“We’d really like consumers, at some point of time, to look back and say, ‘These days, a refrigerator without a screen feels awkward,’” said Sunggy Koo, Samsung’s vice president for smart appliances.

Samsung’s aim is for people to someday conduct their digital lives with equal ease from a fridge, a phone, a television or a car. Fed by data about you in the cloud — and with the help of a virtual assistant — all of the machines will operate in perfect synchrony to enable a maximally efficient domestic life.

Bosch is taking a more conservative approach. Its smart dishwashers, ovens and coffee machines, which range in price from about $1,300 to $3,100, look just like their disconnected counterparts and mostly use their internet connections for remote diagnostics. If a problem occurs, the appliance can automatically send an error code to Bosch’s customer service team, which can help determine whether you should fix the problem yourself or schedule a repair.

“Whenever we talk to our customers, we get the feedback that they really appreciate technology when it makes their life simple, but they don’t want to bother with additional complexity,” said Anja Prescher, Bosch’s director of brand marketing.

Whirlpool emphasizes the use of smartphones as kitchen companions. The company last year acquired Yummly, a recipe site that developed an app for scanning items in a refrigerator or pantry. The app then comes up with suggestions for what to cook and walks the user through recipes.

For now, Amazon and Google are having some of the most notable successes in the kitchen, even though their devices are not specific to that room. Many people use Amazon’s Echo speaker or Google Home, both of which are embedded with the companies’ smart virtual assistants, for setting kitchen timers or looking up recipes.

To take advantage of the frequency with which these devices end up in kitchens, the companies are expanding on those products with voice-controlled smart screens. Last year, Amazon debuted Echo Show, which can load step-by-step recipes on the screen. Google this year unveiled Smart Display, a software system that it shares with manufacturers like Lenovo, which will release smart screens this year that feature Google Assistant and can run apps and play recipe videos.