Why not get the wifi enabled fridge and just not hook it up to your router?

Genuinely asking because I plan to do this once I have to get new appliances, is there something missing that way?

Why not buy the fridge that doesn't have wifi smarts to begin with?

If I want to monitor my fridge's temperature, I can buy a widget that does that for a dozen or so dollars and have that sensor talk to the home automation system of my choice. And when the fridge dies or otherwise gets replaced, I can move the sensor to the new fridge. (And when a new sensor comes out that I like better, I can spend another McDonald's Value Meal worth of money to use that instead.)

Besides: We here on HN should all have a certain amount of distrust for devices that self-report problems.

This distrust is part of the reason why ZFS doesn't trust hard drives to self-report issues and does its own checksums instead.

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But that's a general rant. To answer your question more-directly, if somewhat-tangentially: One of the popular open-source-oriented YouTube dudes (Jeff Geerling?) recently bought a dishwasher that had functional modes that could not be accessed without a wifi connection to The Clown.

And that's... that's not good: In order to be able to use the functions that the thing natively includes, one must always allow it to call home to mother.

My folks have one of these: it bitches at you for internet.

Also the device is generally designed with internet in mind, so certain local-only functions don’t work properly without internet.

at some point they'll put limits until you connect. it might go from just not working to limiting the temperature or whatever.