What's the BEST Fridge to Buy? The Truth Will SURPRISE You!

back in the late 1980s Maytag advertised their best refrigerators is being built so well that one day in the far future you'd go to a Star Trek like Maytag store to buy your next fridge but in real life when you actually do have to go buy that shiny new fridge near the Star Trek section at Best Buy chances are it's going to last about as long as a Kardashian marriage which I ran the numbers and is 4.57 years if my math is correct so who makes the best residential new refrigerator on the market well my name's Ben and I run a used appliance store and I want to talk to you about who makes the best refrigerator now it's not just my opinion on who makes the best fridge but I asked a group of clients technicians and got nearly 200 responses from some of America's best Appliance technicians they all said the same thing they're all trash the reality is within the past 10 years every refrigerator brand has seen a huge nosedive in quality to where you can even go buy a brand new nice shiny refrigerator this one's only about six months old and we had to take it back in on a warranty trade because it already blew up what is the best thing you can do then when you are planning to go out and buy a refrigerator because the honest hard truth is there's no one brand anymore that I could tell you just go buy anything from them it's fine every brand has their strengths and weaknesses and if you go in armed to your local appliance store with the right kind of information and knowledge and understanding you can maybe get a refrigerator that's going to last a bit longer one versus the other so let's talk about that today and if you don't believe me believe the lawsuits against companies like LG and Samsung for faulty refrigerator products and although I mentioned these two companies the truth is that American brands don't get off a whole lot better because most techs know that there are major problems with most models that can cause multiple thousand dollar appliances to become unrepairable quickly when you're buying a refrigerator there are things you want to look for and there are things that you want to avoid if you want it to last a long time so let's go over a few things today so your refrigerator can last a little bit longer than Kim and Kanye the first most critical thing to know about any refrigerator on the market regardless of brand regardless of make regardless of model is that the more features you have on your refrigerator the more problems it's going to have again across every brand make and model I believe there is a notoriously big poet back in the 90s by the name of Wallace that kind of alluded to that in one of his songs but the hard truth is the more features your refrigerator has the less reliable it's going to be let's consider two schematic charts the first one here is for a basic Frigidaire side-by-side refrigerator these are all the electrical circuits and components that this system needs to operate to get your food nice and cold it's pretty straightforward here now this is the same chart for a KitchenAid four-door refrigerator and I want you to know this is not the most complex model on the market today in fact I did a video about a year and a half ago for this exact style of refrigerator and I wish I kept the original schematic for this because the skin automatic for this exact refrigerator is the size of a literal kitchen table and when you add on this many components wires wire harnesses and features you have so many more points of failure that will cause any refrigerator even well made refrigerators to be less and less reliable so the first thing that you need to do is slow your roll and maybe consider less options on your refrigerator instead of more if you want it to last a lot longer should you buy a refrigerator with a UI in the door or an even more modern refrigerator that has a tablet computer in the door well that is a great question and that leads us to our sponsor for today's video Atlas VPN privacy when using a computer device is becoming harder and harder to have without anonymity companies can track which websites you visit and can prevent you from viewing content because of where you live and maybe even one day what you can or can't eat in your refrigerator a virtual private Network like Atlas VPN lets you log into their services use their private networks through a secure tunnel to browse privately and access overseas streaming services reliably right now they're running some incredible sales through the end of the year and if you click the link in the description or Independence you can get their services for as low as 1.70 cents per month for a limited time best yet their VPN is available on all computers as well as any Android or Apple device tablet or phone so if Apple ever makes an ifridge you can be sure that you can protect yourself from getting locked out tomorrow by downloading Atlas VPN today when you pick a refrigerator the most important thing that you can do to pick the right kind of refrigerator is to totally ditch the indoor water and ice especially the ice part regardless of brand every ice maker is absolute garbage and introduces so many points of failure to a refrigerator it is not going to allow your refrigerator to last very long these things don't work together at all just like cats and dogs or a coherent storyline and Game of Thrones season eight come on you build all those Seasons up for the Battle of Winterfell only let bran muffin get the iron throne that doesn't make any sense and neither do ice makers inside these units but in all seriousness having the ice maker in this cabinet is the worst decision that you can make on any refrigerator you can consider on the market if you have the refrigerator cabinet and ice maker in it this ice maker has to be very very cold in order to make your ice so again it needs to be super cold well the rest of your refrigerator is a a higher temperature higher moisture area and these two systems absolutely conflict against each other on practically every brand make and model that I've seen it calls the Samsung class action lawsuit and every other brand still has problems even though Samsung is