Owen Burke is a Senior Home and Kitchen Reporter at Insider, helping craft a brand new guides section for Insider Reviews. Ever in search of the perfect espresso, he focuses on espresso machines and equipment, juicers, kitchen knives, grills, meat and seafood, and the odd outdoors product. The most important thing Arctic King is to keep the back of the fridge at least three inches away from surfaces to allow for optimal airflow, according to David Moreno, a service technician with Liberty Home Guard. Jonathan Chan currently serves as the Lab Manager at Reviewed. If you clean with it, it’s likely that Jon oversees its testing.
You can read more about how we evaluate mini fridges in our Lab — plus everything you need to know to shop for your perfect mini fridge for your dorm or office — at the end of this guide. When you’re using a mini fridge for snacks and beverages in your dorm room or home office, you want something small. Since this is a convenience item, affordability is also important. After taking apart fridges and talking to expert technicians, we found that there’s little difference between mini fridges. A mini fridge with a separate freezer is a great package for galley kitchens, dorms, and wet bars where you want to have all possible storage options.
It features both a refrigerator and a freezer section, each with its own door, so you can chill drinks or store extra groceries and even make extra ice for gatherings with family and friends. The refrigerator door has sections for storing cans as well as larger bottles, and there is an interior light that comes on when you open the door, allowing you to quickly see what you need even at night. The legs of this mini fridge can be adjusted to accommodate uneven floors in your kitchen or garage for optimal compressor performance and cooling.
The GE Double Door Mini Fridge has a separate freezer on top with plenty of storage , and the refrigerator includes a clear crisper drawer as well as shelving and a can rack on the door. You can even remove the glass shelves to create more room if you have larger soda bottles or just want to stack beer cans high. To select our best mini fridges, we relied on our years of experience testing refrigerators and in-depth knowledge of the category. We also checked to see what other reviewers recommend as well as what home users have to say. Our most important criteria was the ability to maintain safe temperatures for food storage, but we also took into consideration size and features. On this list you’ll find a variety of models for different needs and situations.
Make the most of every inch with flexible storage, like hanging storage for cans, ways to instantly add shelf space, and bins that slide up and down. You can also free up shelf space by storing bulky items like milk in a gallon door bin. It can be difficult to find a fully-featured apartment fridge. Whirlpool® small space refrigerators don’t sacrifice features Arctic King like Fast Cool, an ice maker with the Fast Ice option and electronic temperature controls. Some even end up purchasing two of these fridges to store side by side, using one as a fridge and one as a freezer. Frigidaire is a solid name in the refrigerator industry, and the 1.6-Cubic-Foot Compact Fridge is a great affordable, no-frills solution.
The interior glass shelf is adjustable for space optimizing, and the interior light helps you make sure you grab the right item out of the fridge. This eco-friendly solution is the perfect fit for your compact fridge needs. Having a mini fridge in your dorm is a great way to keep drinks and food handy for study sessions and hangouts with friends. The Frigidaire EFR100 is small enough to fit on a dresser top or under a lofted bed, and the reversible door hinge gives you even more placement options by allowing it to open to the left or right. The door has enough space for 2 liter bottles and the freezer section is perfect for an ice tray or frozen meals for a quick bite between classes.
The handle on top makes it easy to reposition as needed. We love how lightweight it is to carry and that you can even use it in your car thanks to its DC adapter. If you want a wet or mini bar fridge, look for a model with a (double-paned) glass door. This allows you to keep an eye on your inventory and not have to stand there with the door open while fishing around or deciding what you want. As we mentioned earlier, the longer and more often you open your mini fridge door, the more you overwork the poor little built-in compressor, and the faster you shorten the appliance’s life.
The adjustable thermostat aims to ensure an ideal temperature for your food. The ultimate dorm addition, this Costway option is just like your regular fridge, only smaller (reviewers even say it’s just as quiet). It has a separate freezer, an ice tray, a crisper drawer, a can rack and shelving on the door and an internal thermometer whirlpool mini refrigerator so you can easily adjust the temperature. The glass shelves are adjustable to make room for tall items and removable for easy cleaning. Our best overall full-size refrigerator comes from GE because it received top marks for temperature maintenance and uniformity, so we feel confident recommending this mini fridge.
Plus, it gives us a better idea of how much space is actually useful. In our tests, we consider temperature consistency, storage capacity, and usability as the most important aspects of a good mini fridge. Its shelves and bins were more or less identical to what we saw elsewhere. We did like the design of its can dispenser rack, which lets you load cans in from the middle as well as the top. Here at Reviewed, our experts have tested hundreds of full-size refrigerators over the years and found some are definitely better than others. After testing some of the most popular mini refrigerators on the market, we can definitively say the same is true here.
It’s equipped with a crisper drawer, fixed door shelves for organizing drinks and a separate top cooling compartment. The Galanz GLR31TBEER features a 1950s classic car aesthetic and comes in a variety of different colors. This mini fridge offers the most storage area out of all the models we tested, measuring a whopping 3 cubic feet—about 0.5 cubic feet larger than the rest of the pack. Create your perfect entertainment setup with wine fridges or beverage centerfrom Whirlpool brand. Entertain in style when you shop models featuring sleek stainless steel or glass exteriors.