CES 2025: LG smart appliances wrap-up

Visitors to the Home Appliances wing of LG Electronics’ vast CES 2025 exhibit will likely be drawn first to the most visually enticing new products: a breakthrough LG Signature Microwave oven, redesigned indoor gardening appliances, and a hyper helpful robot that couldn’t be cuter.  Stuff that makes for cheery Eyewitness TV news coverage and social influencer posts from the giant tech show.

But sorry, gang, you’ll really be missing something important if you don’t also pay attention to the modest looking cylindrical object plotzed on an LG booth table. While the LG ThinQ ON home hub is intentionally muted in appearance to blend in with any space and décor, it’s the AI-enhanced, smart home assistant that could prove the most helpful to your home life.

What’s so hot about a Microwave?

“Not much has changed in microwaves through the years,” noted my seasoned tour guide John I. Taylor, Senior VP of LG Electronics USA, Inc. But the times they are a-changing with the LG Signature Over-the-Range Microwave, which not only excels in cooking and heating food but also delivers an immersive entertainment experience.

On command, the glass front of the microwave’s door reveals itself to be a 27-inch wide Full HD (1080P) touchscreen display with a variety of uses. Activating “InstaView” triggers three inside cameras to offer real-time cook monitoring and time-lapse image creation (great fodder for food bloggers.) And should you pair this microwave with the new, likewise camera-fitted LG Signature Slide-in Double Range, that microwave screen can also keep you in the know as things are cooking down below, without the need to stoop or open an oven door.

But wait, there’s more. The 27-inch screen also comes with built-in speakers and Wi-Fi connectivity, to bring a variety of entertainment content to the kitchen whilst you’re cooking or eating. The screen likewise offers access to the LG ThinQ Smart Home Dashboard, becoming an oversized smart pad to control all your LG AI appliances and compatible Matter and Thread devices.

More kitchen kapers

While we’re in the foodie zone, pay attention to the new 36-inch Smart InstaView French Door Refrigerator. Its upgraded, fully transparent T-OLED display embedded in the upper right door functions as both a digital touch interface and a Dual InstaView panel to show what’s inside the fridge without opening the door and letting the chill out.

On the kinda wild and weird side, Hologram like visuals can also be activated on said screen, blending the virtual with the real, while music plays from your curated playlist. That refrigerator’s inside camera functions pragmatically, too, with LG’s ThinQ Food management system to automatically recognize stored food items, suggest “will-work-with-that-stuff“recipes and warn when favored items are running low or about to expire.

Upgraded proximity sensors are at play in the sleek LG Signature Dishwasher, with a handle that sits flush with the door when not in use then automatically pops out when a hand approaches. And on the laundry front, LG ‘s top washer is exploiting AI DD—Artificial Intelligence Direct Drive 2.0—to recognize and optimize fabric care settings. It’s spooky smart.

How does your apartment garden grow?

Both functional and decorative, LG’s new-gen, indoor gardening appliances merge an advanced growing system with a spiffy look. Downward-facing lights support optimal plant growth during the day while upward-facing mood lighting illuminates the crop and creates a calming ambiance in the evening.

These mini arborteums have smarts, of course, automatically dispensing the right amount of water (from a 1.5 gallon tank) and nutrients to care for the specific number and variety of plants being grown, even when users are away for extended periods (up to a week.) Forthcoming in both a floor lamp standing model and in a side table styled design, users can use the companion ThinQ app to control the lighting settings, monitor growth, and manage cultivation schedules from across the room or halfway around the world.

Say hey, hubbie

LG has coined its deployments of AI as “Affectionate Intelligence.” And nowhere is that more evident than in its (tentatively named) Q9 Self-Driving AI Home Hub: a home agent that moves freely around the premises, interacts with the residents and recognizes situations and context to trigger appropriate actions of ThinQ connected appliances.

LG touts this two-wheeled bot as “the first product to realize the concept of providing ‘care services’ in the smart home domain by actively controlling appliances, saving energy, and offering care through a combination of IoT, appliance data, user conversation context, and lifestyle patterns. “

If Q9 sees the cat knock over its food bowl, the hub will send a message to your robot vac to clean up the mess. And when it hears “It’s kinda chilly in here,” it’ll tell your smart thermostat to crank up the furnace or heat pump. And if you slip and fall and can’t up, you could ask it to summon help.

LG’s John Taylor is most taken by this companion device’s charming ability to concoct a story from drawings and/or to read a book out loud .“You just put the page or image in front of the camera at the top of the display, and it will extract the text or dream up a story  from the drawing, then voice and act it out with various expressions and motions.“ While LG is touting this AI skill as primarily for children, the LG exec thinks “it could also be quite helpful for any one with impaired vision.”

Also coming to everyone’s rescue—Q9 will provide GPT-4o-generated answers to questions practical, mundane, or far-fetched without ever complaining “stop pestering me.”

Saving the best for last

While the maker might wish you would only buy LG appliances that are remotely controllable via its ThinQ OS and app, they’re cognizant that users have also invested in appliances and Internet of Things (IoT) devices operating on a variety of other platforms. To serve as a peace maker, help them all work and cooperate from a single app, it’s soon to bring us ThinQ ON, a smart home hub product that applies generative AI to the task of home management.

ThinQ On is largely based on the Homey Pro smart hub from Athom, a Dutch company that LG took a majority interest in (an 80 percent stake) in July, 2024. More than a decade in development, the current Homey Pro can connect to more than 50,000 devices, load up with apps from an options list numbering near 1,000, including standard protocols such as Matter, Thread, and Zigbee; plus, connection methods defined separately by each manufacturer. Adding disparate products and platforms via an on-screen menu is reportedly straightforward and easy, according to most reviewers.

One differentiator from Homey: the ThinQ On hub will offer onboard voice activation with that Affectionate Intelligence:“Our secret sauce,” says Taylor. Operation entails using a large language model and the ThinQ platform to understand the user’s context, enabling natural conversation for the operation of home appliances and home IoT devices. It identifies the users’ intention, suggests routines appropriate to the situation and can juggle multiple issues when necessary.

Ask it to start the washing machine, unaware that the detergent dispenser is empty, and ThinQ On will first alert you of that situation and hold off starting the cycle until the dispenser has been filled. If it knows (from a connected smart watch) that you were exercising earlier the same day, it will pre-set the wash cycle for “active wear.”

The beauty of this computerized hub is that it functions locally, independent of the internet except for software loading/updating. Local control delivers enhanced privacy, and eliminates dependence on your home’s connection to the internet. That’s quite from the cloud-based, cross-platform schema in development by the Home Connectivity Alliance, an organization similarly “dedicated to the development and promotion of safe and secure interoperability across long-life appliances, HVAC systems and TVs within the connected home ecosystem.” LG is a member of that alliance, which was supposed to deliver the goods by the end of 2024. But you what happens to the best-laid plans.

Also prepped to offer smart speaker entertainment thrills (music, news, and weather on demand) , the ThinQ On hub will first appear for sale later this year in Korea, LG’s home territory and primo R&D stomping ground, we’re told. Same goes for the Q9 Self-Driving AI Home Hub.

Those new kitchen and laundry appliances should all be circling the globe in due course in 2025.

Prices have yet to be announced on any of the products but for the smart hub curious, we can take some guidance from the current $399 price tag on the Homey Pro and the $199 asking price for the soon-to-come, less-powerful Homey Pro mini.