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Refrigerator - quality brands?

I would go with a store that makes returning/exchanging a defective one smoother/easier a higher priority than the actual brand...

If you get an LG, Samsung, etc, the odds of getting a good/bad one are probably pretty similar...
 
Sadly, no one makes a GOOD refrigerator any more. Long gone are the days when a fridge could be expected to last 25 years or more...
 
Well, I CAN NOT recommend Sumsung! Bought a $2500 french door fridge with lower freezer. Worked great for about 2.5 years before it started having problems. The little coil and drain is located in the back wall of the fridge. They cheaped out on the housing. It has rusted through and the rust has blocked the drain. And the coils are now icing up constantly. As the ice melts, water builds up in the bottom of fridge compartment which I have to clean out regularly....

I've called out repairmen twice. There is no good repair and the entire back panel housing is not available as a replacement part apparently..... So usually they repair guys just try to blow out the drain which works for a couple months before it starts all over.

So now, about once a week, I clean out standing water at the bottom of the fridge.

I've been eyeballing new refrigerators also and would love to know which is the most durable and reliable.

I was hoping LG might be better than Samsung. I have LG washer and dryer which I have been very happy with....
 
I'm not sure that you are going to find a long lasting and trouble free fridge. If you do, you won the lottery. Appliances are loaded with electronic gizmos that are the weakest link in achieving reliability. A fridge with minimal electronics and no ice maker will improve your odds.
 
BoomerD said:
Sadly, no one makes a GOOD refrigerator any more. Long gone are the days when a fridge could be expected to last 25 years or more...
Click to expand...

THIS. prepare to spend money on warranty services instead. after 1 year, my Kenmore fridge compressor died. luckily because it was just 2 weeks after the 1 year manufacturer's warranty, Kenmore sent a tech to fix at no charge.
 
The most reliable fridge will be the one with the least "features"

Simple bottom freezer, top fridge $800 unit will likely give you the least amount of problems over the longest life.
Adding an icemaker gives you more things that might fail, but, generally, they are a feature worth having for many.
 
BoomerD said:
Sadly, no one makes a GOOD refrigerator any more. Long gone are the days when a fridge could be expected to last 25 years or more...
Click to expand...

agreed. Especially if it says "Frigidare."

I'm also skeptical of the new fancy ones with all the gizmos attached. Just more stuff that breaks, and none of it related to the only job that the unit is supposed to do.
 
BoomerD said:
Sadly, no one makes a GOOD refrigerator any more. Long gone are the days when a fridge could be expected to last 25 years or more...
Click to expand...

Hm. Actually might be in the market for a fridge too and I was looking at the french door LG fridges at CostCo. They're about 2k with 2 year warranty and I can always buy CostCo's extended warranty.
 
For me...I remember "Lucky Goldstar's" earlier quality problems...I don't think I could ever buy any kind of "big ticket" item from LG.
 
BoomerD said:
For me...I remember "Lucky Goldstar's" earlier quality problems...I don't think I could ever buy any kind of "big ticket" item from LG.
Click to expand...

I thought the same thing for years but I love my LG washer and dryer. In that category they have the highest reliability in the industry.
 
I have an LG washer and dryer that I bought almost 2 years ago. No problems once I understood how to load the washer. But every time I do a wash, I think, how long before this electronic module is going to go haywire? Replacing it will be a major expense.
 
slickdeals generally states samsung is the worst.

Frigidaire is also terrible interms of quality. They are made by electrolux (rebranded).

havent heard much about the other brands. Kenmore is definitely a rebrand that seems to change every few years so that's a huge YMMV
 
lytalbayre said:
Well, I CAN NOT recommend Sumsung! Bought a $2500 french door fridge with lower freezer.
Click to expand...

Yep, you and I have the same one. Just this past Monday I had to take off the freezer panel to thaw out the coils. Who knows why it did, I tested all the components and they seemed fine. Perhaps a control board.

Fortunately I don't have the constant buildup in the fridge part like thousands of others seem to have. Have little buildup but not much.

Ice maker also sucks. Never again.
 