definitely the one that is most well known or inFAMOUS for having its problems but every brand make and model has this issue so absolutely ditch the ice maker and you're going to save yourself not only money but a lot of reliability related issues because of these systems now if you have to have the cold stuff consider either a dedicated countertop ice maker or simply leaving the ice maker in the freezer the best ice maker I can think of on the markets the GE opal 2.0 and I do have a link in the description and a tag as well if you want to buy one now just because you have a ice maker in the freezer doesn't mean that it's going to be perfectly reliable but it will be way more reliable than if it's in the refrigerator cabinet another solution to this is be more modest with the kind of refrigerator you get and get a side-by-side refrigerator instead of a French door refrigerator now what do they call a french door refrigerator in France actually they call it an American door refrigerators it's not actually French another thing to be aware of on refrigerators is where they're actually made when I went to the big boxed store to get some film of you know different appliances I started looking at where every refrigerator was made and I was horrified to find out that only about five of the 80 different refrigerators and freezers they had were actually made in the United States of America it goes without saying that the cheaper refrigerator is probably going to be made in a different country with cheaper labor but I found far too many high-end refrigerators that were not made in America and that was really really frustrating to see two three four thousand dollar refrigerators either made in China or Mexico with only a small number made in the United States for example this really nice Bosch refrigerator was made in China this Whirlpool refrigerator which was about twenty three hundred dollars was made in the People's Republic of China so always make sure to read the label of the manufacturer of origin when you're going to buy a refrigerator because chances are if it's made in the U.S it's going to be built to higher tolerances in stricter standards again it won't make the refrigerator perfect but it's probably going to last a little bit longer with American Quality controls than it is from Thailand or Mexico or even worse probably China Samsung's were either Mexico or from Thailand LG's were either from Korea or I believe Mexico and then GES were mostly labeled from Mexico or they didn't even have a manufacturer stamp on them saying they're from the United States which is really strange because I know that GE does in fact have a refrigerator greater line still in Louisville Kentucky or one of those cities that starts with an L maybe as Lexington next you want to make sure that your refrigerator fits your cabinet space now for most people that means that you're just fitting it to make sure it fits with whatever hardwood box is around it but that's actually the wrong thing that you need to do you do not want to buy a refrigerator that just barely fits inside that space every manufacturer will tell you in the manual that you probably didn't read that you need at least one inch on each side of the refrigerator when you install it and then either one or two inches behind it the reason for this is that you need fresh air to flow behind the coils of the refrigerator to ensure that heat gets exchanged through the condenser if you don't do this your refrigerator either isn't going to work right or it's going to struggle to work properly it will put more stress on the compressor on the unit and it will lead to a lower lifespan now the thing about most modern refrigerators is they're already built with very tight tolerances on how long the compressor needs to run most new fridges will run in 80 to 90 percent of the time you won't hear them start or stop as often as an older one because they're more energy efficient the problem is if the coils have an issue to where they cannot get that exchange of fresh air they will struggle to cool properly but it will burn the compressor out it will run even longer under worse tolerances to make sure that your refrigerator cools and it's very common that people don't size them right and it causes refrigerators to die way more often than they should and the tough truth doesn't end just with making sure that your refrigerator is small enough to fit in your cabinet space there is maintenance that you need to do as a homeowner and refrigerator owner to take care of your refrigerator this one's 10 years old and someone threw it away and we figured what was wrong with it about 10 seconds when it came in our store this area and we haven't gone inside and cleaned it yet was full of pet hair and dirt this is where that cold air we talked about gets exchanged we're going to take a drill gun and take it apart to show you someone threw away a 2729 dollar fridge for a very simple fix so when you do plan on installing a refrigerator keep in mind that you do want to take it out from its cabinet every six months if you have pets every one year if you don't to clean everything out underneath now typically you're going to take a Phillips head screwdriver and remove the metal back panel they vary from model to model but they generally are going to look like this one once you have everything unscrewed you're going to use a con condenser coil brush or something even softer with a vacuum cleaner to clean it up now when you do this make sure to wear a mask because you could get dust everywhere before it gets to the vacuum nozzle no not that kind of mask yes that kind of mask thank you and the truth is by cleaning the coils that were underneath this refrigerator you are going to greatly extend the lifespan of your refrigerator any refrigerator we've seen so many situations where it starts with cleaning the condenser coils on the service call because that has created some sort of wild scenario that could cost hundreds of dollars to fix components over freezing or working too hard leading the compressor burn out all start with regular maintenance now that we've got this unit cleaned this unit is going to last a lot longer than it normally