Which refrigerator to buy

Compared to a single-door fridge, double-door refrigerators need more energy to function. However, thanks to energy-efficient star ratings, you can choose double door refrigerators that consume less power. Unlike single-door refrigerators, double-door refrigerators are frost-free.

This technology allows for even distribution of cool air inside the fridge by electric fans. Simply put, there is no formation of ice, and there is no need for defrosting. Double-door refrigerators cost anywhere between Rs 20, and Rs 45, The big advantage of refrigerators that feature a freezer in the bottom is a slightly bigger deep freezer.

Another advantage of bottom freezers is the convenience factor. For most people, the main fresh food storage area is more frequently used, whereas the freezer unit is used in less frequency. With a bottom freezer, your fridge will be at eye level. This makes it easier to find commonly used items such as vegetables, milk and other commonly used food items.

Bottom freezer refrigerators cost anywhere between Rs 23, and Rs 50, Side-by-side : Side-by-side refrigerators are split in half with the freezer on the left and the fridge on the right. The cost is anywhere between Rs 65, and Rs , Side-by-side refrigerators are spacious and come with numerous adjustable deep shelves and bins.

They are big with enough capacity for a household of six or seven. Most side-by-side refrigerators usually come with a capacity of litres. Also, side-by-side units have built-in ice and water dispensers.

One of the biggest disadvantages of a side-by-side refrigerator is its size. These units are commonly wider than standard refrigerators, making them less than ideal for small kitchens.

French doors : A French door refrigerator is a confluence of style and practicality. French door units have two doors for the refrigerator compartment and a freezer drawer on the bottom.

There are several advantages to a French Door refrigerator including plenty of storage space, wider shelves and larger door bins and a deeper space to store frozen items.

These units look stylish, but unfortunately, very few brands offer French door-style refrigerators in India. Counter-depth: The counter-depth side-by-side refrigerators sit virtually flush with your kitchen counters. They are designed to align with the depth of counters which is typically inches. Today's Top Stories. The Rise of the Cleanfluencer. Advertisement - Continue Reading Below. Best Overall Refrigerator.

Energy Star certified Smart design features like a built-in coffeemaker Wi-Fi enabled. Best Value Refrigerator. Maytag homedepot. Energy Star certified Door shelves cool enough to store dairy Steady fridge and freezer temps. Controls a little tricky to adjust. Best Smudge-Proof Refrigerator. Kenmore Elite americanfreight. Energy Star certified Steady temps Lots of storage. Best Door-in-Door Refrigerator. Energy Star certified Easy access compartment.

Best Counter-Depth Refrigerator. GE ajmadison. Energy Star certified. Best Double Freezer Refrigerator. Miele ajmadison. Best Side-by-Side Refrigerator. Whirlpool ajmadison. Best Top Freezer Refrigerator. Frigidaire Gallery lowes.

Best Bottom Freezer Refrigerator. LG bestbuy. Best Smart Refrigerator. Responds to voice commands. Best Refrigerator for Families. Samsung homedepot. This content is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page to help users provide their email addresses. You may be able to find more information about this and similar content at piano. More From Refrigerator Reviews. Counter-depth fridges are also arguably easier to organize and look better in most kitchens, plus they tend to use a bit less energy.

After size, you get to decide what else is important to you, in whichever order you choose. Decide between freestanding or built-in. This AJ Madison primer has some additional details on style and sizing options for built-ins. AJ Madison is a major appliance retailer that carries most brands of refrigerators, both freestanding and built-in. But some of this guide applies to built-in fridges, too. Choose a door style.

French-door models always dominate the best-seller lists at major retailers, and they were by far the most widely liked of the most popular types in our reader survey. Most people seem to prefer this style because the layout is convenient, and possibly because it looks trendy. But any style can be a good fit for the right kitchen and owner.

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, half-height, swing-open doors and column designs all-fridge no-freezer, and vice versa have their place, too.

Consider reliability. More than half of the respondents in our reader survey said that reliability was one of the top three most important things they wanted in a new fridge. Unfortunately, nobody has a crystal ball that can predict which brand or model—or especially individual refrigerator units on sale today—will last the longest and have the fewest problems. However, after digging through Wirecutter survey responses and retail customer reviews and examining other publicly available data, we have some leads about the brands, fridge types, and even specific models that may be most prone to problems.

Think through what you want for capacity, shelving, and organization. These closely related qualities are highly important to most fridge owners. French-door models earn much more praise and less criticism related to shelving, storage, and organization than side-by-side or top-freezer fridges. The [drawers] on the freezer make it easy to see my food without having to reach so far back.

In general, we learned that most people are comfortable with the size of their fridge. Complaints about small capacity are just as common among huge cubic-foot models as they are among cubic-foot models, for example. It really has more to do with the shelving and layout. If you want an enormous fridge, by all means, get one. But you might not need quite as much space as you think.

Think twice about an ice maker and door dispenser. Automatic ice makers, especially the kind that dispenses ice through the refrigerator door, are both wonderfully convenient and one of the most finicky, problem-prone parts of a fridge.

But most people seem to think that a built-in ice maker is worth having. Ice-maker reliability, as far as we can tell, depends on the specific model of refrigerator, not its brand, door type, or price. It was by far the worst service record we came across. And then the nearly identical-looking Samsung RF28RS has essentially no complaints about its ice maker jamming. Similar trends play out among other brands though none even come close to the failure rate on that first Samsung model.

Consider the finish. Stainless steel is still the trendy-yet-attainable choice, as it has been for a few decades, and is widely regarded as an option that looks good in most kitchens. 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. If this matters to you, check out some fridges in person. Other neutral, brushed-metal finishes such as black stainless or slate are common.

