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New smart kitchen faucets from companies like Kohler and Moen can be controlled via voice and app on your phone, but are they worth the cost?
To find out, I installed a Kohler smart faucet in our kitchen and a Moen smart faucet in our wet bar and have been testing them for several months now. Both are aesthetically pleasing; they come in a variety of different styles and finishes.
I recommend having a contractor assist with the installation. It is similar to a standard kitchen faucet but with some extra electronics. The Kohler faucet did require a plug-in outlet nearby. Fortunately, I was able to use the existing outlet for our garbage disposal. The Moen faucet works with batteries, but they also have an adaptor for an outlet available if you prefer to go that route.
Both faucets can dispense a specific amount of water when prompted with a voice assistant or through their corresponding apps. The Moen faucet can actually pre-heat the water to the desired temperature and can dispense as little as one tablespoon which is pretty impressive.
One of the best use cases when this would be helpful is filling a baby bottle to a preset temperature, but for us I mostly found it to be a cool party trick. The Kohler faucet we tested could only do between one cup and six gallons, but the temperature is manually set. Both have automatic shutoffs to prevent overflow.
If arguing with Alexa to turn on your sink doesn’t sound attractive to you, both have sensors which you can simply wave your hand in front of to turn the water on and off. We found that this has been extremely helpful when our hands are dirty; we’ve gotten so accustomed to this function that we’ve caught ourselves trying to do it on other sinks.
After testing for several months now, I highly recommend faucets with motion-sensing technology if you’re building a new home or doing a major remodel. Having the sink connected to Wi-Fi and controllable by your voice assistant is pretty impressive, even if it doesn’t get a lot of use.
I certainly wouldn’t rush out to replace a functioning kitchen sink faucet to get that ability, but if you’re already planning to swap out a faucet it would be worth considering.
Brandon Doyle is a Realtor at Doyle Real Estate Team — RE/MAX Results in Minneapolis and co-author of Mindset, Methods & Metrics – Winning as a Modern Real Estate Agent. You can follow him on Twitter.
