It frees up major shelf space, and there’s no rummaging around or playing Tetris with your groceries any time you need a refill. College life is all about being on the go, which means Digiorno pizzas, Hot Pockets, cups of fruit and, of course, copious amounts coffee are your best friend. This automatically makes a refrigerator one of the most important appliances any incoming freshman can have .
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 .
Refrigerators over 15 years old could be costing you more than $80 per year to run. If you need a second refrigerator year-round, replace the old one with a new ENERGY STAR certified. Make sure you keep your fridge in an ambient temperature of 35 to 38 degrees Fahrenheit. On average, an old refrigerator uses about 35% more energy than a model that has earned the ENERGY STAR. To maximize your savings, minimize the number of doors and pay attention to cool air you can feel when you shut the doors. Get honest reviews on top products & services — delivered weekly to your inbox.
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 Frigidaire fridge 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.
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 Frigidaire fridge 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 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.
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.
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.
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.