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DEAL WATCH: Keurig K-Express | 22% off $69.99

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  • Introduction

  • Front

  • Interior

  • Back

  • Sides

  • Running Cost

  • Power Use Per Cu Ft

  • Fridge Temperature

  • Freezer Temperature

  • Vegetable Drawer

  • Power Loss

  • Freezing Performance

  • Usable Space

  • Ease of Access

  • Controls

  • Water Dispenser

  • Ice Maker

  • Cleaning

  • Noise

  • Other Features

  • Specs

  • Design

  • Performance

  • Storage Space

  • Usability

  • Specs

  • Design

  • Performance

  • Storage Space

  • Usability

  • Specs

  • Design

  • Performance

  • Storage Space

  • Usability

  • Conclusion

  • Introduction
  • Front
  • Interior
  • Back
  • Sides
  • Running Cost
  • Power Use Per Cu Ft
  • Fridge Temperature
  • Freezer Temperature
  • Vegetable Drawer
  • Power Loss
  • Freezing Performance
  • Usable Space
  • Ease of Access
  • Controls
  • Water Dispenser
  • Ice Maker
  • Cleaning
  • Noise
  • Other Features
  • Specs
  • Design
  • Performance
  • Storage Space
  • Usability
  • Specs
  • Design
  • Performance
  • Storage Space
  • Usability
  • Specs
  • Design
  • Performance
  • Storage Space
  • Usability
  • Conclusion

Introduction

Front

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The {{product.name}} is a side-by-side refrigerator with a glossy white exterior.

The Frigidaire's matte finish won't pick up fingerprints.

The handles are a standard set of handles. The edges are rounded, the sides are flat: no design flourishes here.

The handles have a plasticky look to them that looks clean but also doesn't have much of an aesthetic flair.

The {{product.name}}'s water/ice dispenser has separate outputs for ice and water respectively, and controls the flow of either with curved levers.

Although basic, the dispenser's controls are functional, if a bit redundant: they really only needed two buttons for these options.

This is a shot of the dispenser when the light is on. It illuminates the whole enclave with a pale salmon glow.

Interior

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The {{product.name}} keeps its freezer on the left side and its refrigerator on the right. While the fridge is functional, again, it looks a bit plain.

The interior of the CDWT980VSS.

The top of the refrigerator side has a few shelves that can be removed and replaced with an impressive granularity. If you only need a little more headspace, you can move the shelf up a notch or two and not waste a lot of room.

The bottom of the refrigerator has two drawers. They don't have any rollers, so they tend to be a bit sticky.

The water filter is located in the top right corner of the refrigerator.

The top of the door has a butter drawer. Just below the butter drawer are four enclosed shelves that can be removed and slotted back at any of those little tabs lining the door wall.

Here's the remaining three shelves on the door. You can technically move the bottom shelf, but if you did you'd only be removing storage space.

Although the bright light makes it a bit hard to photograph, the freezer has two wire shelves. They can be removed, but as you can see in the photo, the slots are really few and far between. Additionally, the wires aren't going to stop any spilled liquids from seeping all the way down to the bottom.

There are two more wire shelves towards the bottom of the fridge, along with a plastic drawer. Like the drawers on the refrigerator side, there aren't any rollers to help the drawer slide in and out. Sometimes it's a bit jerky.

The top part of the freezer only has one shelf, located above the ice chute.

Below the ice chute are three more drawers that can't be relocated.

The fridge's ice maker takes up a lot of space on top of the fridge. It looks like there's a bit of storage space above it, but there's no shelf there, just a drop down into the ice maker itself. The front of the ice maker has a little door that can be opened and shut: as the helpful graphic shows, the ice maker is deactivated when the door is open.

Back

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The back of the fridge looks pretty cheap. It has a water pipe for water and ice dispensation.

Sides

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The two sides of the fridge are featureless and basically indistinguishable.

Olympus SZ-31MR iHS side views

Running Cost

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We found that the {{product.name}} should cost about $53.48 a year to run, which is pretty average for a refrigerator of this size. That is slightly less than some of our more expensive comparison products, though.

