Refrigerators
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Blog
Best Door-in-Door Refrigerators – Consumer Reports
In our tests, door-in-door refrigerators perform just as well as fridges without door-in-door components, and even occupy some of the top spots in our roundups of the best French-door and side-by-side refrigerators. “The door-in-door design doesn’t really affect refrigerator performance,” says Breann Chai, who leads refrigerator testing at CR. “The feature really just offers convenience.” CR first tested door-in-door refrigerators…
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Best Large Refrigerators for Big Families
Below, CR members can read ratings and reviews of the five best large refrigerators from our tests, ranked in order of Overall Score, with one pick for each fridge configuration (bottom-freezer, French-door, side-by-side, top-freezer, and built-in). For other high-capacity options, check CR’s complete refrigerator ratings and sort by total usable capacity, then move the Ratings & Specs slider bar to…
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Best Apartment-Sized Refrigerators – Consumer Reports
“These smaller models gained more visibility in retail stores in recent years, likely due to changing consumer preferences from the many millennials entering the appliance market. But most major brands only offer one to three models, with limited color options,” says Nish Suvarnakar, senior market analyst for refrigerators at CR. “Nearly all also lack some of the features that consumers…
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Best 30-Inch-Wide Refrigerators – Consumer Reports
There are a couple of caveats, though. “With the exception of built-in models, you’re unlikely to find a 30-inch-wide fridge that’s counter-depth,” says Breann Chai, who leads testing for refrigerators at CR. “You’ll need to be okay with a fridge that sticks out from your kitchen cabinets.” Fridges that are 30 inches wide tend to be at least 30 inches…
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Best Bottom-Freezer Refrigerators of 2025
Bottom-freezers—as well as top-freezers—typically take up less space than other configurations. Bottom-freezers start at 24 inches wide and go up to 33 inches, making them more suitable for a tighter space. Our most recent surveys of CR members found that bottom-freezers tend to offer better reliability than French-door models, too. For example, LG French-doors receive middling reliability ratings, while LG…
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Best Top-Freezer Refrigerators of 2025
Why do top-freezer refrigerators tend to last so long? “Top-freezers are usually bare-bones models,” says Breann Chai, CR’s test engineer for refrigerators. “The more complicated refrigerators become, the more prone they are to breaking.” Many top-freezers, for example, lack the components that seem to break most frequently: an icemaker and dispenser. Of course, there’s a downside to that simplicity. Top-freezers…
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Best 33-Inch-Wide Refrigerators – Consumer Reports
We rate refrigerators based on their thermostat control, temperature uniformity, noise output, ease of use, and efficiency. Every refrigerator we test gets wired with 15 temperature sensors. We then monitor these thermocouples for more than a month in one of three temperature-controlled chambers. These results tell us how well a refrigerator maintains a set temperature and how temperature varies in…
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Best Counter-Depth Refrigerators of 2024, Tested by Our Expe
Counter-depth refrigerators are less obtrusive. They sit almost flush with kitchen counters (like built-in refrigerators do), but they cost thousands less and get pretty close—much closer than standard-depth refrigerators. With a depth of less than 30 inches (and some all the way down to just 24), most counter-depth models stick out a mere few inches past the countertop or sometimes…
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Best French-Door Refrigerators of 2024
Despite their popularity, French-door refrigerators as a group are not very reliable. Except for the high-end brand Fisher & Paykel, most French-door brands received a middling or worse score for predicted reliability in our latest member survey. Those results also reveal that Kenmore and LG French-doors are more prone to having compressors that break or are faulty than competing brands.…
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Best Refrigerators of 2024 – Consumer Reports
The refrigerator lab at Consumer Reports is always busy. Our testers are constantly evaluating new models and adding them to our refrigerator ratings, which have more than 250 models across all configurations: bottom-freezer, built-in, French-door, mini fridge, side-by-side, and top-freezer. The lines between categories, though, are blurring. Today’s refrigerators have more doors, and features that were once exclusive have trickled…
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