would otherwise so now let's cut to the Chase and talk about which brands technicians voted on as being the best in the US and for links to all of these refrigerator models make sure to check the product tags in the description as we will try to make sure all of them are there for the technician survey I did which had nearly 200 texts respond GE actually came out on top as voted the most reliable refrigerator on the market beating out Whirlpool but just by a few percentage points but the common argument made by text involving refrigerators is that every manufacturer has good refrigerator models and bad refrigerator models so let's go over the good and the bad for the next few minutes on french door refrigerators the only two that I could find at my local hardware store that were actually made in America was the whirlpool wrf-535s and the KitchenAid krfc 300E refrigerators now neither of these units had indoor water and ice in them which is what we are absolutely looking for and these models are referred to by text as a jazz Board model refrigerator they have one single evaporator system in the entire refrigerator and they are less mechanically calm complex to operate from a basic level and texts love that specific model and you know that it's a jazz board by the interface at the top which of course you're seeing on the screen these style refrigerators have been around on the US market for 10 years and the truth is we don't see very many of them come into our shop because people are not seemingly throwing them away very often now that isn't to say that every Whirlpool refrigerator is good because it's not the more complex KitchenAid and Whirlpool models that have four and five doors with the indoor water and ice are absolutely terrible to deal with technicians tend to deride those systems again especially if they have ice in the door for many failures involved with both the ice maker but also the sealed system as well and even though I didn't see any on my trip GE does in fact make quite a few US models ge's pwe 23k or GNE 29g refrigerators are probably considered the largest capacity refrigerators you can find that are counter depth or full size of the mark Market they're actually made in the U.S with no indoor or water or ice and personally if you were going to not compromise on ice and water in the door I would suggest a GE over an LG Samsung or a Whirlpool of any model and style they actually have the LG ice makers in them which are relatively good for a bad part but otherwise their single evaporator and they tend to run better and that's why ge's got number one on our list from all texts or at least that's my opinion even Samsung refrigerators like from their bespoke series are not terrible units if you actually try to avoid the ice in the door low-key it seems like Samsung has realized how horrible their ice making systems are and they've replaced them with beverage dispensers in the doors which look cool and operate way better because you can get away with water in the door but not ice most techs will tell you that Samsung's sealed systems and compressors are actually pretty well designed as well as their Electronics which means that if you have to fix one it tends not to be an extensive horrible costing problem but it all hinges on ditching the ice maker but of all the indoor ice units Samsungs are by far the worst of the bunch now if you're looking for higher end refrigerators beyond the residential type Subzero and Viking are two of the best units on the market that you can buy if you can afford them I definitely would suggest either those two Brands over the GE Monogram or especially the KitchenAid refrigerators they tend to be more basic and will last typically dozens of years just again because they're operationally not very complex and are extremely well built you're going to pay quite a bit for those premium models but if you have the money and don't want to ever mess around with a refrigerator and swapping it out those two brands are definitely the way to go now for side-by-side refrigerators the one advantage they have is you can actually do the indoor water and ice and not have too many problems with that because it's in the freezer it's naturally built to cool properly and you can get the Frozen ice without having too many problems now ice makers by Nature do have problems but you're going to face so many less problems with it being in the freezer than you are the refrigerator now one kind of catch with the side-by-side refrigerators though is that since they are sometimes considered a cheaper run of refrigerator I was not able to find any made in America side by sides at my local Big Box store however I can tell you that Whirlpool Maytag makes a good side by side that is built in the U.S like the wrs325sd and anything from that line with or without ice maker seems to be pretty decent Frigidaire also makes a very basic neat side-by-side refrigerator and the frsg1915 now I don't know if they make those in a larger model than the 19 cubic foot which is a counter depth but I was amazed when I looked the schematic up on them they may be the most simple refrigerator on the market and again here's a picture of the schematic of that frsg 1915 versus the KitchenAid high-end a little bit different on the complexity there guys right that would tell me that the Frigidaire is probably going to be a little bit better on maintenance or failures however it is made in Mexico I don't think that one's made in the U.S because most frigidaires I don't think have a U.S line anymore I've done a few YouTube videos on GE gss25 refrigerators and again they're made in Mexico but I've been really happy with the build quality when I had to tear them down for my videos according to ge's website they come in a lot of different colors including a biscuit collared refrigerator I don't know why they're making a comeback you may want to consider one of those I am a big fan now for freezer tops I've been really Rosy on Whirlpool refrigerators and I've even done some Whirlpool tests on their Matrix style refrigerators but I would absolutely not suggest Whirlpool top freezer refrigerators even if they were made in the US although I think they don't