If you are set on a mini fridge, consider that it might be wise not to spend too much because of the shorter lifespan. Our recommendations above run the gamut of what we found to be a reasonable price range. The basic wire rack shelf is removable for easy cleaning, and the compact fridge has a chiller for freezing a tray of ice cubes or keeping a small item or two frozen. The bare-bones design means there are fewer components to potentially break down. Frigidaire is a solid name in the refrigerator industry, and the 1.6-Cubic-Foot Compact Fridge is a great affordable, no-frills solution.
Insignia is Best Buy’s house brand, and you can get some great deals on basic (but often big!) fridges. We did a little digging, and unlike refrigerators from other big store brands Insignia fridges don’t seem to be made by any of the other major manufacturers. The customer ratings are solid, though we didn’t get enough info from our reader survey to understand how Insignia models compare to those of other brands. According to our reader survey, slightly fewer Whirlpool French-door owners than their GE counterparts said they were very or somewhat satisfied, and they trailed even further behind LG French-door owners.
GE Appliances is owned by Haier, which also sells the budget Hotpoint and city-sized Haier brands, though we don’t have much info about those. If your knob is a dial that has a blue strip, the darker blue/thicker side indicates the coldest setting. If your model has a thermostat with temperatures in °C /F, set it to the coolest temperature. Danby’s refrigerators and freezers operate at a sound level between 35 and 46 decibels. This is within the normal decibel range for modern refrigerators.
Top-freezer models are a lot more affordable and can fit really small spaces. Bottom-freezer fridges usually lack the high-end look of French-door models but have a lot of the same practical advantages. Four-door models (equal-size half-width, whirlpool mini refrigerator half-height, swing-open doors) and column designs (all-fridge no-freezer, and vice versa) have their place, too. Once you’ve nailed down a budget for your new mini fridge, you’ll next have to decide what you want to use it for.
In addition, we haven’t seen any proof that spending more on a fridge means it will be more reliable, at least not among non-luxury freestanding fridges. True counter-depth fridges can blend into their surroundings, but even the pseudo-counter-depth freestanding fridges from mainstream brands don’t feel so dominating or imposing in a room. Although side-by-sides tend to create much less satisfaction than French-door models, some people genuinely prefer this layout. Arguably the best part is that they tend to cost much less than French-door fridges while offering similar capacities and feature sets. A $2,000 French-door is not as nice,” said Richard Hughes of Appliance Factory. You can find four popular styles of freestanding refrigerators, plus a few less-common types, all with some aesthetic and functional differences.
Consumer Reports puts LG near the front of the pack for reliability, too. For other current LG fridges (including the French-door models we analyzed) and other major brands, we saw those kinds of problems cited in only about 3% of reviews, give or take. So we’d guess (hope?) that as long as you avoid the older side-by-sides, the chance of a cooling problem with an LG is about the same as with refrigerators from other brands.
Wide but shallow fridges, like counter-depth French-door models, might represent a happy medium. These fridges are big enough to help minimize shopping trips, they might reduce the amount of time you spend looking for items, and they are compact enough to save some energy. Any prediction about reliability is based on data about older fridges. That’s a reasonable way to try to do it, but there isn’t much of that historical data to begin with, especially outside of the five major brands.