GE will release a new fridge that brings us that much closer to automated tea: the new GE Café Fridge has a built-in hot water faucet.
The GE Café Fridge is efficient too, scoring an Energy Star rating (which probably wouldn’t be as impressive if the thing didn’t make hot water on request). The fridge has French doors, meaning its upper refrigerator has two vertical doors, and its lower freezer door pulls out.
The hot water spigot isn’t the only futuristic feature, either. The fridge has two separate evaporators for each section. As Wired explains, “if you don’t have separate evaporators, opening the fridge door actually lowers the temp in the whole fridge just a bit, leading to freezer burn and melty ice cream.” But in the new fridge, your frozen peas are sure to stay frozen and your chicken thighs unburned.
The fridge has a multi-purpose drawer for storing multiple different types of food, so you can store cheese, soda, citrus or meat. The drawer also has color-coded LED indicators so you can see what you’ve set the fridge for.
To get hot water out of this magical refrigerator, first pick the temperature you’d like. The hot-water function will heat water to any temperature from 90 to 185 degrees Fahrenheit. And if decisions are not your strong suit, there are four pre-set temperatures, from warm baby formula to hot tea. The fridge alerts you when it’s done heating the water, which will take between one and six minutes. Then you’ll have to pull a knob and push a button to release the water. The fridge heats about 10 ounces of water, which should be enough to fill a mug.
Of course, we’ll really be excited when Samsung and GE combine their smart fridges to bring us a hot-soda-streaming refrigerator.
The GE Café Fridge’s suggested retail price is $3,199 and it should go on sale in the spring.
