I dont know Which made me buy an Amazon Dash Smart Shelf, but it happened towards the end of 2020, and 2020 was a very strange year. On November 25th, I ordered the $ 20 auto-refill scale – large – and it had arrived by December 1st. In a customer support email, Amazon asked me to start using the Smart Shelf. That said, Amazon wanted me to go shopping.
The point of the Amazon Dash Smart Shelf is that you don’t actually shop. As with all of Amazon’s Dash products that are linked to the company’s Dash Replenishment Service (DRS for short), the shelf is supposed to be smart enough to know when you are running out of anything you might find on Amazon. It detects when the load gets too light and automatically reboots without you having to do anything. After nearly a year of testing the Dash Smart Shelf with the help of small and medium-sized businesses, Amazon made it available to all customers in October 2020.
See, Amazon’s vision for our interface-free future of shopping: You don’t even have to sigh near an Alexa speaker or press a dongle with a garbage bag token. Your devices just know. The Dash shelf is like an empty Amazon storage shelf begging to be replenished. Only in this case is it in your office. Or your home. Or your home office.
Photo: Amazon
The Dash Smart Shelf assumes a lot. Their purpose is to refill non-durable goods – items like printer paper or pet food. So it is assumed that you want the product to appear on your doorstep on a regular basis. However, the default is to keep using the same product over and over and not necessarily looking for the best deal. In the world of Amazon, convenience is so delicious that you won’t bother looking at the menu – no matter how shocked the bill is. (What does that say about those who accept?)
The Dash Smart Shelf is available in three sizes: small (7 x 7 inches), medium (12 x 10) and large (18 x 13). Interestingly, regardless of the size, each shelf costs $ 20. Still, it’s cheap. It’s so cheap that this is difficult to qualify as a standard gadget rating. Should you buy one? Sure, why not! Should you really do this? That is the question.
There’s not much to say about the hardware. It’s a flat, black plastic scale and comes with four AAA batteries that should last about two years. My editor is probably upset that I’ve already spent so many words describing it. (Editor’s note: Go ahead, Lauren.)
The large smart shelf takes up about half a shelf in my linen closet that I decided it should live in. It relies on a couple of different signals to determine if you need more products that are invisibly reordered. Amazon learns from your reorder habits over time and begins to anticipate when you may need more. However, the primary signal that the Smart Shelf uses is weight. As soon as you have determined which consumer goods you want to store in the Smart Shelf, Amazon will record the weight of it. When the load exceeds a certain point, a new order is placed.
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