GE’s new smart fridge adds a barcode scanner and an 8-inch tablet

Have you always wanted to scan your groceries at home? If so, the newest smart fridge from GE Appliances is for you. There’s a barcode scanner built into the water dispenser that works along with an interior camera and an 8-inch tablet to help you keep track of what food you need and add it to your digital shopping list.

The GE Profile Smart 4-Door French-Door Refrigerator with Kitchen Assistant is being announced at CES 2026, which kicks off next week, and is slated to launch in April for $4,899 — $500 more than a comparable non-Kitchen Assistant model.

This is GE’s first fridge with a full tablet built in, but not its first appliance with one — that accolade goes to GE’s Kitchen Hub, which was a giant 27-inch tablet attached to an over-the-range microwave.

The company says this time they are looking to use the technology to address specific pain points, such as maintaining your shopping list, meal planning, and managing food waste. “We’re integrating very purposeful technology into the product,” Amy Hite, product manager with GE Appliances, told The Verge. “We didn’t just put an iPad on the front of the door.”

The novel feature here is the built-in scanner, situated below the tablet and above the water dispenser. The idea is that you scan your empty packages as you take them out of the fridge or pantry. This adds them to your shopping list in GE’s SmartHQ App — complete with brand, flavor, and size — ideally making it easier to build your shopping list.

You can also manually add items via the 8-inch touch screen, which, by being integrated into the water dispenser area, looks less obvious than those on other brands. Another option is the new built-in voice assistant, “Hey, HQ.” The screen also provides access to recipes from Taste of Home and a meal-planning feature, and you can add ingredients you need from a recipe to your list with a few taps.

A camera inside the fridge monitors your crisper drawer, letting you check from the store via the app if you’re running low on spinach. It’s integrated into a flush-mount LED bar above the doors and has a physical shutter.

Once your list is ready, you can order your groceries through Instacart in the app, check off items while in the store, or export the list as a PDF. “The goal here is not to try and keep an inventory list of what’s inside the refrigerator but to actually allow easy shopping for you,” says Hite.

The company plans to add AI-powered object tracking to the camera to enable more precise food tracking — a feature Samsung’s Family Hub smart fridges already offer. “AI vision is the future here,” says Hite. “There is a real problem with food waste, so we are trying to solve for that by helping you know what you have, so you don’t buy duplicates.”

The SmartHQ voice assistant is another first for GE Appliances. In addition to adding items to your shopping list, it can handle tasks like kitchen timers, dispensing a precise amount of water, and answering questions about the fridge, such as “How do I change my water filter?”

HQ doesn’t talk back; instead, it answers any questions on the screen. However, there is a speaker in the fridge, along with a microphone, that you can use to stream music and podcasts.

“The voice control feature fills the gaps that are difficult to get to with our Alexa and Google assistants integrations,” explains Justin Brown, director of Digital Product Management at GE Appliances. He says it will be available on other appliances in the future.

There are several apps, services, and smart speakers that can do some or all of the above, but having all these capabilities integrated into one appliance — the fridge — and accessible to everyone in the household holds some appeal. However, being locked into one manufacturer’s ecosystem and app feels restrictive, especially for meal planning. And my experiences with the SmartHQ app so far haven’t been great.

There’s also the very real concern around having a tablet built into your fridge that might stop getting updates or break long before your fridge does. However, sticking tablets into appliances isn’t a trend that’s going away anytime soon. Hisense just announced a line of fridges and ovens with touchscreens that will also be at CES, and Samsung’s latest appliances all feature 7-inch or larger tablets.

The other fear is that once companies have screens in your home, they’ll start pushing ads at you, something Samsung has already done. The trade-off between the convenience these interfaces bring, and the lack of control you ultimately have over them, is something we’ll be watching closely.