Appliances

Nobody likes washing dishes, but they keep piling up. The new Capsule Solo portable dishwasher from Loch Electronics is designed to make short work of that chore even while camping.

Leaf-blowers are the bane of suburban Sunday mornings. Now a team of engineering students at Johns Hopkins University has invented a kind of silencer attachment to radically reduce noise, which could be on shelves in a few years from Black & Decker.

Besides keeping your food cold, there’s not much more we need from a fridge, but manufacturers keep cramming new features in there. The latest example from LG is the MoodUP, a fridge that sports speakers and LED doors that can change color on demand.

Keurig is best known for popularizing the coffee pod machine, but realizing it’s always five o’clock somewhere, the company is now taking the concept out on the town with the Drinkworks Home Bar, which cooks up cocktails (or beer and cider, for some reason) from the same kind of premixed pods.

​​There’s nothing quite like a warm and crispy pizza pie pulled straight from a wood fire oven, but few have the capacity to create such a meal in their own kitchen. Breville is out to change that with a new countertop pizza oven for the home.

Whether your loved ones are culinary artists looking for some exciting new toys to play with, or well-meaning amateurs who could use some high-tech help, New Atlas rounds up some of the best giftable gadgets for the kitchen.

With an eye on those who may need a technological leg-up to boost their coffee snobbery, Goat Story is launching Gina, allowing users to brew three different types of coffee in one appliance, with guidance from an app and Bluetooth-connected scales.

Of all the smart devices that can give reminders or the weather in the morning, the toaster probably isn’t one that springs to mind. Toasteroid is a smart toaster that can cook a customized image or message into your bread, forecast the weather, or send a message to a friend’s toaster.

The proliferation of electrical devices means that plug sockets are in increasing demand. Socket splitters and power strips can be used to solve this problem, but can be bulky and unsightly. An innovative socket design called theOUTlet, however, provides more socket space at the push of a button.

Who wouldn't want to save up to 50 percent on their electricity bills? The makers of Ottobox claim their smart home automation device can do just that, and all by turning off appliances when they're left in standby.

When a fridge is opened, warm air gets into the main storage area and energy must be used to cool it again. LG tackled this problem with its Door-in-Door French-door refrigerator, which allowed regular-use items to be stored in a door-frame compartment. Now, the company has updated the design.

Haier and Energous are joining forces to turn household appliances, such as fridges and washing machines, into chargers for mobile devices. Not only that, they will be using the WattUp technology developed by Energous that allows devices to be charged at a distance.