From a bachelor?s point of view, a refrigerator must hold a lot of beer and keep leftovers of ’ordered food’ for long. A typical 165 ltrs fridge would suffice such a need. But being inclined towards good food and cooking, and with an imminent prospect of marrying, I chose for a larger 230 ltrs capacity, double-door model. Before I went about my purchase, I researched on the internet for various models and brands available in the market. Primarily Samsung (https://samsung.com/in), LG (https://lgezbuy.com) and Electrolux (https://electrolux.com).
In the 230 ltrs range, a lot of options are available, but the main feature that made me choose Samsung are:
Very neat design (the silver color option is stunning)
Intelligent space utilization for chiller (consisting of a twist ice tray, chiller room)
Large vegetable basket with humidity control feature (looks dumb but is quite effective)
Rollers on the bottom (very much appreciated)
Side cooling vents (as against LG?s door cooling technology, Samsung has 2 vents wile LG only 1)
I chose a white one with wire shelves then acrylic shelves (the former being break-resistant). The fridge comes with two shelves and an acrylic shelf-chamber placed under the roof of the lower unit. This is not very convenient to use though it?s quite a common feature across different brands.
All of them need to think up something nice in its design to make it more accessible. As of the wire shelves, you have option of only three ridges on the sides to adjust height. The lack of more is due to the side vents.
The door disappointed me somewhat as it has no compartment that can be closed (especially for medicine). Although the unit has modular design and you can purchase a separate medicine box from Samsung by paying Rs500.00 extra (comes free for 260 ltrs model)! Since I am not too fond of chilled water, I was looking to use this space for more storage but then I was given only one half-sized shelf though there is provision for two. Again pay and buy the attachment.
The lower bottle rack can hold one liter size bottles while the upper one can take a giant 2.5 liters Thumbs Up, if you like that cola. A point to note here is that there?s no color coordination. The egg rack is blue as is part of the lamp panel, vent mouths are in gray while the vegetable basket is translucent green. The same is not the case with the Silver finish model.
The temperature control knobs are placed on the far end for both chiller and regular compartment making them inconvenient to use. But this practice is there in almost all the brands now a days. Needless to say, there’s no lamp in the chiller compartment. Both models (White or Silver) do not specify presence of any Far-Infrared Lamp, though it can possibly be fitted with. For those who can spend a little extra, there?s a SilverNano model (260 ltrs and above) which has a thin coating of silver on the side panels that prevents organic growth.
The chiller compartment did not come with the twist-ice tray as displayed on their website and on manuals so I had to dish out another 250 bucks to get that. For this I really had to stick after their customer service center. Certainly a big thumbs down for the poor turnaround time in servicing. Neither did I get the lid for the chiller compartment, though that is not necessary as I can store extra pouches of Venky?s chicken in that.
The reason I was given for these missing items was that it varies depending on model colour! The shelve-hinge on the chiller door has a projection in between which protrudes a bit too much. I tried removing the top shelf to make room for small bottles (a beer bottle maybe) but that make the bottles tilt forward. Don?t want to accidentally pop it out when I open the door.
Also the vents on the chiller compartment can be better designed cause it directly points onto the door (outwards) and when you open the door, all the cold air blows right out.
The back of the fridge is neatly concealed. Typically it makes a click sound when the cooling cycle begins. The sides of the fridge get pretty hot during this cycle and its no malfunction as it?s done to evaporate any moisture that may have collected over the sides.
Final Verdict:
It?s a good model to get and has modular compartments. Sleek in looks with compact dimensions. Haven?t had a huge electricity bill so far, so can safely say that it?s easy on wattage too.