Samsung's new Family Hub fridge is no faster than my five-year-old one

Last year, I completely renovated our new house. Once the renovation was done, it was time to buy new appliances. As the owner of SamMobile, I naturally went with Samsung: a couple of ovens, a dishwasher, and a Family Hub refrigerator for the kitchen.

I'd owned a Family Hub fridge (model RS68N8941B1, bought Q2 2020) in our apartment before this, and I was happy with it, so I expected the current generation sold in the Dutch market to be even better. Sadly, that's not how it went.

The old fridge did everything a fridge should do, and it offered plenty of storage. My only real complaint was the software on the big display, which was never fast. That's the one thing I hoped the new model (RF65DG9H0EB1, bought Q4 2025) would fix, and it's the one thing that hasn't changed.

The Family Hub display is meant to show your calendar, your photos, apps like YouTube and Spotify, and new recipes. It can even show you what's inside the fridge without opening the door, which is a neat idea and probably saves some energy.

But in practice, opening the door is faster than waiting for the display to load that view. That sums up the whole experience. The calendar widget takes ages to load when you check events on other days, the Spotify app feels half-finished, and the browser is painfully slow.

There's a five-year gap between my old fridge and this new one. But I honestly can't tell the difference in speed. The only visible update is the icons. They now match One UI 8.5, but they probably won't match One UI 9 when that arrives. Under the hood, this fridge runs Tizen 7.0, while Samsung's TVs are already on Tizen 9.

Samsung loves to talk about its ecosystem and the bigger picture. But if the ecosystem really matters, why is the core software of every kitchen appliance this slow? It doesn't need to be as fast as a flagship phone. Smartwatch or TV speed would be perfectly reasonable.

A fridge is one of the essentials of a house. If you put a display on it, that display can't feel so slow, especially now that everyone is used to fast smartphones.

I understand that Tizen is Samsung's own operating system. But maybe it's time to consider an alternative. Android would bring more apps, more frequent updates, and fewer headaches — and it wouldn't be the first time Samsung made that switch. The Galaxy Watch went from Tizen to Android and came out better for it.

I hope someone in Samsung's home appliances division reads this. The funniest part is that my Samsung AI washing machine currently has the smoothest interface of any Samsung device I own, phones aside. Until the Family Hub gets a proper software update, I'd avoid this fridge. And if that update ever comes, I'll gladly update this opinion along with it.