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I Spent Some Time With Samsung’s AI Appliances. Is the Cost Worth The Hype?

AI-powered dishwasher, fridge, oven, washer and vacuum may sound cool but after comparing the cost to non-AI appliances, I’m not sure you’re getting more value.

Every company is working hard to put AI in all your home appliances. Samsung is no exception. It showcased a range of AI-powered appliances during CES 2024 and CES 2025. Highlighting smart fridges, dishwashers, ovens, washing machines and dryers, Samsung’s smart home appliances integrate AI features, LCD touchscreens, cameras, auto-open doors and other features to improve your day-to-day cooking, clothes washing and cleaning. 

None of these AI features are particularly new. All of them have existed on previous iterations of Samsung’s lineup but it’s become increasingly clear that home appliances are going to get AI in them, regardless of need.  

Samsung invited me to Samsung Home Studio to see how the AI-powered features work but what I really looked at was how much of this AI is actually useful for you as a customer. Is it worth the hype and the extra cost?

Here’s what I learned and why I ultimately think the AI revolution for home appliances isn’t quite there yet.  

Samsung Bespoke AI Kitchen Appliances 

Samsung is introducing four bespoke refrigerator models (some of which were showcased at CES). The largest of which is the Bespoke AI 4-Door Refrigerator with AI Family Hub+ and AI Vision Inside. All the models (with exception to the Bespoke 4-Door Flex Refrigerator) are available for preorder starting now on Samsung.com for $1,000 off and come with an additional year of warranty. 

AI is back, but not significantly improved 

The first thing I noticed with Samsung’s 4-door refrigerator is the 32-inch LCD touchscreen on the front. It’s the largest I’ve ever seen on a home appliance and, according to Samsung, the largest in the industry. But it’s not particularly new or notable. AI Family Hub has appeared on previous models of Samsung fridges, giving you access to apps such as YouTube and TikTok, showing recipes, setting reminders, creating a grocery list and more.
I’ve never been a huge fan of putting a touchscreen on everything; I err on the side of having physical controls whenever possible. That said, the 32-inch screen is big and bright and serves the same function as my Amazon Echo Show 8: it provides a hub to control your smart home, add things to your calendar, and keep an eye on reminders. It’s useful enough as a general home screen.

AI Vision Inside also returns. It’s basically a camera inside the fridge that can identify the food you put in and take out, letting you know when things are getting low. It can automatically add things to the SmartThings grocery list and alert you when food is about to expire. If you’re a big grocery delivery person, like I am, you also can set it up to add things directly to your Instacart grocery list. 

Currently, the AI Vision recognizes about three dozen food items automatically but you can also add things manually. I expect that it’ll learn new items over time, although Samsung has been saying that for some time now. This, to me, would be the biggest selling point. Too often I’ve opened a carton of berries that I thought were new to find them covered with mold. Getting a warning a few days before an expected expiration would help me reduce food waste. 

The fridge comes with Wi-Fi and SmartThings integration, naturally. It also has auto open doors so you can stock the fridge even if your hands are full, which is a nice quality-of-life feature. I imagine it will also help reduce staining and streaking on the fridge (a curse of stainless steel appliances) if you don’t need to grab the handle anymore.

The Bespoke AI Refrigerator with AI Family Hub+ will be priced at $4,699 and available in stainless steel, white glass, and charcoal with matte black. It also has a range of customizable door panel colors and finishes. Three other models are in the lineup, including a 4-door model with a 9-inch AI Home Screen and the same AI Vision Inside feature for $3,999. 

AI cooling? Kind of, but the real magic is with the Peltier module 

Another model worth mentioning is the Bespoke AI Hybrid 4-Door Flex priced at $3,999. The AI name is slightly misleading because it doesn’t have AI Vision inside. Instead, the Hybrid model uses AI to optimize cooling efficiency and energy use. It does this by combining two power sources, a compressor and a Peltier module. During normal use, the compressor is the cooling mainstay, while the Peltier module kicks in during other scenarios for added cooling. 

