Bosch have announced that they are to offer Matter-enabled appliances, starting with a fridge freezer model that will be available as Bosch and Siemens.
For those that don’t know, Matter is a home automation (HA) protocol used to allow “smart” connected devices to communicate across different platforms such as Apple HomeKit, Google Home, Home Assistant, Hunitat, Homeseer and so on as a sort of universal standard.
How much use this is presently for any appliance is debatable, and we’ve discussed this a number of times as we don’t think consumers are all that bothered about it bar the initial wow factor.
Of course, if you set up a washing machine, for example, ready to go, you can program it to operate only when electricity is at its cheapest, usually through the night in the wee small hours. But a lot of people don’t want stuff running noisily through the night, and the same can be accomplished with a simple delay start.
You can also see the energy used, etc., but it is questionable how much use that is or, indeed, what consequence it has for people as most only run appliances as they need to.
Being able to remotely see the status of any appliance may be of use to some people and notifications of any issues may also be of use so it’s not a total dead duck but we’d say that it was of limited use and likely only of use to some people, it’s not a game-changer.
And we’d say it’s certainly not a feature worth seeking out or paying extra for for most people.
