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.
Customer ratings for these pricier models often reach 4.7 stars out of five on Home Depot’s site, whereas the midrange models tend to earn closer to 4.4 stars. And according to our reader survey, brands that exclusively sell premium fridges have higher owner satisfaction than brands that sell fridges at a mix of prices. Whirlpool was one of the few brands that had enough survey responses about bottom-freezer models to be statistically significant, and the ratings were strong.
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.
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.
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 Arctic King 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.
Mini Fridge with Top Freezer has an interior light for spotting exactly what you need inside. Emily Belfiore is a Buying Guides writer for Meredith brands including InStyle, People, Food & Wine, and more. Always in pursuit of the best reviewer-vouched products, she covers topics spanning across the fashion, beauty, and health and wellness verticals. In her free time, you can find her testing products for articles, watching beauty tutorials, or catching up on the latest binge-worthy show. Take a look at your school’s housing policy to find out what dimensions are acceptable (many schools require ones that are 5 cubic feet or smaller, though some max out at 3.5 feet).
But maybe that’s because the brand’s slightly higher prices discourage people from buying the truly lowest-end models, so they don’t drag down the overall rating. Whirlpool’s reliability for this style also seems to be a little better than that of the other two brands. But we just don’t have enough data to say how these Whirlpools compare to similarly priced models with comparable features from LG or Samsung, so we don’t want to endorse one brand over another.
Our editors thoroughly review and fact-check every article to ensure that our content meets the highest standards. If we have made an error or published misleading information, we will correct or clarify the article. If you see inaccuracies in our content, please report the mistake via this form.
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.