AI algorithms can detect changes to the fridge’s interior, such as warm air entering when you open the door or an increase in temperature when you put in food that’s still hot. When this happens, it’ll deploy the compressor and Peltier module at the same time. According to Samsung, the hybrid cooling technology gives the interior of the fridge an additional 2.5 inches of usable space compared with a traditional compressor-only refrigerator. 

I like this use of AI quite a bit more than AI Vision. It’s less in your face than having a screen and camera on your fridge. If energy bills are a major concern for you, this hybrid cooling model seems like it could be worth considering. 

A space-saving fridge 

Last, with price and availability still to be determined, is the Bespoke 4-door Flex Kitchen Fit Refrigerator. As the name suggests, it is designed to fit into tight places, with a 4-millimeter installation gap on both sides. The doors can be opened to 90 degrees and Samsung says its SpaceMax technology allows the refrigerator walls to be thinner, creating more interior space without compromising insulation. I’m giving it serious consideration for my 800-square-foot apartment because I’m long overdue for a new fridge but very limited in space. 

Samsung’s ovens are still oddly targeted to influencers

Once again, this isn’t a new feature, but the Bespoke 30-inch Double and Single Wall Ovens come with AI-powered cooking, as with previous members of the lineup. The double wall oven comes with a 7-inch AI home screen that acts as a control center, the same as the one you get on the fridge. It supports a smart home hub, apps such as YouTube and Spotify, and it can pull up a camera view of the dishes inside your oven if you want to monitor it and upload a clip to social media. It seems oddly targeted for cooking influencers but the other features are more useful for people looking to do actual cooking. 

With the Samsung AI Pro Cooking software, the camera can automatically recognize 80 recipes (others you can save manually) and display the optimal cook time and temperature for different dishes. It can even tackle different types of meat in the same dish. Samsung showed me a bizarre example of salmon and a whole chicken being baked together, which sounded truly disgusting. A more reasonable combination I might actually try is bacon-wrapped chicken, which require different temperatures to be eaten safely.   

There are also no physical handles. It has a Push to Open feature that makes opening it easy if you have your hands full with a dish, letting you bump it with a shoulder or elbow. I like this tech in theory and it worked just fine in practice but I’m curious how it’ll fare in a less curated environment. For instance, if my cat gets the zoomies and runs face first into the oven while it’s baking, will it open? I assume it’s too smart for that but there are some things you can only find out with testing. 

Wi-Fi and SmartThings connectivity also allows you to monitor and preheat the oven from your phone, monitor energy use and search for recipes. This is something I already do with my much less smart LG oven but the feature is hit and miss so I’m hopeful that Samsung’s take on it is more reliable. 

The Double-Wall Oven costs $4,649, and the Single-Wall Oven costs $3,759. Both are available now on Samsung.com. 

Samsung is also releasing a 30-inch and 36-inch Induction Cooktop with some smart features focused on energy efficiency. Samsung says the cooktops are Energy Star-certified and come with four and five burners, respectively. Both have a 4.3kW Power Burner for more intense heat. All the burners also have a Power Boost function for faster cooking and the Sync Burner lets you control two at the same time with one control. As with all the other appliances, Wi-Fi and SmartThings are integrated. 

The 30-inch model costs $1,499, and the 36-inch model costs $1,699. These are both available now for preorder on Samsung.com. 

Dishwashing gets the AI stamp

Cooking can be fun but the dishwashing that comes afterward is usually less so. The Bespoke Auto Open Door Dishwasher should make things a bit easier. The smart features here aren’t really new either, which is a fairly common theme in this article. The AI Wash feature is intended to help remove stubborn food residue more easily and works together with the rotating StormWash dual arms. There’s a high-resolution sensor that keeps an eye on your dishes and the machine learning algorithm automatically adjusts washing and rinsing cycles based on the soil level. 

To some extent, this is tech that already exists on dishwashers. My LG dishwasher has an Auto mode that uses sensors to detects the soil level of my dishes and clarity of the water and adjusts the cleaning cycle to accommodate it. Unfortunately, I’ve found that it doesn’t always do a great job of figuring out how dirty something is and I get dishes that still have food particles on them. If Samsung can use AI to make this soil detection feature smarter, I could definitely see myself using AI Wash but I still question if this feature is actually AI.   

