If you have a kitchen island, measure the distance from the wall to the edge of that counter to account for the door swing. In this situation, a counter-depth model, or one with half-width doors (like a French-door Frigidaire fridge or side-by-side model) might make the most sense. If your fridge will sit close to a wall, think about whether the door will be able to swing open wide enough for you to pull out crisper drawers or deli trays.
Learn more about how Insider Reviews tests and researches home products. You can even store frozen items in the compact 1/2 width freezer compartment. The chiller goes down to 27 degrees and the refrigerator can go as low as 32 degrees. Whether you need a fridge for the garage, dorm room, or office, the Whirlpool 4.3 cu. This Energy Star rated compact refrigerator has an adjustable thermostat, allowing you to have control over how cold your items stay. The fridge has a seven-can dispenser built in, and is tall enough inside to hold two-liter bottles.
(That’s counting the handles in both cases, but not the 2 inches you should leave between the back of the fridge and the wall for circulation). The doors aren’t flush with cabinetry like those of a “true” counter-depth model, but the overall design tends to feel less obtrusive than a standard-depth model, which can jut way out beyond your cabinets. It’s common among models of both types to have separate cooling systems for the fridge and freezer compartments , which their makers advertise as an upgrade over the single systems used in most fridges.
This compact pick by Costway comes with a crisper drawer, so you can enjoy your Trader Joe’s goods for as long as possible. It also comes with a separate freezer compartment and includes an ice tray so you can keep drinks cool on the go or while chillin’ in your room. Mini fridges are great for offices, dorms, recreation rooms, and so many other places, but it’s important to know that they are built economically, and you can’t expect to get more than five years out of even a good one.
I chose a variety of price points, designs, and sizes of mini fridges to suit almost every budget and purpose. I even chose a mini fridge model with a Sabbath Mode for Jewish customers who observe strict rules about using electronics on the Sabbath and religious holidays. Look for exterior features that help you easily navigate a small kitchen, like reversible doors and counter-depth models. On the inside, shelves that slide back to make room for tall items help you use the same space for different purposes.
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 .
As of early 2021, new LG refrigerators all use climate-friendly R600a refrigerant. Take multiple measurements of your space to find the Arctic King maximum width, depth, and height. Seriously—take multiple measurements of each dimension in case your floors turn out to be crooked.
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.