10 Smart Devices That Will Improve Your Kitchen

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Smart home tech is slowly but surely infiltrating every room of the house, promising to take away the more mundane everyday chores and therefore make it easier to spend time doing what you enjoy. One of the rooms to see the biggest improvements in recent years is the kitchen, with a slew of new smart devices launched with better connectivity and useful features. Almost every kitchen appliance can be upgraded with smart tech to some degree, but working out which ones are worth shelling out for can be tricky. No matter whether you're a baker, a grillmaster, or even just prefer to keep your kitchen endeavors limited to a regular morning coffee, there's a smart kitchen gadget out there that might just be a game changer.

It's worth noting that many of these smart home gadgets come with a significant price premium over traditional appliances, so before splashing out, be sure you're happy to pay a little extra for the added features. Nonetheless, if you can justify the investment, these smart kitchen devices are among the best in their segments right now.

Thanks to the commercials, it's known as "Brad Pitt's Coffee Machine," but the De'Longhi Dinamica Plus is a genuinely impressive bean-to-cup coffee maker with plenty of smart features. Users can customize everything from coffee type to milk frothiness and temperature, either via the 3.5-inch touchscreen or smartphone app. The app also offers additional features for discerning drinkers, like setting the exact amount of coffee to be produced in ml. Assuming a cup is already in position, you can produce drinks directly from the app without getting up.

This is especially handy if you're the kind of person who can't function without their morning coffee but also never leaves enough time to make it. Simply start the machine through the app when you wake up, and by the time you get to the kitchen, it should be ready. Smart kitchen tech usually comes with a steep premium, and the De'Longhi is no different – at a retail price of $1,649.99, it's a serious investment but worthwhile for hassle-free, barista-style coffee.

Air fryers are one of the hottest kitchen gadgets at the moment, and the Proscenic T22 is a feature-loaded option that's one of the most hassle-free thanks to its built-in recipes. Selecting a recipe on the app brings up a list of ingredients and the required cooking time, so all you need to do is put the ingredients in the fryer and leave it to do the rest. There's also a custom recipe option for frequently cooked meals that aren't already in the app's recipe book.

The fryer's basket capacity of 5.3 quarts makes it family-friendly, and the Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa compatibility means busy parents can use it with their hands full. It's worth noting that a common complaint about the T22 is that the presets tend to be a little on the stingy side, and sometimes an extra few minutes' cooking time produces a better end result. Still, that's a fairly minor quibble considering the air fryer's competitive $129.00 retail price.

Despite its name, the Anova Precision Oven is a lot more than simply a conventional oven – it also features options for baking bread and sous vide dishes thanks to the adjustable steam levels inside the cooking chamber. The steam is generated from water housed in a built-in tank and can be adjusted from 0% to 100% humidity to suit different cooking styles.

With the sous vide function, humidity is maximized but the temperature is kept relatively low, below boiling point, to simulate sous vide conditions, but without the need for a bag. This enables users to sous vide bulkier foods that would normally be too large to fit in a bag, like family-sized joints of meat. It works fine as a conventional oven too, and like most of the other smart kitchen products here, can be controlled through Google Assistant or Amazon Alexa. It retails for $699.99 on Anova's website.

It might not be the first place tech enthusiasts look to upgrade their kitchens, but switching to a smart faucet comes with a number of benefits. U By Moen is one of the leading smart faucets, with hands-free control thanks to Amazon Alexa and Google Home integration. On a basic level, being able to turn the tap on when your hands are full is always useful, but the Moen is also able to dispense exact measurements of water or heat it to specific temperatures, all through voice commands.

Smart tech is no good if the product itself doesn't deliver on the basics, but the U By Moen gets those right too. The retractable nozzle can extend across the whole sink, and the choice of spray settings makes cleaning trickier kitchen items less of a hassle. The faucet itself looks high-end, but it comes with a suitably high-end price tag, too: several styles are available to choose from, starting from around $450 on Amazon and rising in price from there. That's a lot to ask for something that is, at the end of the day, still just a faucet, but it's potentially a useful kitchen addition for those who can justify the initial outlay.

It might only be justifiable for the most dedicated smart home tech enthusiasts, but for the ultimate smart kitchen, even the humble toaster can be upgraded. The Revolution R180S features a touchscreen with settings for various types of toastable items, from waffles to bagels. When it's not in use, the screen can be customized to display either a digital or analog clock. Leaving the screen aside, the actual heating elements of the toaster are also claimed to be a step above a standard machine, with a design that minimizes energy use and cuts down on toasting time.

As much as it might be an improvement for serious toast or bagel fans, the smart toaster is ultimately a bit of a waste of money for most people. But, if you can justify its $349.95 retail price – yes, $350 on a toaster – it's certainly a unique way to improve your kitchen.