Buying a new refrigerator, which one works with HA easily?

Hi,
My current refrigerator is about to break down. So I’m in search of a new one. Which ones can be easily connected to HA?

Thanks

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I’m in the same boat… my $2000 8year old fridge been broken for 3years and finally getting sick of all the issues. My failed fridge experience started off with me reading consumer reports and picking their top rated fridge in the side-by-side category. Looking at consumer reports today, it seems they approve of the LG smart fridges. Not sure if that means I should avoid LG, or not? I’m curious what advice others will offer here, and if that will include any discussion of reliability/long term cost.

The price of entry for the level of engineering and manufacturing required to simultaneously meet current environmental laws, and work reliably for decades is about $10k (Thermador, Subzero, etc). The laws truly have gone above engineers knowledge, and mandated some things that are practically not feasible with current tech. Alternatively, we can get more common fridges for ~$2000, toss them in the landfill every 5-8years and repeat. I tried reasoning with my wife that after 25years, sticking with “normal” fridges, we will have spent $10k on fridges (~$2 on a new fridge every 5 years). Difference being, in the end we’d have 5 fridges in the landfill, food spoiling for the 5th time as we research our 6th fridge purchase, and never get to experience owning a Thermador or Subzero or similar. She didn’t buy that, LOL (she’s the artist, I’m the engineer). So I’m stuck on the installment plan, and I hope mother earth doesn’t mind.

Well, searching the webs, I also found that the “smart” fridges are way too expensive and offer little to none extra’s. It would be nice if it was a normal fridge with a little extra gimmic like seeing the inside temp. But that isn’t worth the extra money. I’m sticking with A+++ energy label on a normal fridge for around 500 euro’s.

Get a non smart fridge, add a door sensor, a temperature sensor (or two), and a power monitoring smart plug.

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I like this approach, which can be used with any old reliable fridge out there. I’ve got a door sensor on my fridge so far, and it has saved food after my kids forgot to close the door on several occasions. I have some dfplayer/esphome devices that say “Fridge door left open”. So it’s not always me having to close the fridge after getting a phone notification. :wink:

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LIEBHERR for example is not open enough to be integrated with HA unfortunately. Only smart phone apps (HA users hate app homes, right) and perhaps Alexa/Google assistant/IFTTT options depending on the country. And even those seem to be temporarily shutdown. Anyway, nothing native for HA.

Probably stick with my ZigBee temperature sensor and power smart plug. Being able to actually SET things (like temperature or boost cooling etc.) would be nice, but vendors seem to live in the last decade when it comes to smart home integration.

As far as I understand it, most Miele fridges and freezers can be controlled via Home Assistant. At least there are some integrations:

Couldn’t try them yet due to a lack of any connected Miele devices

There’s just a new custom integration in hacs:

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