You also get a 2.25-inch LCD panel with controls and there are features including Smart Dry that lets warm air circulate better, which Samsung says results in 2.5 times better drying performance. The dishwasher itself is quiet at 38 decibels. For reference, appliances with a decibel rating from 38 to 40 are generally considered quiet. A regular conversation is usually around 60 decibels and many dishwashers are generally in that range so that makes Samsung’s new dishwasher quite a bit quieter than the competition. 

The Wi-Fi connectivity and SmartThings app let you remotely start and stop the dishwasher and monitor its power use. 

It’ll cost $1,399 at launch and is available for preorder on Samsung. 

All-in-one laundry machine with — you guessed it — AI 

Laundry isn’t spared from AI. The Bespoke AI Laundry Vented Combo is a washing machine and dryer combined, meaning you can do your washing and drying in one unit without having to move clothes. Like the fridge and oven, the 7-inch AI Home touchscreen acts as the hub for the controls, cycles, settings and various apps, just like the other features in the lineup.

All-in-ones tend to have bad reputation about how well they clean and dry but Samsung is implementing some features to improve things — in theory. Opti Wash & Dry adjusts the settings on the cycle automatically and the vented electric dryer has an internal heater and fan to move hot air through clothes more easily. The entire wash and dry cycle happens in 77 minutes, with the AI and sensor determining temperature and cycle time. The AI learning model predicts when the rinsing process ends and can have the other cycles take over when it thinks things are sufficiently clean. 

If you chose not to start an automatic dryer cycle, the Auto Open Door automatically opens after the washing cycle to release humidity and moisture, preventing your wet clothes from festering if you forget about them. 

You also don’t need to constantly top up on laundry detergent. The Flex Auto Dispense System can automatically dispense up to 47 loads of detergent or you can split the compartment to dispense 34 loads of softener and 25 loads of detergent. 

Like almost every other appliance in Samsung’s lineup, it comes with Wi-Fi and SmartThings for remote monitoring but also adds voice control for starting and stopping cycles hands-free.  

The Vented Combo will cost $3,099 and doesn’t require any additional laundry hookups for installation. It’s available for preorder now through Samsung. 

Does a vacuum need AI? Samsung thinks so. 

Finally, Samsung is putting the AI branding on cordless vacuums, although once again I hesitate to say that it’s actually new because an earlier version of the model was released in 2023. There’s an LCD panel to show you suction levels, battery life and alerts. When you start vacuuming, the so-called AI senses floor types and automatically adjusts suction power and brush speed to optimize runtime and maneuverability on those types of floors. I was able to briefly run the vacuum in Samsung’s demo area and I found it to be fairly lightweight and easy to maneuver, although it was hard to judge cleaning performance in the fairly clean environment. 

The Bespoke AI Jet Ultra Cordless Stick Vacuum has 400 air watts (a measure of suction power) and the company’s proprietary HexaJet motor. For reference, most vacuums have between 150 and 200AW of suction, with 200AW being considered good. 

Samsung also says it has the longest battery life of any stick vacuum, with 100 minutes of runtime. If true, that would be a pretty incredible runtime, although I’d be curious to see what suction power level it was tested at. With my Ryobi vacuum, I’m lucky if get a half-hour at full suction power before I have to swap out the battery and it’s not like I have a particularly big apartment. A 100-minute runtime should be more than enough to handle all the rooms in my apartment with plenty to spare so it may be a great option for people with bigger spaces. 

We’ll undoubtedly be getting the Jet Ultra into CNET’s testing lab to put it through the paces, so keep an eye on our list of best vacuum cleaners and best cordless vacuums to see where it ranks. 

Other features include an All-in-One Clean Station that charges the vacuum and automatically empties and closes the dustbin. Samsung says it traps 99.99% of fine dust particles. This is a huge quality-of-life feature if you’ve never used a vacuum with a dock before, sparing you from getting dust everywhere when you empty it into the trash. 