Power Use Per Cu Ft

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We also look at the efficiency of refrigerators in terms of how much energy is required per cubic foot of usable space. For this model, that worked out at 0.09, which is slightly better than other models, but not by a huge margin.

Fridge Temperature

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A refrigerator has to chill your food and keep it at a constant temperature. If the temperature of the food varies a lot, the food will spoil quicker. We found that this Frigidaire had only acceptable performance in this test, as it didn't maintain very constant temperature over the several days of our test.

The graph above shows a 12-hour sample of our data: the refrigerator should remain in the yellow zone for most of the time. It does manage this, but there is a lot of variation and a few slips into the red zone, which could cause your food to spoil quicker than other devices with more constant temperatures.

Freezer Temperature

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The freezer did a slightly better job of keeping food frozen at a constant temperature, but we did find the occasional temperature spike here as well.

Vegetable Drawer

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As well as keeping your food cool, a refrigerator has to try and stop the water evaporating from your vegetables. That's why they have a separate veggie tray, and we test this by putting a fake vegetable (made of floral foam and water) into the appropriate tray and measuring how much weight it looses over a few days. We found that this refrigerator did pretty well int his test: our test veggie lost about 0.2 grams of water per hour. This is a little more than some of our more expensive comparison models, though, so your veggies will not stay crisp in this refrigerator for as long as they would in them.

Power Loss

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Power cuts are a fact of life, so a refrigerator has to cope with this by keeping your food frozen. We found that the fake food in the freezer compartment was completely defrosted after 30 hours, which is a shorter time than some of the more expensive models. So, you might save money when you buy this refrigerator, only to loose money when the power goes off for an extended time and you have to refill the refrigerator.

Freezing Performance

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When you put something into a freezer, you want it to freeze quickly, as this helps preserve the texture of the food. We found that food froze pretty quickly: when we placed it in the freezer, it was completely frozen in 1 hour and 29 minutes. That is about 20 minutes quicker than some of the more expensive models.

Usable Space

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Manufacturers tend to be generous with refrigerator volume. They account for basically all of the space inside the fridge, regardless of how unfeasible it would be to perfectly fit all your groceries into a neat cube.

We weren't wowed by the {{product.name}}'s usable storage space, but it should be good enough for the most users: it had an average capacity. The main problem with the storage in the refrigerator is the inability to hang your shelves exactly where you want them. If you're having trouble squeezing in that turkey, your options are to cram it in there or move a shelf up eight inches and end up with wasted space.

Again, this is an average refrigerator. You can fit a few gallon jugs of milk on the doors' shelves, which is convenient, and the butter drawer is fairly large. The best thing about the door, however, is it provides the customizability the main space lacks: you can nudge the shelves up or down a few inches at a time.

The freezer doesn't have as much storage space as the refrigerator, primarily because the ice maker takes up so much room. Even so, you'll get a lot more freezer space here than you would in the typical top-freezer refrigerator.

The freezer door has significantly less space than the refrigerator door due to the through-the-door ice dispenser. You have some small shelves above the ice chute and a few below it. It's adequate, but not impressive.

Below are the manufacturers own figures for capacity, and our own measurements for usable capacity. The manufacturers figures do not take account of the shelves, drawers and other removable features, but our measurements do account for the space these take up.

Ease of Access

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The {{product.name}} doesn't have any significant ease of access issues, but it also wasn't flawless. The shelves are a bit hard to extract: they're flimsy wire frames that are a bit awkward to remove.

Controls

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Water Dispenser

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The water dispenser is located on the left door and has a curved pedal that activates it. The

Ice Maker

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The fridge's ice maker takes up a lot of space on top of the fridge. It looks like there's a bit of storage space above it, but there's no shelf there, just a drop down into the ice maker itself. The front of the ice maker has a little door that can be opened and shut: as the helpful graphic shows, the ice maker is deactivated when the door is open.