most technicians are very wary right now of Whirlpool brand refrigerators because of refrigerant sealed system issues as well as control board issues we have had to junk more Whirlpool refrigerators that are freezer tops than any other brand lately I'm going to get a lot of hate comments saying that's about that I'm biased against them or something of that nature but I have to be honest we've thrown away so many it's ridiculous and I'm super biased for my Frigidaire fftr 1835wv3 it has a mechanical timer it is the most simple refrigerator on the market but I will also tell you of the freezer tops that I know of because I had to do a lot of research GE is the only company that I'm aware of that still makes a freezer top made in the United States you can go to their website and you can look up models like the GTS 19k or the GTS 22k which look pretty darn good and they are available in some big box stores but not the one I went to for my videos techs generally swear by GE being on average the most reliable system in 2022 as long as you don't get an overly complex system and if I was going to offer you advice on which refrigerator I would want to buy I would probably just go out and buy two GE freezer top refrigerators go ahead and offset the doors to where they all swing in the middle and make myself a redneck homegrown four-door refrigerator throw an ice maker in one unit and then not in the other and then have all the space and room I would want with the reliability or cost considerations of a standard plain freezer top refrigerator and I think either Frigidaire or GE would be a good choice for that now for our European friends I know you're probably mad at me because I have not answered any questions about European units the truth is I don't service a lot of European units so my opinions or beliefs suspect I guess I'd say but of course texts talk about different makes and models from other units across the pond and two of the brands that always get discussed is be having very high marks are both melee and Liber which are German manufacturers I'm definitely partial to how Liber they construct their units they are very minimalistic in what they add for their components and they seem to have extremely high marks from technicians not having to repair them often although most techs will complain that they are not cheap or easy to fix due to how it takes to tear them apart both unfortunately in a way costs quite a bit more money that you get what you pay for and they're going to last a whole lot longer other companies tend to be kind of suspect Baco makes an okay unit AEG Electrolux we have that as Frigidaire in the U.S and their units as long as they are simplistic seem to be very very well done and I would imagine that you would get a great Step Up in quality if your Electrolux unit is actually manufactured somewhere in Europe under stricter quality controls but always look at the manufacturer of origin to see where the quality controls lie the poorer of the country the more suspect the quality controls are the components may still be from the same place in China but at least better hands may have worked on the sealed system and that's usually where all of the major worst problems end up coming from is a poorly built or poorly constructed sealed system unit now one other brand we have not talked about in this video which is worldwide is LG I've intentionally left them out because there's been a multi-year controversy even my last video I discussed with LG to where they have had lawsuits or huge difficulties with their compressor their linear compressor is incredibly efficient and it's it's a very nice unit for refrigerators but they're poorly built reminds me a lot of the Xbox 360 Fiasco there are some problems with those units that have plagued them for years and I think they are coming out of those problems and if they had a cling bill of health from a local appliance shop where you're at that can vouch for the fact the sealed system issues are fixed they would immediately go to the top of the list but I can't say that that's the case in good conscience another U.S brand that I've sidestepped and haven't mentioned in this is Kenmore the thing about Kenmore and I've talked about this in other videos is Kenmore gets other manufacturers to make their appliances for a very long time the refrigerators were either Frigidaire Amana or in some cases GE and they were incredibly well built to very high tolerance standards but within the past 10 to 12 years those standards that were amazing for Kenmore have plummeted they got LG to start manufacturing the refrigerators when the linear compressor started being a problem and then more recently they've switched from LG to Daewoo which is an even lower brand which they may have good fridges in Korea but the ones that are here in the United States for their French door models but they have very common uh freezer fan problems and the issue with this freezer fan problems as it ices up the unit it ruins it and then we have found out that it's very very difficult to get Daewoo Parts in the United States and I can't recommend any sort of Kenmore because their quality has dropped and that's everything that I have for you guys today on a video regarding refrigerators maybe it's not exactly what you wanted but it's what you got much like Game of Thrones season 8 but hopefully this video wasn't nearly that disappointing again you as the purchaser need to take care and maintain your refrigerator make sure your clearances are good make sure you clean them the coils underneath and any refrigerator you get is going to last a lot longer always be aware of where your refrigerator is made what features it has and again the brand name matters but not as much as you would think which is definitely a surprise have a great day and remember the amazing sale that Atlas VPN our sponsor has in the description and pinned comments below

Channel: Bens Appliances and Junk

Views: 3,788,020

Keywords: best refrigerators 2022, best refrigerator, best refrigerators 2022 usa, best refrigerators to buy, best refrigerators brands

Id: rKJgYVhZ6-w

Length: 24min 7sec (1447 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 30 2022