Like everything else, the vacuum has built-in Wi-Fi and SmartThings connectivity. If you get a phone call or text while vacuuming, the vacuum display will alert you about the message so you don’t miss anything important while cleaning up. This strikes me as being a little bit of a solution in search of a problem. Most people, including myself, have a smartwatch that does that and unless the suction on the vacuum is totally deafening, you’re unlikely to miss a phone call if it rings or vibrates. Still, I suppose it’s a nice-to-have feature if you have a vital phone call you’re expecting that you can’t miss but decide you also need to vacuum. 

The Bespoke AI Jet Ultra will cost $1,099 and it comes with a 10-year warranty on the motor and a 2-year warranty on the battery. It’s currently available for preorder through Samsung. This is pretty pricey for a cordless vacuum, putting it in the same price range as Dyson’s $949.99 Gen5 Detect Absolute

Are these AI appliances worth the cost? 

With prices ranging from $1,000 to $4,000, depending on the appliance in question, I hesitate to say that any of the AI features showcased by Samsung are game-changing enough to warrant the price premium compared with a similar «dumb» product. 

Take one of the ventless all-in-one washers and dryers, for instance. Samsung’s smart model costs $3,099, while a quality ventless one from GE will run you $2,599 at MSRP but is currently on sale at $1,798. Notably, it’s also Energy Star-certified and has some smart chops on its own, like the SmartHQ app for notifications and specialty cycles, even if it isn’t as fancy as the one from Samsung. 

Compared with a regular four-door refrigerator from Whirlpool or KitchenAid, you’re looking at spending approximately $1,000 more for the Samsung refrigerator’s AI features and screen. By themselves, I’m not sure any of these features are worth an extra $1,000, but I suppose if you’re already in the market for a smart fridge, it’s not too bad. A high-end LG Signature fridge with similar smart features such as auto opening doors can cost you twice as much at $7,199, though there are also more affordable smart models available that match Samsung’s pricing.

Of course, you can get a perfectly good «dumb» fridge from a quality brand like Whirlpool for significantly less. While undoubtedly there are some promising features at play for some of this lineup, ultimately I don’t think AI features are worth the premium compared with buying a simpler, high-quality appliance from a reputable brand at a similar or lower price. 

Technologies

The Future’s Here: Testing Out Gemini’s Live Camera Mode

Gemini Live’s new camera mode feels like the future when it works. I put it through a stress test with my offbeat collectibles.

«I just spotted your scissors on the table, right next to the green package of pistachios. Do you see them?»

Gemini Live’s chatty new camera feature was right. My scissors were exactly where it said they were, and all I did was pass my camera in front of them at some point during a 15-minute live session of me giving the AI chatbot a tour of my apartment. Google’s been rolling out the new camera mode to all Android phones using the Gemini app for free after a two-week exclusive to Pixel 9 (including the new Pixel 9A) and Galaxy S5 smartphones. So, what exactly is this camera mode and how does it work?

When you start a live session with Gemini, you now how have the option to enable a live camera view, where you can talk to the chatbot and ask it about anything the camera sees. Not only can it identify objects, but you can also ask questions about them — and it works pretty well for the most part. In addition, you can share your screen with Gemini so it can identify things you surface on your phone’s display. 

When the new camera feature popped up on my phone, I didn’t hesitate to try it out. In one of my longer tests, I turned it on and started walking through my apartment, asking Gemini what it saw. It identified some fruit, ChapStick and a few other everyday items with no problem. I was wowed when it found my scissors. 

That’s because I hadn’t mentioned the scissors at all. Gemini had silently identified them somewhere along the way and then  recalled the location with precision. It felt so much like the future, I had to do further testing. 

My experiment with Gemini Live’s camera feature was following the lead of the demo that Google did last summer when it first showed off these live video AI capabilities. Gemini reminded the person giving the demo where they’d left their glasses, and it seemed too good to be true. But as I discovered, it was very true indeed.

