A single-door fridge (like a top-freezer or bottom-freezer model), with the hinge on the opposite side from the wall, might be your best bet. We don’t have “official” recommendations for specific refrigerator models. If this were a typical Wirecutter guide, we’d highlight a handful of the “best” refrigerators that, based on our research and testing, would make the most people the happiest.
And LG doesn’t sell as wide a variety of that type of fridge as other brands do. But judging from the little info we do have, those models seem to be solid, too. LG’s bottom-freezer models also earned high marks in our reader survey. The shelving and organization in LG fridges earned especially high ratings in our reader survey, as LG beat the other major brands in satisfaction with perceived capacity, storage ability, and accessibility of contents. Among refrigerators from the five major brands, LG fridges seem to make their owners the happiest.
If you’re looking for a spot to store extra drinks, the Frigidaire 6-Can Mini Retro Beverage Fridge’s 14-cubic foot construction is the perfect choice. It’s small enough to fit on top of a desk, nightstand, or countertop and its portable design makes it double as a cooler. Owen Burke is a Senior Home and Kitchen Reporter at Insider, helping craft a brand new guides section for Insider Reviews. Ever in search of the perfect whirlpool mini refrigerator espresso, he focuses on espresso machines and equipment, juicers, kitchen knives, grills, meat and seafood, and the odd outdoors product. Some even end up purchasing two of these fridges to store side by side, using one as a fridge and one as a freezer. Note that if you do use this fridge as a freezer, you’ll want to be hypervigilant about condensation and be sure to get a good seal every time you open and close the door.
I’ve broken down their features and price points so you can compare and choose the one that is the best fit for your home, office, or dorm. What we can say, based on the limited data we collected, is that people who own luxury brands tend to be really happy with their refrigerators. It wouldn’t surprise us if other luxury brands had similar ratings, but we just don’t have reliable information about enough of these brands to offer much specific, comparative advice. This mini fridge from KitchenAid is a high-end model with lots of premium features that make it well worth the almost $2,400 price tag.
A refrigerator is a quintessential home appliance that is vital for storing and preserving perishable food. The decision to buy a fridge is not an easy one as there are several factors that have to be considered before you ahead with the purchase. As with luxury fridges in general, we don’t know enough about built-ins to offer useful advice, unfortunately. LG’s warranty coverage is pretty typical for the industry now, with one year comprehensive parts and labor, and five years parts and labor for the compressor and cooling system. The company will also provide a replacement compressor for up to 10 years , though you’ll have to cover the cost of labor, which will be high.
The customer ratings for these models are solid and sometimes even great, though these owners are more likely than normal to complain about noise, lack of shelving, and lack of capacity. The barebones GE GTE17DTNRWW, for example, has an average rating of 4.5 stars on Home Depot’s site, beating out most side-by-side models, but a whopping 18% of recent reviewers write that it’s noisy. We also found through our survey and customer-review analysis that Whirlpool’s French-door and side-by-side reliability was similar to that of the other brands—although notably, the rate of major problems seemed especially low. As a brand, Whirlpool had the fewest complaints in our survey about truly bad reliability .
Samsung has its Bespoke series, and LG has the Studio and Signature lines. In 2020, LG settled a class-action lawsuit regarding faulty compressors that may have affected up to 1.6 million fridges sold from 2014 to 2017, all of which were 33- and 36-inch-wide French-door and side-by-side models. Different brands have slightly different looks to their stainless—some are more reflective, some have more pronounced brushed-metal grooves, some are more fingerprint resistant. You can take the doors off the fridge to get a few extra inches, but there are some fridges that you just cannot get inside of certain kitchens. Our advice is based mostly on two big fact-finding projects we conducted to collect feedback from people who use refrigerators and then quantify and analyze that feedback.
Having a small refrigerator in your dorm room makes it easy to keep fresh food and cool drinks on hand between classes or when you just can’t bring yourself to eat another meal in the dining hall. Mini fridges are also great for use at home when you might need a bit of extra cold storage for groceries like meat, drinks, and vegetables. The LED interior light uses a motion sensor to automatically turn on as you approach.
The appliance is designed to be small and out of the way, as it’s only about 25 inches tall, 19 inches wide, and weighs only 43 pounds. This Kenmore refrigerator includes three premium glass shelves that can easily be adjusted to accommodate tall items. The chic design is perfect for ushering in some retro vibes into your space. It’s equipped with a crisper drawer, fixed door shelves for organizing drinks and a separate top cooling compartment. Snag a whopping three cubic feet of storage space without using a lot of energy with this Energy Star-certified mini fridge. It’s specifically made for tight spaces, with a top freezer that’s perfect for storing meat and your favorite pints of Serendipity.