Which is the best refrigerator?

[Daniel Breiter]

If you were to have one refrigerator, which are you going to use? Digital inverter or Linear compressor?

 

[bud16415]

Welcome to the forum.

Where I retired from we made refrigerators up to 1958 when the business moved out of town. I retired a couple years ago and there were still units made there running 24-7 keeping the guys lunches cold. Too many to count.

I know for a fact they were never recharged or worked on in any way during the 43 years I was there. That says a lot for the ability of a sealed piston system.

As to new units built today your guess is as good as mine.

 

[zannej]

I wish I could help here but I have absolutely no clue. I'm not familiar with those cooling methods. I'm interested to learn more if people have feedback though.

 

[bud16415]

I wish I could help here but I have absolutely no clue. I'm not familiar with those cooling methods. I'm interested to learn more if people have feedback though.

The one old style turns on and off like your furnace. The new ones run at different speeds trying to think ahead.

Little bit like adding a NEST T-stat it should save energy running more but at a slower rate.

Everything is getting smarter even the fridge. More to go wrong and more to fix most of the time.

 

[bud16415]

I did have my fridge bulb go the other day and I didn't have a fridge bulb so I put in a LED with lower wattage but more lumens. Wow is my fridge bright now. I have no idea if it will last but we will find out.

 

[Flyover]

I was hoping this was going to be about layout: side by side vs. traditional freezer-over-fridge, etc. For whatever it's worth, I am not a fan of side-by-side. It feels like way less fits in them. When they have water/ice dispensers and stuff in the freezer door that apparatus takes up a bunch of freezer space. Frozen pizzas definitely don't fit in them either.

 

[rbm328]

Stay away from LG and ESPECIALLY Samsung! Many, Many problems!
We bought a Whirlpool French Door, 36-inch Wide French Door Refrigerator - 25 cu. ft - WRF555SDFZ
The ratings on it were excellent, and like Flyover said, a SxS prohibits you from putting in wide items. This is WIDE AND DEEP! We especially like
the meat/cheese drawer. Price wise, its <$2000.
Check it out. We bought ours at Lowes. BTW, they're Made in America!!

 

[BuzzLOL]

Prices must be coming down on the 3 door French door fridges... that 3rd door used to add another $1,000 to a $1,000-1500 fridge... yeah, just 'marketing', doesn't really cost that much to do it...

When I go to a side by side, to avoid the narrowness, I will get the biggest available... a 29 or 30 cubic foot if still available... and likely a Whirlpool since made around here and usually most dependable... but my old Montgomery Wards/Admiral fridge from the 1970's is still working fine... but nowhere's near as efficient as the new ones... but maybe much more reliable...

In the over/under door models, I think the top freezer is more efficient, since some of the freezer cold just drops down to cool the refrigerator... whereas the bottom freezer models have trouble getting cold to go up... the old 'heat rises'...

 

[Flyover]

In the over/under door models, I think the top freezer is more efficient, since some of the freezer cold just drops down to cool the refrigerator... whereas the bottom freezer models have trouble getting cold to go up... the old 'heat rises'...

That's what I always figured too. Putting the freezer on the bottom seems like an extravagance, fighting an uphill battle against physics. But maybe I'm wrong and it's the other way around, and the cold air "pools" in the freezer so the freezer doesn't have to work as hard?

 

[68bucks]

We have had a sub-zero for 5 years now, bottom freezer. Love it. It has separate compressors for the freezer and the fridge. It's American made also. They are expensive but great quality. I'm not sure what technology it has relative to the OP.

 

[BuzzLOL]

the cold air "pools" in the freezer so the freezer doesn't have to work as hard?

That's what I figured was part of the problem with bottom freezer, getting a uniform temp in the fridge part, too warm at the top, freezing things at the bottom...

 

[BuzzLOL]

We have had a sub-zero for 5 years now, bottom freezer. Love it. It has separate compressors for the freezer and the fridge. They are expensive

LOL! I rest my case... an overly expensive complicated solution to a simple problem... although I can see shorter people or people with certain health problems preferring the bottom freezer...

