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. If you refuse your delivery without inspection, miss your delivery appointment or return a non-defective or undamaged product, you will incur original shipping charges along with actual return shipping fees. In the event that your returned merchandise was mis-shipped, damaged or defective, BJ’s Member Care team will be happy to reimburse you for return shipping costs.
If you buy something through our links, we may earn a commission. Looking for an additional refrigerator to hold beverages or meats that take up too much room? Consider this Whirlpool Mini Fridge on sale at BJs for just $119. Many appliance retailers will pick up and recycle your old refrigerator when you purchase a new one. 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.
We plan to examine some of those topics in greater depth in the future. In the meantime, we think the research we’ve done can help a lot of people find a good fridge. The glass shelves easily slide out for when you need to make space for extra large items or when you need to clean the inside of the mini fridge. The stainless steel door adds a touch of modern style to any space and even coordinates with tool chests and workbenches in your garage.
More than half of the respondents in our reader survey said that reliability was one of the top three most important things they wanted in a new fridge. Unfortunately, nobody has a crystal ball that can predict which brand or model—or especially individual refrigerator units on sale today—will last the longest and have the fewest problems. 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.
Sleek and discreet, the Whirlpool 2.7 Cubic Feet Mini Refrigerator measures 24.69 inches high, 19.13 inches wide, and 19.69 inches deep and can easily fit in your space. Offering flexibility with its reversible door, the two-shelf mini fridge has a small freezer compartment, an adjustable thermostat, and a four-can dispenser to conveniently hold your snacks and beverages. Thanks to its strategic shelving, the Whirlpool 4.3 Cubic Feet Mini Refrigerator meets your Frigidaire fridge every storage need without crowding your space. Additionally, the 32.91-inch by 19.92-inch by 22.01-inch mini fridge has a reversible door, a full-width freezer compartment, an adjustable thermostat for temperature control, and manual defrosting capabilities. It also has an adjustable shelf, a small freezer compartment, and a temperature control feature. Buying this model from Hisense is basically like having the same fridge that you have at home, only smaller.
But the list has plenty of other efficient models in other styles, as well. Counter-depth, in the strictest sense, means that a refrigerator is shallow enough to sit flush with typical cabinets or countertops, so roughly 24 inches from the front edge to the back wall. These “true” counter-depth models are almost always very expensive built-in units. We point toward a few notable top-freezer models in our section on budget-friendly fridges.
Side-by-sides and top-freezer models were somewhat more prone to minor, nuisance-type problems like noise, broken shelves or handles, and flickering lights than French-door or bottom-freezer models. We can also tell you that just a small percentage of most fridge models we analyzed suffered from a major cooling failure—it’s Arctic King uncommon. Similarly, in our reader survey, just 2.5% of respondents said that their current refrigerator had suffered a cooling failure. We think most counter-depth models from the brands we highlight above should work well for most people. Many people buy counter-depth fridges because that’s what fits into their kitchen.
We spoke to several industry experts, including brand representatives, dealers, and repair technicians. All products featured here are independently selected by our editors and writers. If you buy something through links on our site, Mashable may earn an affiliate commission. Have you recently opened and then closed the freezer (over the last 1-5 minutes)? If so, being unable to open the unit again right away is an indication that your door seal is working well.