Gemini Live will recognize a whole lot more than household odds and ends. Google says it’ll help you navigate a crowded train station or figure out the filling of a pastry. It can give you deeper information about artwork, like where an object originated and whether it was a limited edition piece.

It’s more than just a souped-up Google Lens. You talk with it, and it talks to you. I didn’t need to speak to Gemini in any particular way — it was as casual as any conversation. Way better than talking with the old Google Assistant that the company is quickly phasing out.

Google also released a new YouTube video for the April 2025 Pixel Drop showcasing the feature, and there’s now a dedicated page on the Google Store for it.

To get started, you can go live with Gemini, enable the camera and start talking. That’s it.

Gemini Live follows on from Google’s Project Astra, first revealed last year as possibly the company’s biggest «we’re in the future» feature, an experimental next step for generative AI capabilities, beyond your simply typing or even speaking prompts into a chatbot like ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini. It comes as AI companies continue to dramatically increase the skills of AI tools, from video generation to raw processing power. Similar to Gemini Live, there’s Apple’s Visual Intelligence, which the iPhone maker released in a beta form late last year. 

My big takeaway is that a feature like Gemini Live has the potential to change how we interact with the world around us, melding our digital and physical worlds together just by holding your camera in front of almost anything.

I put Gemini Live to a real test

The first time I tried it, Gemini was shockingly accurate when I placed a very specific gaming collectible of a stuffed rabbit in my camera’s view. The second time, I showed it to a friend in an art gallery. It identified the tortoise on a cross (don’t ask me) and immediately identified and translated the kanji right next to the tortoise, giving both of us chills and leaving us more than a little creeped out. In a good way, I think.

I got to thinking about how I could stress-test the feature. I tried to screen-record it in action, but it consistently fell apart at that task. And what if I went off the beaten path with it? I’m a huge fan of the horror genre — movies, TV shows, video games — and have countless collectibles, trinkets and what have you. How well would it do with more obscure stuff — like my horror-themed collectibles?

First, let me say that Gemini can be both absolutely incredible and ridiculously frustrating in the same round of questions. I had roughly 11 objects that I was asking Gemini to identify, and it would sometimes get worse the longer the live session ran, so I had to limit sessions to only one or two objects. My guess is that Gemini attempted to use contextual information from previously identified objects to guess new objects put in front of it, which sort of makes sense, but ultimately, neither I nor it benefited from this.

Sometimes, Gemini was just on point, easily landing the correct answers with no fuss or confusion, but this tended to happen with more recent or popular objects. For example, I was surprised when it immediately guessed one of my test objects was not only from Destiny 2, but was a limited edition from a seasonal event from last year. 

At other times, Gemini would be way off the mark, and I would need to give it more hints to get into the ballpark of the right answer. And sometimes, it seemed as though Gemini was taking context from my previous live sessions to come up with answers, identifying multiple objects as coming from Silent Hill when they were not. I have a display case dedicated to the game series, so I could see why it would want to dip into that territory quickly.

Gemini can get full-on bugged out at times. On more than one occasion, Gemini misidentified one of the items as a made-up character from the unreleased Silent Hill: f game, clearly merging pieces of different titles into something that never was. The other consistent bug I experienced was when Gemini would produce an incorrect answer, and I would correct it and hint closer at the answer — or straight up give it the answer, only to have it repeat the incorrect answer as if it was a new guess. When that happened, I would close the session and start a new one, which wasn’t always helpful.

One trick I found was that some conversations did better than others. If I scrolled through my Gemini conversation list, tapped an old chat that had gotten a specific item correct, and then went live again from that chat, it would be able to identify the items without issue. While that’s not necessarily surprising, it was interesting to see that some conversations worked better than others, even if you used the same language. 

Google didn’t respond to my requests for more information on how Gemini Live works.

I wanted Gemini to successfully answer my sometimes highly specific questions, so I provided plenty of hints to get there. The nudges were often helpful, but not always. Below are a series of objects I tried to get Gemini to identify and provide information about. 