LG has been the best for me and mine in recent years. I had one of their stainless steel French door units with the lcd readout on the left door by the ice maker and led lighted switches and interior with hydraulic assisted doors. The buttons and ice maker levers were all stainless steel and were of very high quality. My parents had a new 3k whirlpool French door unit that was problematic and they ended up getting Lowes to take it back and replace it with a 34 cubic feet LG French door model. I wouldn't hesitate to buy another LG fridge.
 
I'm about 8 years into my Samsung side by side and its done nothing but work like a champ. Between it and my Bosch diswasher I'd have a hard time picking a favorite. Fridigaire on the other hand is pretty crappy, I have a microwave and oven by them, the door on the microwave cracked luckily under warranty and the oven occasionally has an issue where it thinks the door is open when it isn't.
 
Can't speak to LG about major appliances, but I am very happy with their television lineup. I have an LG 55EF9500 TV and it is quite good. It only has 2 minor "should be better" ... 1): It will not remember WiFi Password if the set or house loses AC Power ... 2): RF signal from remote control is hard to position the cursor or select items. Otherwise an excellent set. ... Frigidaire was quite good about 8 years back, quality may have gone down since then.
 
bruceb said:
Can't speak to LG about major appliances, but I am very happy with their television lineup. I have an LG 55EF9500 TV and it is quite good. It only has 2 minor "should be better" ... 1): It will not remember WiFi Password if the set or house loses AC Power ... 2): RF signal from remote control is hard to position the cursor or select items. Otherwise an excellent set. ... Frigidaire was quite good about 8 years back, quality may have gone down since then.
Click to expand...

Helping to take this thread completely OT, I have two LG TVs and I'm completely happy with them. Early this year, the 47-inch TV just went blank in the middle of a TV show. It just stopped. Nothing catastrophic occurred, it just stopped. Took it apart and isolated the problem to the main board. Found the tech manual and followed a debug chart that asked me to check voltages and oscillation frequencies and whatnot on specific chip pins and whatnot on the board. Got to the last step, and it said, "replace main board".

Great.

Finding a four year-old main board is just about impossible. If you find the right one on ebay, people want $120 to $200 for them. I kept poking at the main board in mu spare time and searching forums for new ideas until one day a new result showed up on Google. Some genius was talking about the main chip on the board which is attached by a grid of solder balls (BGA). He claimed that the board had bad solder joints, so his solution was to pull the board from the TV and bake it in his oven for 15mins... and it worked!

Others started reporting the same. It turns out that there's an entire generation of LG TVs with BGA connections on the main board, and all of these TVs were failing within months of one another. My TV was part of that!

Rather than poisoning the oven (and house) by baking a PCB, I covered everything but the chip with aluminum foil, put a meat thermometer a few millimeters above the chip, and I held my heat gun on it for 10min trying to maintain ~200C. It worked! I put better heat sink compound on the chip, reassembled, and the TV has been in service since February with no problems.
 
I know that this thread is specifically related to fridges and I spoke my piece but I have to bring up my experience with Samsung appliances. I had one of their stainless steel dishwashers with the covered heating ring and food grinder and it was fantastic. I could drop my pots and pans in without any pre-scrubbing whatsoever and it would blast them clean. I also had a Samsung over the stove microwave that also performed flawlessly. To be honest if I were buying new appliances today I'd have to look up the current reviews for each model under consideration to see who it compared before I made a decision on anything. Maytag wouldn't even be in the mix nor would GE or whirlpool.
 
We're in a remodeling phase and just replaced all our appliances with Kitchenaide. I can't speak to longevity, but they're all well built quality wise. Only had them for about 2 wks. We do own a samsung frenchdoor/bottom drawer freezer, and while it mostly works ok, the ice maker crapped out within a year. Googling the issue, it's a common problem with this model fridge, and replacement parts will end up breaking as well because of the design so I never bothered with it.
 
TheGardener said:
I'm not sure that you are going to find a long lasting and trouble free fridge. If you do, you won the lottery. Appliances are loaded with electronic gizmos that are the weakest link in achieving reliability. A fridge with minimal electronics and no ice maker will improve your odds.
Click to expand...
I'd love to see more fridges, especially side-by-sides, without added things. I don't need a water dispenser or ice maker, nor do I need some fancy electronic thingamajigs. Those things end up just being something else that can break and don't really add value for me.
 
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