In recent years, smart home appliances have become more and more popular among consumers, with sales data reaching new highs.
On the one hand, this is related to people’s expectation that smart home appliances can alleviate or even liberate housework and improve the quality of life; on the other hand, it is also directly related to the rapid development of AI technology and the vigorous promotion of brand marketing by various merchants. People will subconsciously believe that smart home appliances have reached a very intelligent level.
However, some consumers have reported that the actual experience of smart home appliances does not match the propaganda.
Not long ago, the Jiangsu Provincial Consumer Rights Protection Committee released a survey report on the consumption of smart home appliances.
The report pointed out that although some products have novel and eye-catching designs, their functional practicability is insufficient, and the intelligent experience they bring to consumers needs to be improved.
From the actual situation, there is obviously a clear gap between the experience of many consumers and the intelligent scenarios depicted by merchants in marketing.
According to a survey report on the consumption of smart home appliances released by the Jiangsu Consumer Protection Commission, some products labeled as intelligent are actually “pseudo-smart”. Problems include exaggerated functions, poor experience and incompatibility with equipment.
For example, software stability problems are particularly prominent in categories such as sweeping robots, smart door locks, and smart speakers. The specific manifestations include sudden startup of smart speakers, unrecognizable passwords for smart door locks, disordered map construction of sweeping robots, and abnormal function execution.
In addition, different brands usually need to be equipped with independent mobile clients, which cannot interconnect with each other, which also brings inconvenience to users’ actual operations.
So, overall, there is still a big gap that needs to be made up between the current “intelligent” level of smart homes and consumers’ expectations.
Of course, judging from the laws of industrial development, this situation is also normal.
You must know that any industry needs to go through a process of gradual improvement, which is not only related to technological maturity, but also includes integration with user needs, improvement of relevant standards, etc.
At the same time, the smart home industry is still in its infancy, with low entry barriers. The delivery quality and intelligence level of each brand are inevitably uneven. In the early stage, many brands will be more obsessed with building their own ecological platforms.
Once the industry enters a relatively mature stage and the reshuffle speeds up, these problems are expected to be better solved.
In fact, in November 2025, the State Administration for Market Regulation (National Standards Administration) approved and issued two national standards for smart home appliances, which will be officially implemented on May 1, 2026.
These two national standards clearly define smart home appliances from the two key dimensions of “intelligent capabilities” and “scene effects”. They not only establish norms for enterprise R&D and production, but also make product selection more transparent for consumers.
For example, for the first time, five levels of intelligence have been defined for smart homes, from L1 basic intelligence to L5 high-end intelligence, which allows consumers to have clearer expectations for the intelligence level of products.
At the same time, the new standard also delineates typical application scenarios of nine categories of smart home appliances for the first time, and also provides a clear framework for companies in product development and ecological interconnection.
Of course, the improvement of the standard system also means higher requirements for all smart home manufacturers.
For example, when it comes to innovation, companies still need to focus on user needs to the greatest extent, with fewer flashy “gimmicks” and truly focus on solving users’ actual “pain points” and improving “product power.”
At the same time, companies should also focus more on R&D and innovation instead of relying too much on marketing.
After all, the companies that ultimately win the market will always be those companies that focus on product quality and user experience.