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Technologies

Today’s Wordle Hints, Answer and Help for April 26, #1407

Here are hints and the answer for today’s Wordle No. 1,407 for April 26. Hint: Fans of a certain musical group will rock out with this puzzle.

Looking for the most recent Wordle answer? Click here for today’s Wordle hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Connections, Connections: Sports Edition and Strands puzzles.


Today’s Wordle puzzle isn’t too tough. The letters are fairly common, and fans of a certain rock band might get a kick out of the answer. If you need a new starter word, check out our list of which letters show up the most in English words. If you need hints and the answer, read on.

Today’s Wordle hints

Before we show you today’s Wordle answer, we’ll give you some hints. If you don’t want a spoiler, look away now.

Wordle hint No. 1: Repeats

Today’s Wordle answer has no repeated letters.

Wordle hint No. 2: Vowels

There is one vowel in today’s Wordle answer.

Wordle hint No. 3: Start letter

Today’s Wordle answer begins with the letter C.

Wordle hint No. 4: Rock out

Today’s Wordle answer is the name of a legendary English rock band.

Wordle hint No. 5: Meaning

Today’s Wordle answer can refer to a violent confrontation.

TODAY’S WORDLE ANSWER

Today’s Wordle answer is CLASH.

Yesterday’s Wordle answer

Yesterday’s Wordle answer, April 25,  No. 1406 was KNOWN.

Recent Wordle answers

April 21, No. 1402: SPATE

April 22, No. 1403: ARTSY

April 23, No. 1404: OZONE.

April 24, No. 1405: GENIE

What’s the best Wordle starting word?

Don’t be afraid to use our tip sheet ranking all the letters in the alphabet by frequency of uses. In short, you want starter words that lean heavy on E, A and R, and don’t contain Z, J and Q. 

Some solid starter words to try:

ADIEU

TRAIN

CLOSE

STARE

NOISE

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Technologies

T-Mobile Adds New Top 5G Plans, T-Satellite and New 5-Year Price Locks

The new top unlimited plans, Experience More and Experience Beyond, shave some costs and add data and satellite options.

Just two years after expanding its lineup of cellular plans, T-Mobile this week announced two new plans that replace its Go5G Plus and Go5G Next offerings, refreshed its prepaid Metro line and wrapped them all in a promised five-year pricing guarantee. 

To convert more subscribers, the carrier is also offering up to $800 to help customers pay off phone balances when switching from another carrier.

In a briefing with CNET, Jon Friar, president of T-Mobile’s consumer group, explained why the company is revamping and simplifying its array of mobile plans. «The pain point that’s out there over the last couple of years is rising costs all around consumers,» Friar said. «For us to be able to bring more value and even lower prices on [plans like] Experience More versus our former Go5G Plus is a huge win for consumers.»

The new plans went into effect April 23.

With these changes, CNET is already hard at work updating our picks for Best T-Mobile Plans, so check back soon for our recommendations.

More Experiences to define the T-Mobile experience

The top of the new T-Mobile postpaid lineup is two new plans: Experience More and Experience Beyond.

Experience More is the next generation of the Go5G Plus plan, which has unlimited 5G and 4G LTE access and unlimited Premium Data (download speeds up to 418Mbps and upload speeds up to 31Mbps). High-speed hotspot data is bumped up to 60GB from 50GB per month. The monthly price is now $5 lower per line than Go5G Plus.

The Experience More plan also gets free T-Satellite with Starlink service (the new name for T-Mobile’s satellite feature that uses Starlink’s constellation of satellites) through the end of 2025. Although T-Satellite is still officially in beta until July, customers can continue to get free access to the beta starting now. At the start of the new year, the service will cost $10 per month, a $5 drop from T-Mobile’s originally announced pricing. T-Satellite will be open to customers of other carriers for the same pricing beginning in July.

The new top-tier plan, Experience Beyond, also comes in $5 per line cheaper than its predecessor, Go5G Next. It has 250GB of high-speed hotspot data per month, up from 50GB, and more data when you’re traveling outside the US: 30GB in Canada and Mexico (versus 15GB) and 15GB in 215 countries (up from 5GB). T-Satellite service is included in the Experience Beyond plan.

