The consumer advocacy group Which? has said some brands only support smart appliances for two to three years. This is a much shorter length of time than many customers expect to keep these products.
The UK-based consumer rights group, Which?, has warned that smart appliances may stop working prematurely due to a lack of software updates after just two years. It reached out to 119 brands and less than half responded but of those that did, many said they only offer two or three years’ worth of updates before abandoning products. To be clear, these are products like washing machines, TVs, dishwashers, and so on – things you’d typically expect to last about a decade. To add insult to injury, these smart variants can cost hundreds of pounds more.
While losing feature updates after a couple of years may not seem too bad to customers, the lack of updates also includes security updates which means the appliances become susceptible to hackers.
