Are you in the market for a 27″ touch display with Google Assistant built in for your kitchen? If so then GE may just have the product for you, the GE Kitchen Hub which was announced today at CES 2019.
To be clear this isn’t a Google Smart Display it’s a smart display with Google Assistant built-in, clear? Using the Haier U+Smart Life Platform the GE Kitchen Hub includes Video Chat, with multiple cameras so someone can help guide you through cooking that dish, an inbuilt recipe system, calendar integration and live streaming of services like Netflix and Spotify.
The Kitchen Hub runs on top of Android with Google Play built in so you could also install your favourite apps and services and catch up TV apps. It’s unclear what version of Android is underneath, what security patch it’s running or what GE’s / Haier’s commitment to platform updates is, but all of that aside it’s still pretty cool.
Based on it’s suggested US launch price and the typical Australian inflation we’d expect this to launch at $1800 AUD if it ever came to Australia, however, we think that’s a little unlikely.
Would you put a GE Family Hub Range replacement in your kitchen? If so, at what price?
The physical cupboard space cost makes this a non-starter for most Australian blocks of flats kitchens.
For a new home build, maybe you could design a kitchen to work with the physical cost.
I wonder if the GE Kitchen Hub is overcomplicating things, by running the full Android OS with apps and tablet functionality.
Suddenly, you find you have to use your fingers to control those apps. The Lenovo smart display and JBL Link View run the Internet of Things OS, and are designed to do everything by voice command, which is probably what you want when you’re cooking.
In se ways I could see something like this could be an interesting device to install if you are installing a new kitchen but would both fear it would become obsolete very quickly. I think a better solution may be to create a custom device that could be upgraded in future by just swapping out the computer parts. But it is probably even better to just get one of the standalone devices which are cheap and already available and get another one when it becomes obsolete.