Cleaning

Noise

Other Features

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Specs

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It is perhaps unfair to pitch a premium model like the Samsung against a cheap model like the Frigidaire, but life is full of such unfair competitions. And it is no surprise that the Samsung generally comes out on top, as it is the more solidly built, better engineered device.

Design

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The Samsung has the cleaner, sharper design. The Frigidaire looks somewhat cheap in comparison.

Performance

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The Samsung was the clear winner in our tests, producing more consistent fridge and freezer temperatures, which should mean that your food lasts longer. The Samsung also held up better when the power went out, with food remaining frozen after 36 hours, while the Frigidaire lost its cool after just over 30. If you live in an area with frequent power outages, it may be worth the extra for the Samsung.

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Storage Space

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The Samsung offers more space, but the Frigidaire should provide adequate storage for most users.

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Usability

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We thought both refrigerators were fairly easy to use, but the Samsung has a fancy LCD while the Frigidaire has redundant buttons. That being said, while you can do more with the Samsung, at least the Frigidaire doesn't bog you down with a software menu.

{{score_bars comp_num="1", scores="Usability Ease of Access Rating , Usability Controls Rating, Usability Water Rating, Usability Icemaker Rating, Usability Cleaning Rating"}}

Specs

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The Whirlpool and Frigidaire are very, very similar models, with almost identical interior layout and performance results.

Design

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The main difference between these two refrigerators is the Whirlpool has glass shelves in its refrigerator section, while the Frigidaire has wire shelves throughout.

Performance

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Again, both the Whirlpool and the Frigidaire were remarkably similar: they had nearly the same performance results across the board.

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Storage Space

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With nearly identical layouts, the two refrigerators were essentially the same in terms of storage space. The Whirlpool has the little hidey-hole above its ice maker that you can actually use, while the Frigidaire doesn't let you store items in that space.

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Usability

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Both refrigerators had very similar control interfaces and, again, the same internal layout.

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Specs

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It is perhaps unfair to pitch a premium model like the GE Profile PFSS6PKX against a cheap model like the {{product.name}}, but life is full of such unfair competitions. And it is no surprise that the GE generally comes out on top, as it is the more solidly built, better engineered device.

Design

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The GE has the cleaner, sharper design, but the Frigidaire has a very adequate design that is unlikely to sully your kitchen.

Performance

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The GE was the clear winner in our tests, producing more consistent fridge and freezer temperatures, which should mean that your food lasts longer. The GE also held up better when the power went out, with food remaining frozen after 36 hours, while the Whirlpool lost its cool after just over 30. If you live in an area with frequent power outages, it may be worth the extra for the GE.

{{score_bars comp_num="3", scores="Power Use Rating, Running Cost Rating, Fridge Temperature Rating, Power Loss Rating, Freezer Temperature Rating, Freezing Test Rating"}}

Storage Space

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The GE offers more space (especially in the fridge section), but the Whirlpool has enough space for most users.

{{score_bars comp_num="3", scores="Freezer Usable Space Rating, Fridge Usable Space Rating"}}

Usability

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We found both devices to be easy to use, but the GE is a little easier to control, and has a more sophisticated control system that makes it easier to set temperatures directly.

{{score_bars comp_num="3", scores="Usability Ease of Access Rating , Usability Controls Rating, Usability Water Rating, Usability Icemaker Rating, Usability Cleaning Rating"}}

Conclusion

Energy Efficiency

We had no complaints with the Frigidaire's energy efficiency. It's about the same cost to run it as other refrigerators in its class.

Performance

The Frigidaire's performance wasn't perfect, but it was still functional. You won't have to worry about your food spoiling overnight, but you'll also run into issues like freezer burn more often than with a higher-end model.

Storage Space

The Frigidaire has an average amount of storage space, and should be fine for the average consumer. If you have a full family, however, you'll probably want a bigger fridge.

Usability

The Frigidaire doesn't have any frills, but it also doesn't have any hurdles to a good, usable experience.

Meet the tester

RefrigeratorInfo.com Staff

RefrigeratorInfo.com Staff

Editor

RefrigeratorInfo.com Staff is a valued contributor to the Reviewed.com family of sites.

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