Honestly smart features in large/permanent appliances is something I explicitly avoid these days. The majority of smart home products I’ve bought over the last ten years have been somewhat disappointing if not outright rage inducing. I don’t want that in something that is difficult or expensive to replace.

I sort of have to assume in the case of large appliances that the manufacturer will drop support for it well before I want to replace it, and that if there is any sort of functionality fully gated behind an app, that it will become unusable to me at some point when I reset my phone and discover they’ve unpublished the app from the store.

I’d much rather buy a dumb garage door opener and bolt on that ratgd device mentioned in this post, than be beholden to the manufacturer’s whims and invariably godawful garbage horrible no-good app.