Whether you’re looking to buy a mini fridge for your dorm or office or need extra space at home for groceries, the Hisense LCR44D6NSE freestanding mini fridge is an almost perfect option. It has 4.4 cubic feet of space, and it forgoes Frigidaire fridge a freezer section to provide more room for things like 2 liter bottles and gallon water or milk jugs. The door hinge is reversible, allowing you to choose whether it opens to the left or right to better fit into your space.
The freezer doesn’t have its own door, but it’s wider than the ones found in most minis. It will come in handy if you need a lot of ice or frozen treats for a party, but it’s not a good idea to keep meat or other highly perishable items for more than a day. We spend a week testing each miniature refrigerator with our standardized battery of tests. First we fill the fridge with water ballast, because (fridges operate better when there’s less empty space).
Here’s everything you need to know about assessing your space. As part of Best Buy‘s Black Friday deals, you can snag this Insignia™ Stainless Steel 4.3 Cu. Mini Fridge with Top Freezer for only $189.99 Arctic King (reg. $269.99) with free in-store/curbside pickup. Learn more about how our team of experts tests and reviews products at Insider here. Yes, and generally, motors last longer when they’re regularly run.
So if the best spot is an awkward corner that won’t let you open the door on the right side, you’re just seconds away from a switch—rather than having to redo your entire floor plan. In the fridge, you’ll find two glass shelves as well as a crisper drawer for fruits and veggies. However, the crisper doesn’t have humidity controls so don’t expect it to keep greens sprightly for more than a week.
A mini fridge is a great addition to small space dorm rooms while an apartment sized fridge may be a better option for larger dorm rooms or small shared kitchen spaces. 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. NewAir refrigerators are built with the same compressors we found in Magic Chef mini fridges and others owned by Whirlpool.
What really speaks to your fridge’s longevity is how often you open and close it. The more you do so, the harder the compressor works, and the shorter you can expect it to live. Make sure you maintain a good seal by wiping the gaskets clean every month. The more a fridge leaks air, the more the compressor runs, and the more the compressor has to run, the shorter its lifespan will be. Over time, the wrong mix of spills and ensuing mold can start to damage the components. Our big fridge went out over the weekend during a storm, lost 90% of our food…so I’m alerting on every fridge that gets posted, renting one for now and it’s not cheap.
The fridge’s default settings ran warm, hitting an average temperature less than 1°F below the safe zone of 40°F. For starters, the freezer runs warm, averaging 5°F instead of 0°F. It was also the least consistent freezer of the group; temperatures ranged between 2°F and 8°F. That’s a huge swing, considering freezers normally waver by fractions of a degree.