IoT, Bluetooth, and WiFi

by Rian

Few months ago, I wrote a spiel on a new Dyson PencilVac vacuum cleaner. It didn’t merit to be called a full-scale review, as I wasn’t testing the product against any other vacuums in the market, and quite frankly my research was limited to what fits into my needs and routines. Regardless, at the time, I knew the vacuum had Bluetooth capability and an app that were lackluster overall. The modern expectation of IoT apps would be somewhere near or above entry level robot vacuums.

The devices suffer from bad connectivity and UI also share the secondary symptom: Bluetooth. Bluetooth itself is not the core issue; it’s the expectation these devices have for Bluetooth. Connecting to a device from a smartphone once a month or once a year is perfectly fine. But if a firmware update that is relatively big needs to be pushed a smartphone, then through an app, then through the Bluetooth, it’s a recipe for disaster. PencilVac is expected to be priced at $599 in the US, somewhere in the range of entry level smartphone. And for a price of iPhone 16e in 2025, Dyson is cheapening out on WiFi when the product could definitely use higher bandwidth for maintenance and software update.

Dyson is not the only guilty one in choosing Bluetooth when clearly the application calls for different standard. I happen to own one of the early Anova’s Sous Vide machine, and it only has Bluetooth. There is really no reason not to use WiFi with Sous Vide — the appliance is plugged in during operation, and WiFi would eliminate the range issue. With cooking methods that can take hours at a time, a home cook would want smarter appliance to take the eyes off from the pot. It’s quite half-baked solution to a problem that many home cooks would want to solve, and apparently Anova, seeing as all the latest models have WiFi, finally agrees.

The irony of these supposed IoT appliances is the double standard about being it being “smart”. If it is truly smart, then being able to receive future updates and having proper apps would be necessary. But no, the bundled apps and firmware updates are rarely satisfactory. In fact, some of the reviews I’ve read blatantly said — ‘it works without the apps, so even if [insert manufacturer] it won’t be a problem’. That’s not the core issue at hand. It’s not an IoT appliance when being connected to internet and utilizing the connectivity is merely an accessory to its core feature.