High-tech barbecues, mowers, sprinklers make life easier for homeowners

Overcooking or undercooking meat might be a thing of the past. Wireless meat thermometers, such as the Meater, can tell you the temp of your food on an app, even if you're inside and socializing with friends.

• 
• 
• 

Spring has sprung, a glorious time in Ontario, when we bravely step outside into the warmth, spark up the barbecue, read on the deck, and open the garden to welcome the sunny weather and the season of living outdoors.

“Smart” appliances offer modern conveniences that improve life for homeowners during the summer months.

Eating and cooking outdoors is a delight. A good barbecue can make all the difference. You can spring for a “smart grill,” such as an app-controlled Traeger wood-pellet solution.

Or you can buy something like the $149 MEATER Plus, which lets you barbecue with confidence, as this wireless probe (with dual sensors) will communicate your food’s internal temperature and grill’s ambient temp, up to 165 feet away (via Bluetooth), to its companion app on a smartphone or tablet.

Ideal for cooking indoors or outdoors (and portable for camping trips), this small device works with all cuts of meat (beef, lamb, chicken, and pork), as well as fish. The app will display alerts, such as when it’s time to flip your steak based on how well you like it done, as well as other handy features.

Then there’s the matter of keeping your lawn in good shape. Mowing the grass is a key task. The family of Husqvarna Automowers (from $899) can cut your grass autonomously. And for the first time in Canada, the latest model doesn’t require a “boundary wire” to be installed around the perimeter of the property, or around flower beds, gardens, and other areas you don’t want cut.

Instead, the new Automower 450X EPOS ($7,699) is the first model relying solely on Husqvarna’s Exact Positioning Operating System, which uses precise GPS connectivity to stay on your grass, and with custom stay-out zones.

Like its predecessors, it can navigate around obstacles, handle slopes, and when it detects its running low on its battery, it navigates itself back to the base to charge up and continue the job.

These residential mowers are quiet, too, as quiet as 58 decibels, which is about the same volume as a conversation, the company says. This means you can cut your grass early in the morning or late at night without disrupting your neighbours.

For suburbanites and countryfolk with larger properties, new rideable mowers from Ryobi have gone electric which makes them a good alternative to gas-based mowers, which can be noisy, smelly, costly, and cause emissions.

The Ryobi 80V HP Brushless Lithium Electric Zero Turn Riding Mowers (from $7,448.00 for the 30-inch model) takes suitcase-sized Lithium Ion cells to power the mower, plus you can snap in any Ryobi 40V battery, popular with more than 85 tools and other equipment, such as leaf blowers, to extend performance. Features include the iDrive system that uses one-handed joystick steering for easy manoeuvering on your lawn, and an LCD screen to see your runtime, blade and drive speed; and an app to monitor charge-time status.

Lawn maintenance generally includes watering the grass. The Moen Smart Sprinkler Controller (from $249; for 8 zones), paired with its Smart Wireless Soil Sensors (from $84), is designed to cut down on water use, and includes features such as independent zone control and scheduling, automatic weather skip — if it’s raining, it won’t water the grass at that moment, for instance — as notified on the Moen Smart Water App.

Homeowners can save up to 30 per cent in water, more than 56,000 litres annually, compared to clock-based controllers, the company claims. Wireless sensors monitor soil moisture and temperature at varying depths, and will adjust watering routines automatically, based on a zone’s specific needs.

After doing the hard yards in the garden, you may be in the mood to relax. Just because you’re kicking back in your outdoor hot tub on a sunny evening doesn’t mean you can’t binge your favourite TV shows. Suited to outdoor shaded areas, Samsung’s The Terrace outdoor televisions are built with all-weather IP55-certified exteriors that protect internal components from rain, dirt, humidity, and insects (in temperatures of — 31°C to 50°C). Its bestselling model is the 65-inch The Terrace 4K Outdoor TV LST9T ($9999), a QLED television, delivering a wide, more true-to-life colour palette than other TV technologies, it’s ultrabright and has an antireflection coating to combat glare from the sun.

SHARE: