In recent years, smart home appliances have become more and more popular among consumers, with sales data reaching new highs.
In this AI era, smart home appliances have become a new choice for many consumers to improve their quality of life.
On the one hand, this stems from people’s deep desire to reduce or even liberate housework through smart home appliances, making life easier and more comfortable; on the other hand, the current rapid development of AI technology and the vigorous marketing and publicity of various merchant brands have also made people subconsciously believe that smart home appliances have reached a very intelligent level.
However, reality has poured cold water on people.
Many consumers have reported that smart home appliances have problems such as discrepancies between actual experience and publicity.
Not long ago, a survey report on the consumption of smart home appliances released by the Jiangsu Provincial Consumer Rights Protection Committee showed that although some products have novel and eye-catching designs, their functional practicability is seriously insufficient, and the intelligent experience they bring to consumers needs to be significantly improved.
Many products labeled as intelligent are actually “pseudo-intelligent”. Problems include exaggerated functions, poor experience, and incompatibility with devices.
For example, software stability problems are particularly prominent in categories such as sweeping robots, smart door locks, and smart speakers.
Smart speakers may start suddenly, breaking the tranquility of the home; smart door locks may have passwords that cannot be recognized, leaving users embarrassed and anxious outside the door; sweeping robots may have disordered map construction, abnormal function execution, etc. We originally expected it to clean the home spotlessly, but it backfired.
In addition, different brands usually need to be equipped with independent mobile clients and cannot interconnect with each other, which also brings great inconvenience to users’ actual operations.
Overall, there is a big gap that needs to be filled between the current “intelligent” level of smart homes and consumers’ expectations.
However, judging from the laws of industrial development, this situation is normal.
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.
The smart home industry is still in its infancy, with low barriers to entry, and the delivery quality and intelligence levels of various brands are inevitably uneven.
And in the early stages, many brands will be more obsessed with building their own ecological platforms.
Thankfully, the country has begun to take action.
In November 2025, the State Administration for Market Regulation (National Standards Committee) approved the release of 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 research and development and ecological interconnection.
The improvement of the standard system means higher requirements for all smart home manufacturers.
When it comes to innovation, companies still need to focus on user needs to the greatest extent possible, 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.
Only in this way can smart homes truly return from “gimmicks” to “product power” and bring consumers a real smart life experience.
