'Intelligent' Appliances
Will Soon Invade Homes

For a long time now, appliance makers have spun visions of a fully networked kitchen a la the Jetsons, where the refrigerator can tell you if the milk is spoiled, the coffee maker orders up toast, and tasty food can essentially cook itself.

But because few homes, especially in the kitchen, have had the kind of robust Internet and wireless capabilities needed for such automated tasks, the reality of such futuristic dreams has pretty much been a wash. Now, finally, networking improvements have given manufacturers a chance to get it right.

There has been a lot of noise in that arena over the years, but an almost compete lack of such devices in the market. A few years ago, for example, there was a lot of fuss over an Internet-equipped refrigerator from LG Electronics, which didn't sell well, as well as a variety of small stand-alone computing units that were supposed to eventually control your appliances. All of them bombed.

iCEBOX Countertop; Price: $1,800; Comment:; You can watch TV, play the radio and monitor your loved one's eating habits on this well designed, all-in-one hub.

But LG, for one, is back with the recent announcement of a remote monitoring system for the washer and dryer, which will come out later this year, as well as a range of "intelligent" appliances it hopes to roll out.

To sample the here and now, my assistant Ed and I stuck to a commercially available line of appliances from Salton Inc., called Beyond. We tested out its iCEBOX (which stands for Information, Communication, Entertainment) CounterTop ($1,800), microwave oven ($150) and bread maker ($150). (The $99 coffee maker and Home Hub clock radio/CD player, which hasn't yet been priced, are due out later this year.)

When all these appliances are up and running, the basic idea is that they talk to each other, sending information and operating instructions back and forth. In our experience, the inputs and outputs for various cables and wires were easy to understand. We didn't even have to place the units close together -- the iCEBOX we tested was more than 30 feet and through a door from both the bread maker and the microwave. But while they have done a good job with the basics, there are also still glitches aplenty.

The appliances come loaded with bar codes -- and cooking instructions -- for thousands of popular prepared foods, from Campbell's soup to fish sticks. Once you scan the bar code of whatever prepared food you want to cook, the appliance automatically knows how long to cook the food, and at what power setting. If, for example, the instructions call for cooking something for five minutes at a high level and then three minutes at a lower level, the microwave will make that transition on its own. You, of course, will have to do the stirring, if that is called for.

Microwave Oven; Price: $150; Comment: It's a good idea, especially for kids, but the scanner is glitchy and it doesn't recognize enough food products.

That seems simple enough, but in practice it is a bit less smooth. In our test, the microwave quickly recognized common soups from Campbell's and Progresso, as well as many branded frozen and canned vegetables.

But when we tried to get it to read newer versions of foods like Pop Secret, Lean Cuisine Chicken Chow Mein and Kraft Macaroni and Cheese, they weren't in the microwave's memory.

The Beyond Web site is constantly adding new bar-code information to its growing database -- it updates on a nightly basis. To build the appliances' memory, you can manually scan in bar codes and then hope that those products are already in or will eventually be added to the Beyond site. For those products not in the database -- often regional, boutique or in-store items -- you can use the "learn" button to teach it new bar codes to recognize by keying in the correct cooking power and times. Once keyed in, it will remember it the next time you cook that particular food.

In our test, we had to either wait for a download or key in too many of the bar codes -- that was the case with nine of 14 products we tried to heat.

And we wished we could somehow save information for more healthy fare, like fresh veggies or meats. With the bread machine, finding mixes that had already been downloaded was even tougher; it was often easier to just read the instructions on the boxes and use the buttons manually.

Bread Maker; Price: $149.99; Comment: It's easier to key the cooking instructions manually, considerably lessening the wow factor.

The scanning itself also wasn't always so straightforward -- the machines didn't always work on the first swipe. Other hitches: We weren't crazy about the spring action on the scanners (they have a cord that connects them to the appliance, much like the phones on the seatbacks of airplanes) because it snapped back a little too tensely.

Every action that takes place with the microwave or the bread machine is recorded by the countertop, which acts as a hub for the wireless kitchen. If anyone in the house uses the microwave, for example, what they cooked and for how long gets noted by the countertop. I felt a little bit like I was running my own home version of the Patriot Act -- I could actually nail my partner for heating up to many Hot Pockets after midnight!

The countertop unit, which is essentially the controller, is perhaps the best part of the whole system and one I would recommend even without the networked appliances. The device looks a lot like a tiny version of a desktop computer in the style of an Apple iMac. It comes in either black or white and weighs about 12 pounds. There also is an under-cabinet flip version for $2,300.

The unit's keyboard and remote are wrapped with a plastic vinyl material that you can stick under the tap to clean. Along with its role as a wireless information distributor to the appliances, you can also use it to watch television, surf the Internet and check e-mail, play DVDs and CDs, or listen to FM radio. (When you shift the countertop into kitchen mode, you can interact with the peripheral devices and that is where the usefulness is more questionable.)

Email your comments to rjeditor@dowjones.com.