However, one small change to the Experience plans affects that pricing: Taxes and fees, previously included in the Go5G Plus and Go5G Next prices, are now broken out separately. T-Mobile recently announced that one such fee, the Regulatory Programs and Telco Recovery Fee, would increase up to 50 cents per month.

According to T-Mobile, the Experience Beyond rates and features will be «rolling out soon» for customers currently on the Go5G Next plan.

The Essentials plan is staying in the lineup at the same cost of $60 per month for a single line, the same 50GB of Premium Data and unlimited 5G and 4G LTE data. High-speed hotspot data is an optional $10 add-on, as is T-Satellite access, for $15 (both per month).

Also still in the mix is the Essentials Saver plan, an affordable option that has ranked high in CNET’s Best Cellphone Plans recommendations.

Corresponding T-Mobile plans, such as those for military, first responders and people age 55 and older are also getting refreshed with the new lineup.

T-Mobile’s plan shakeup is being driven in part by the current economic climate. Explaining the rationale behind the price reductions and the streamlined number of plans, Mike Katz, president of marketing, innovation and experience at T-Mobile told CNET, «We’re in a weird time right now where prices everywhere are going up and they’ve happened over the last several years. We felt like there was an opportunity to compete with some simplicity, but more importantly, some peace of mind for customers.»

Existing customers who want to switch to one of the new plans can do so at the same rates offered to new customers. Or, if a current plan still works for them, they can continue without changes (although keep in mind that T-Mobile earlier this year increased prices for some legacy plans).

Five years of price stability

It’s nearly impossible to think about prices these days without warily eyeing how tariffs and US economic policy will affect what we pay for things. So it’s not surprising to see carriers implement some cost stability into their plans. For instance, Verizon recently locked prices for three years on their plans.

Now, T-Mobile is building a five-year price guarantee for its T-Mobile and Metro plans. That pricing applies to talk, text and data amounts — not necessarily taxes and other fees that can fluctuate.

Given the uncertain outlook, it seems counterintuitive to lock in a longer rate. When asked about this, Katz said, «We feel like our job is to solve pain points for customers and we feel like this helps with this exact sentiment. It shifts the risk from customers to us. We’ll take the risk so they don’t have to.»

The price hold applies to new customers signing up for the plans as well as current customers switching to one. T-Mobile is offering the same deals and pricing to new and existing subscribers. Also, the five-year deal applies to pricing; it’s not a five-year plan commitment.

More money and options to encourage switchers

The promise of a five-year price guarantee is also intended to lure people from other carriers, particularly AT&T and Verizon. As further incentive, T-Mobile is offering up to $800 per line (distributed via a virtual prepaid Mastercard) to help pay off other carriers’ device contracts. This is a limited-time offer. There are also options to trade in old devices, including locked phones, to get up to four new flagship phones.

Or, if getting out of a contract isn’t an issue, T-Mobile can offer $200 in credit (up to $800 for four lines) to bring an existing number to the network.

Four new Metro prepaid plans

On the prepaid side, T-Mobile is rolling out four new Metro plans, which are also covered by the new five-year price guarantee:

• Metro Starter costs $25 per line per month for a family of four and there is no need to bring an existing number. (The cost is $105 the first month.)

• Metro Starter Plus runs $40 per month for a new phone, unlimited talk, text and 5G data when bringing an existing number. For $65 per month, new customers can get two lines and two new Samsung A15 phones. No autopay is required.

• Metro Flex Unlimited is $30 per line per month with autopay for four lines ($125 the first month) with unlimited talk, text and 5G data.

• Metro Flex Unlimited Plus costs $60 per line per month, then $35 for lines two and three and then lowers the price of the fourth line to $10 per month as more family members are added. Adding a tablet or smartwatch to an existing line costs $5. And streaming video, such as from the included Amazon Prime membership, comes through at HD quality.

See more: If you’re looking for phone plans, you may also be looking for a new cell phone. Here are CNET’s picks.

The Pixel 9A’s Design: Google Takes Minimalism to the Extreme

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