The most useless "useful" functions of household appliances

Home appliance manufacturers take care of us, offering cutting-edge solutions with many options that... May be useless. Well, take a closer look for yourself.

Vacuum cleaner

A very necessary thing that makes cleaning much easier. But it’s not enough for us to simply collect garbage or do wet cleaning with its help, isn’t it? And caring manufacturers took this into account, sending to the market models with an ultraviolet lamp and an antibacterial coating of the container - so that not a single microbe survives.

Well, now think about it - UV lamp can destroy microorganisms only by acting on them for a few minutes. But even if you have the patience to hold the brush motionless on each piece of floor for 2-3 minutes, the bacteria will return to the recently cleaned area within a few seconds - they will settle out of the air.

What about antibacterial coating of the container still more interesting. Why is it there? My logic fails. But let’s say that destroying bacteria inside a vacuum cleaner is a very important process. So, not a single independent research center has yet proven that such coatings are capable of significantly reducing the population of microorganisms. So even from this side it turns out to be zilch.

Fridge

We've already sorted out the antibacterial coating - this thing doesn't work here the same way as in vacuum cleaners.But refrigerators are a more popular and noble technology, and therefore manufacturers made fun of their functionality even more sophisticatedly. Here we have an ice maker, a double door, and even an air ionizer, and... In general, in order.

About ice maker I can’t say anything bad - someone may need it (if the whole family eats only soft drinks all day long). But this case almost doubles the cost of the refrigerator. For that kind of money, it’s easier to use a classic ice cube tray.

Door within doors – an invention designed to ensure greater food safety and save energy. The essence of the progressive solution is that products that you have to look for less often are supposed to be put in the main compartment, and those that you have to look for more often are supposed to be put in the door.

This should supposedly protect the contents of the main chamber from too frequent temperature changes, extending its shelf life. But in practice, if you do not stand in front of the open refrigerator door for hours, the food does not have time to heat up anyway. Well, the second useful property of a double door has something in common with the first - we do not let cold air out of the main chamber and due to this we save electricity (10-20 rubles per year, despite the fact that the cost of such a refrigerator is 3 times higher than that of an analogue without a double door) .

Ionizer - a close relative of the antibacterial coating with similar effectiveness. The fact is that a side effect of ion production is the formation of ozone and nitrogen oxides. If you try to achieve a level of ionization sufficient to destroy bacteria in the refrigerator, an amount of ozone will be formed along with them, sufficient to harm a person.Refrigerators don’t harm people (otherwise they wouldn’t be allowed into the market), so...

Let's move on to the next point: vitaminization. Or rather, section Vitamin Plus – a special compartment in which products are kept fresh longer, because vitamin C prevents their oxidation. And the fruits and vegetables themselves in such a compartment lose almost 2 times less ascorbic acid than in a regular refrigerator.

And everything would be fine if it were not for important points: the preservation of the precious vitamin mainly depends on compliance with the temperature regime (optimally +2...+3°C), and even under such conditions it is not recommended to store greens for more than 12 hours. But even these precautions do not help, since the main losses occur not during storage, but during the preparation of products.

Well, the most useful innovation - cameras that send photos of the contents of your refrigerator to your smartphone every time the door closes. A useful option that helps you remember to buy the necessary products. It can also be used instead of an alarm system, catching household members in the act. But it’s not free and, in my opinion, it’s no more effective than a regular list.

Washing machine

It is also a very popular technique, rich in non-standard solutions. Moreover, I won’t even focus on the large number of programs - these are still relatively harmless pranks of the manufacturers.

And here automatic dosing of detergents can hardly be called harmless. Firstly, the option, for which you will have to pay extra, can easily be replaced by “manual control” (we read what is written on the packaging of the product and use a measurement). Well, secondly, it leads to excessive consumption of powder and rinse aid.

But these are also flowers. Have you heard about washing machines that have reloading laundry? Well, in case the program has already been launched, but then they discovered that another shirt did not go into the drum. In this case, we press pause and simply load the forgotten item through the additional door. Comfortable. Expensive. And it is used extremely rarely.

Equally “practical” solutions include second department in a washing machine, designed for washing small items. It can be located above or below the main compartment and, according to manufacturers, is designed to reduce washing time by half.

But such a miracle unit costs five times more than a regular one, does not save water or electricity, and has impressive dimensions. In addition, two simultaneously operating drums are guaranteed problems with vibration and, therefore, frequent repairs, which cannot be simple with such a complex device.

Silver wash - a close relative of ionization and antibacterial coating. Water passing through silver plates does not have time to become enriched with noble metal ions, and therefore will not be able to remove pathogenic microbes from things.

Oven

The most useless addition that caught my eye is “steam generator” in the form of a recess at the bottom. I have nothing against a real steam generator (a special container that is hidden in the wall of the device). Also overkill, of course, but still at least reasonably packaged. But the usual recess in the bottom can be replaced without unnecessary overpayments with an ordinary frying pan, for example, which is much easier to clean later.

Another “usefulness” is cooking programs. Convenient, expensive and easily replaced by manual selection of the required temperature and time. The second option, by the way, usually also speeds up the start of cooking

Microwave

There is also only one serious complaint about their expanded capabilities - grill. In the oven, the golden brown crust will come out better, and it will consume less electricity. And this is not to mention the fact that there will be more splashes in the microwave, and it will be more difficult to clean them up.

Multicooker

They have such a clever option as 3D heating (when a heating element is built into the lid). Why this was done is unclear. You can’t achieve a golden brown crust this way, because the temperature is not right - the heater “heats” the lid only to 80°C. Accelerated cooking of dishes is also in doubt - the lid of a conventional multicooker is heated by hot air in exactly the same way and prevents heat loss.

And finally, a useful bells and whistles that are implemented in almost all modern technology: control via smartphone apps. It does not interfere with climate control technology, quite the contrary. But does it add value (and safety) to an electric kettle, dishwasher, oven, electric stove and other household appliances?