine off, and replacing each rod. The Sump Pump Motor was about $120 from the manufacturer. I sourced the same part from the upstream supplier (which, as it turns out, is used in non-LG washers as well) and that was $60.
Any company that pushes this shit doesn't deserve your money. Don't buy their TVs.
Most of my groceries are in the pantry not the fridge. This tech was always for people who have a kitchen that is for show and never used.
I'm not against my refrigerator having a screen that I can control
But why have a screen at all?
Shopping list, digital post it notes, etc.
People have been sticking important things into fridge doors since there are fridges.
You carry a phone that supports these features in your pocket. Fridges don’t need screens imho
But then you need to use cloud services to sync with your family/roommates/etc. Not everyone lives alone.
So how are you gonna access the shopping list on the fridge when you are in the store (without using cloud services)? Taking a screenshot of sticky notes on the fridge works as good as taking a screenshot of the fridge screen. So in both cloud connected and not clod connected scenarios, the fridge screen is not needed and functions as a gimmick.
For just $15.99/month/user, you can store up to one thousand bytes of text in our super unsecured cloud service, and access it remotely with our Galaxy Pro Platinum Gold Fold Unfold Refold Defold Sync Edition!
*unavailable with any other devices, only available on our latest halo product, when we release the Galaxy PPGFURDSE 2026 in 3 months your device will become unavailable to sync with the fridge. Only available in 2, 3, and 5 year subscriptions, but we will kill the service after 17 months, no refunds.
Samsung. Because fuck you~.
Blah blah blah, I don't like the form factor so it's unneeded. You people are insufferable.
Guess what, it is easier to look directly forward on an always on screen that's going to have a common display like a family calendar of events for that day while I'm preparing my family for the day. I don't have to find and unlock my phone, I don't have to wash my hands and open up a calendar app. It's right there, front and center, where it needs to be for the task.
Not everyone has their reflection burned into the screen holding them all day. Some people actually leave them in other rooms!
Yes, some of us go screen to screen and therefore need screen on every appliance in our house! /s 😆
This is not untrue haha, however it's usually a more productive use of the screen at least 🤣.
Because not everything important is digital.
Magnetic whiteboard
Tablet is more flexible.
It there was any hope for these being useful that would have integrated with the mobile experience the same way CarPlay did.
These are it a tv screen on a fridge with a channel that is for the fridge, these are all proprietary junk that it's the antithesis for a smart home because they control it not the home owner.
Why do gas pumps have screens?
Everyone should know this. Share it.
Only sometimes. I've seen the mute button be disabled on numerous machines. Worth knowing and trying when the screen is blaring ads at you, but my success rate has been low in muting them.
Yeah, and it varies by station. I push all the buttons. Some times one works, some times not.
Never worked for me. Push that button. Pushed the button below/above. Held the button.
Pushed all the buttons.
None of it worked.
Hero. There's only one gas station I use that has ads and I'll try it there for sure. I deliberately avoid screened pumps.
To display ads.
Only in banana republic would customer be less valuable than ad revenue
Normal ones, yes, even 3rd world countries:

have counters only (minimalism).
Especially lately. The screens used to just be for controlling the pump or letting the station show a silent ad or two for products in their convenience store. Or community ads.
NOW THEY BLARE RANDOM ADS AS YOU GAS UP YOUR VEHICLE.
It's bliss after hours when the gas station is about to close and the ads stop. You can pump up in peace. Although when the ads crash the pump, have fun paying for gas.
This is actually why I got a Costco membership. 90% of gas stations in my city have a TV screen now and fuck that noise.
So you can see the inside of your fridge while never seeing the inside of your fridge. /s
Well I suppose that would be sort of a useful feature especially if you could access the camera remotely while shopping but if you think about it that camera angle is impossible.
Just open the fucking door.
- Greek soldiers outside of the city of Troy
I would love a monitor on my fridge (it'd be better than most of the dusty old shit on mine right now. ) But I would want to have complete control of the hardware attached to that screen
I hope a DIY mod community springs up to help people take back the machines they own.
Yeah a small screen showing time, day, weather, moon phase, sunrise/set, moonrise/set and daily/weekly schedule would be awesome. I have friends who keep a weekly meal/social schedule on their fridge and when I was staying with them mid move it was really convenient to have what's going on so prominently displayed
I haven't been able to get home assistant working but I imagine it has something for home displays like that with a fair amount of customizability
Ads and the news are two things I absolutely don't want on my refrigerator. This is a large eye level object in the room that days begin in. They're putting ads there because they know its a really convenient place to display useful information.
"because I'm a dumbass"
"because I'm a dumbass"
--dumbass