And if the bottom freezer is in the form of a pullout drawer, you get the same problems as a deep freeze chest, food on the bottom is forgotten about or a pain to get to and sits down there for years or even decades...

In the 2 door over/under models, I'd estimate the top freezer is around 95% or more of sales...

 

[68bucks]

We had a bottom freezer on the last fridge. We really like the bottom freezer. We are both on the taller side and it always sucked getting on your knees to see what was in the back on the lower shelves. So I guess we like the upper fridge actually. We have a deep freezer so we only have minimal stuff in the fridge freezer. I didn't have any big issues with the last one, it was a Whirlpool French door bottom freezer.

One thing with the separate compressors is the fridge is controlled separately so you don't get that real cold temp in the fridge compartment. In a standard fridge the freezer controls the compressor and the fridge is managed by directing the cold air flow. That leads to more uneven cooling. It's more of a commercial unit.

 

[BuzzLOL]

On my top freezer, the coldest air entering the fridge is directed to the fresh meat drawer to keep it 30-32 degrees and then the rest of the fridge is around 35 degrees to prevent freezing liquids...

 

[MrMiz]

ice makers.... I hate ice makers.... I love ice. I've replace the ice maker components in my currently whirlpool fridge 3 times and this last time it fried something on the main board so now I've got a perfectly fine fridge that can't make ice. (Going on year 5)
The model before I replaced the ice maker twice before it the whole fridge died 3 days before Thanksgiving. It was also a whirlpool. I love the whirlpool fridges but I hate their icemakers. (Was 7 years I think.)

 

[BuzzLOL]

Yeah, I get about a year and a half out of icemakers....

 

[Sparky617]

The thing I really dislike about SxS, and I've had two of them, is the narrowness of them. Not the pizza box issue, but in the fridge section stuff is always behind something that you have to move to get at. Not a problem with the bottom freezer models. At my first house I bought a French door bottom freezer model, this was in 1985. I really liked it, at the time they hadn't come up with the drawer concept. I'm getting ready this year to replace our 21 year old Whirlpool SxS in this house, and I'm looking at a French door, bottom freezer drawer model. I don't think the physics problem of cold air sinking is really a problem that they haven't engineered around.

 

[zannej]

I prefer the side by side fridges because I have a bad back and hate bending for the drawer. My friend has one with the freezer drawer and I have a hard time getting the drawer to open. It gets stuck sometimes. There is also the bending part. Maybe in the future they will have a kind that opens with a button and raises up for people who have trouble bending.

 

[Flyover]

Kitchens are typically designed with a gap in the counter, or a place along a wall, where the fridge is supposed to go. This kind of forces the people who make fridges to keep making them more or less the way they have been. I imagine there are some potential fridge concepts that would be better for people with back issues and other impairments (or being really tall, for that matter) without sacrificing engineering integrity/simplicity, but those fridges can't be mass-produced because they wouldn't fit into the places where kitchens are currently designed to accommodate fridges.

Same is true for lots of consumer goods unfortunately: we're locked into one format by the other stuff around it.

 

[Spicoli43]

Stay away from LG and ESPECIALLY Samsung! Many, Many problems!
We bought a Whirlpool French Door, 36-inch Wide French Door Refrigerator - 25 cu. ft - WRF555SDFZ
The ratings on it were excellent, and like Flyover said, a SxS prohibits you from putting in wide items. This is WIDE AND DEEP! We especially like
the meat/cheese drawer. Price wise, its <$2000.
Check it out. We bought ours at Lowes. BTW, they're Made in America!!

Not defending LG at all, but my LG fridge is the only thing that lasted between that, the washer / dryer and dishwasher (2014). There's a lawsuit for LG fridges, but mine isn't one.

As far as Whirlpool being made in America, they put them together in America, and put the sticker on in America. It's 100% China. I don't know about the fridge, but I have a Whirlpool Washer / Dryer and Maytag Dishwasher (2020) They are all worthless pieces of garbage.

Every major brand of appliance is garbage thanks to "Energy Star".