We’re moving house and looking to invest in a new refrigerator for our family. Any suggestions/recommendations of fridges you love?
* We need it to be narrow to fit our new place and I like the idea of the ones with two doors but my husband thinks it’s stupid as you lose space where the doors meet?
* i’d like ample freezer space for premade meals/breastmilk storage
* I don’t need a bluetooth speaker/camera
* The easy-touch ‘open with your elbow’ thing seems fun, again my husband thinks it’s a gimmick that will just break.
* We have costco membership that we never use (but i’m wondering if it’s better to go to Yamada denki and get points? or amazon seems cheaper, is there a catch?)
It seems like Toshiba, Panasonic and Hitachi all have nice options for under 20man that are made in japan but honestly they all seem very similar and I can’t tell how people choose.
Any suggestions/advice etc is very welcome. Thanks!
12 comments
>all seem very similar and I can’t tell how people choose.
Take the measurements of the space you have and go to Yamada Denki to look at all that fit in the space you have. They do all look very similar but have small differences in layouts that may or may not interest you. Your ideas of what you need are probably different than others.
Measure space, look at everything, I will say if you need it slimmer, a large one door fridge/freezer will be better than a double door IMO. However I will always recommend separate fridge and freezers if you have a space for a chest freezer.
The ‚open with your elbow‘ thing is the best thing ever. So nice when you have stuff to put in the fridge in both hands and don‘t need to put anything down to open the fridge.
ETA: We chose Toshiba, because I liked that it had the vegetable storage in the middle (instead of middle freezer, veggies below)
We had a Mitsubishi for 15 years, couldnt kill it. Finally gave it to my son when we moved to a larger house and bought a bigger fridge. Then HE used it for 3 years before getting a new one when he got married.
The damn thing just wouldn’t die.
I would recommend Twinbird as I’ve been using one for a few years now. Solid Japanese brand fridge with great customer service.
Don’t get a Toshiba. It’s the first fridge I’ve ever had in my life that breaks. The brackets inside, drink shelf in the door and one of the shelves. They have all broken
The freezer sucks. It’s somewhat loud.
It’s such a piece of crap.
The outside door to main compartment won’t close if the cheese shelf door isn’t closed exactly right. The alarm won’t go off to tell you the door isn’t closed, in such a case.
The alarm is annoying and goes off all the time when I’m playing refrigerator Tetris yet it doesn’t go off when the door isn’t closed correctlyb by mistake.
I have a 600L Toshiba model. So, 2 doors up top, a middle section for veggies, 3 freezer sections (auto ice maker, frozen rice, and the big one at the bottom for the meat).
We initially thought this would be too large but having the extra space for all compartments is very handy. For example, on one of the doors that opens up we store a 2L water bottle, 1L brewed tea container and a few of those 1L juice boxes along with beer cans and some of those energy drinks up at top, and some small condiments in the middle (garlic/wasabi/ginger squeeze tubes, sliced cheese, etc). On the other door we have our sauces and larger condiments like ketchup, mayo, hot sauces and Japanese sauces like tonkatsu sauce.
It’s best to go spend an afternoon and see the different models in the denki store as there are different functions and more importantly with different layouts. If you can afford it, get a larger model as over time, you will want to stock up the fridge with food and drinks to make life easier for your family. So in summer, the auto ice maker is a huge bonus and being able to store more cold drinks makes the summers here somewhat bearable.
Good luck with your new fridge!
I had a Mitsubishi fridge 450 L for 20 years and 2 month and it died last week. Bought another Mitsubishi, a bit smaller. Good brand. Yodobashi camera. I think they had 500L for about 200k or close to
I went to the Shinjuku largest store they have lots of models to choose from, and a few special deals. They can arrange for delivery and removal of the old one for a small extra fee
I got the most basic 600L Toshiba as well a few months ago. It was the cheapest for the size, and no issues so far.
We have a french door Sharp that I really like. We picked it because it has a larger freezer than most models. The veggie drawer is half size but that doesn’t bother us since you can always just put excess veggies in the main fridge. Can’t really do that with freezer items.
Think what your use case is. There are some models that you can change the function of some of the drawers so you can have multiple freezers or multiple fridge drawers.
By ‘narrow’ do you mean left to right, or depth?
With wider, flatter models there’s less tetris; with deeper models it’s natural that things get buried/lost in the back.