Connected household appliances are a priority for Bosch, and to develop in this area, the manufacturer is putting the package on Home Connect. This ecosystem makes it possible to connect and interact with Bosch, Siemens and Gaggenau devices. If Home Connect was already present in the kitchen through several household appliances of the brand, Bosch chooses to centralize its ecosystem thanks to the Smart Kitchen Dock. It is in fact a multifunction support for smartphones and tablets equipped with Amazon Alexa, which allows you to make your kitchen smarter.
The Smart Kitchen Dock at IFA, dressed in a touchscreen tablet.
Unlike the smart displays that we were able to test in writing, this dock does not have a screen. It is indeed the tablet or the smartphone of the user who takes on this role once placed on the support – it is then necessary to connect the two devices via Bluetooth. The station would also be compatible with products running Android 8.0 and iOS 14 and later.
Once equipped, the device becomes, for example, a digital recipe book. The Bosch application, immediately transferred to the screen, also makes several applications available to the user, including one devoted to recipes. And who says cooking, often says hands in trouble. To remedy this discomfort, the station responds to gesture control: the user can in particular swipe from right to left in front of the station to access the rest of the recipe. This saves your screen from fingerprints of all kinds.
Controls are present on the device, in particular to adjust the sound volume.
Thanks to Amazon Alexa, the Smart Kitchen Dock also reacts to the voice and integrates the functionalities of the voice assistant. In particular, it is possible to ask it to display a recipe or play a piece of music. A loudspeaker is obviously part of it to transcribe Alexa’s responses or play any sound content. In addition, four microphones allow the user’s voice to be picked up, even in a noisy environment such as a kitchen, according to the manufacturer. To Digitalwe are curious to assess its effectiveness, as few smart displays have proven themselves in terms of sound capture.
But we shouldn’t forget one of the primary functions of the Smart Kitchen Dock: strengthening and making the Home Connect ecosystem more accessible. Like a control center, the station can manage other manufacturer’s devices in the home. For example, the user can ask him to turn on the hood and adjust his lighting, to open the oven door or to start preheating. In short, the user orders his kitchen with his finger and the eye… but without his hands!
At present, some features are still unclear. We would like to know more about the technology allowing the Smart Kitchen Dock to recognize the screen installed on it.
For more details, we will therefore have to wait for its launch, scheduled for January 2023 at a price of 189 €.