Glossy black and white are still widely available, particularly on cheaper fridges. Bolder, brighter colors or even prints are available, too, though they tend to be reserved for upscale models and only from certain brands.

Choose a model that maximizes efficiency and sustainability. And as of summer , all of the major brands now claim to use a climate-friendly refrigerant in at least some of their lineups—and a couple have transitioned all of their new fridges in that regard. But there are some rules of thumb to follow if you want to maximize your energy savings , such as choosing a smaller capacity, passing on a door dispenser, and avoiding side-by-side models. Consumer Reports tests and rates refrigerators for temperature consistency, defined as how quickly and accurately each fridge reaches the temperature on its thermostat and how well it holds that temperature as the ambient temperature around the fridge changes.

What we can tell you is that after analyzing more than 28, customer reviews across 34 different fridges, it is very uncommon to find criticism of fridges for doing a poor job keeping foods fresh, outside of cases where the cooling system was obviously defective or broken.

The problem seems more common among lower-cost top-freezer models, and higher-end models with a door-in-door feature might struggle to hold dairy-safe temperatures in their door shelves. Noise: When refrigerators are functioning properly, they do not make enough noise to irritate the vast majority of people.

Low-cost top-freezer models tend to run a little louder in the first place and seem to be a bit more prone to nuisance noises, too. Among refrigerators from the five major brands, LG fridges seem to make their owners the happiest. In a Wirecutter reader survey, far more real-life LG owners said they were satisfied with their fridges than owners of other brands did, and fewer said they hated their fridges. A handful of specific models all side-by-sides have major reliability problems.

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. The door-in-door feature also available from a couple of other brands was widely liked, as well. But judging from the little info we do have, those models seem to be solid, too.

As of early , new LG refrigerators all use climate-friendly Ra refrigerant. The following models received generally positive customer reviews, according to our review analysis, and may be a good place to start in your search:. The big caveat with LG refrigerators is that some of its larger fridges are more likely than those of other brands to stop cooling. It has been a big problem over the past decade, and although the company seems to have corrected the issue with most of its current models, there are still some side-by-side models with a really poor track record.

In , LG settled a class-action lawsuit regarding faulty compressors that may have affected up to 1. We found some evidence of this compressor problem in our reader survey: More LG owners 3. Samsung was the only major brand with a worse track record for cooling failures, at 4. And when we analyzed customer reviews for nine available LG models, we saw clear evidence that two of them seem to have this same compressor-related no-cooling problem: the LSXSS and LSXSS , both of which are side-by-sides with the older bar-style handles rather than pocket-style handles like those of the newer LRSESV.

When, on occasion, any such issue arises, LG is committed to taking care of its customers. LG customer service is worse than average, with one quarter of all owners who reported interacting with the company in our survey citing a negative experience. Not great! LG was very bureaucratic and we spent at least 8 hours on phone calls and emails.

We did find that LG fridges were slightly less likely to break in minor ways that are annoying though often tolerable. So with an LG refrigerator, you might be less likely to deal with nuisances like broken shelves, handles, doors, lights, ice makers, or water dispensers. Owners also cited temperature inconsistencies less often and were notably less likely to say that organizing the fridge and keeping track of items was difficult.

Consumer Reports puts LG near the front of the pack for reliability, too. But the basic French-door models still earn great ratings, too. GE is also one of the handful of brands whose customer service seemed to generate fewer negative sentiments among our survey respondents, especially compared with LG and Samsung. GE has its own repair fleet in some metro areas, which might have something to do with it. To be clear, our data suggests that GE French-door fridges need repairs at a rate similar to that of LG French-door models, and we did see some complaints about customer service among the analyzed reviews.

Minor problems like noise may be slightly more common, and a small percentage of customer reviews still cite major cooling failures. But you might have a better chance of getting a repair done promptly under warranty. Top-freezer models from GE are decent and can be some of the very cheapest full-size fridges available.

We have more on these below, in our section about budget-friendly options. Most current GE fridges PDF use the climate-friendly Ra refrigerant, and GE told us it plans to transition all of its freestanding models by the end of and its built-ins by the end of 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.

As a brand, Whirlpool had the fewest complaints in our survey about truly bad reliability though compared with LG, it had fewer reports of good reliability and more for okay reliability, which is a sign of annoying problems but not critical failures. In our analysis of customer reviews, we found very few reports of cooling-related failures—we actually found no such complaints reported in the past year for the WRFSWHZ French-door model, which we had previously highlighted in this guide as a big, basic option that should work well for most people.

Its highest-end fridges, under the KitchenAid brand, are more about style than flashy features—a perfectly respectable approach. 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.

Bottom-freezer fridges are a bit of a hidden gem, offering a lot of the same advantages of French-door models but for a much lower price. As of August , many if not most popular Whirlpool models use the climate-friendly Ra refrigerant, according to a list the company shared with Wirecutter, and Whirlpool plans to transition its entire lineup by the end of But across its popular French-door models, we found double the rate of dissatisfaction compared with LG, GE, and Whirlpool models in our reader survey.

A class-action suit regarding the faulty ice makers is winding its way through mediation and courts as of August One high-end feature that owners like a lot is the Family Hub , a giant tablet built into the door of a big fridge.

A few owners cite glitchy behavior, but for the most part, satisfaction seems pretty high. I remember scoffing at the idea of a tablet in a fridge when Samsung launched the first version about six years ago, assuming that it would be a reliability nightmare. But in general, people who have a Family Hub like it. And in general, plenty of people are perfectly happy with their Samsung fridges. The premium Bespoke line is one of the few true counter-depth offerings we know of.

The challenge with these brands might be getting service under warranty or spare parts for repairs in the future. Kenmore products can vary a bit from the major-label versions—sometimes they earn different performance ratings from pro reviewers, for example—but generally you can expect the same experience.