Our most helpful positive review

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Kenmore Elite, Love It February 07, 2011

Gotta love this refrigerator! We investigated, in person and on line, and did our homework. Ramping up from knowing nothing about current refrigerators, we found that we valued energy-star rating, cabinet depth, stainless steel, bottom freezer, French doors, LED lighting. Didn't require water or ice dispenser, though this one has them. Didn't want gimmicks. Wanted good design, durability. Although cabinet depth, this refrigerator has more cubic feet than did our previous one, which was not. It displays our food cleanly and simply, beautifully lit, at eye level, easily organized. By comparison, our previous refrigerator was a dim cave in which stuff hid behind other stuff and was always difficult to organize. We (fortunately) have had none of the problems cited in other reviews. We did consider seriously the negative reviews, here; in the end we felt willing to rely on Sears' Appliance Protection Agreement, on top of the manufacturer's warranty, to address any problems we might end up having. Stainless steel is easy to keep clean; just wipe along the direction of the grain-lines, in this case horizontally. The icemaker is located wholly inside the left-hand door, leaving room for only one shelf in that door, at the bottom, for storing food. We worried initially that this loss of shelving inside the door was a disadvantage, but, truly, we find that we do not miss that space one bit, and we LOVE the resulting glorious unimpeded space in the body of the fridge. It is also nice not to have that awkward-looking hole and bulging throat into which an icemaker within the refrigerator body shunts the ice into the door; who ever thought THAT was a good design? Do not agree with other reviewers who say the dispenser is too small, or difficult to use, or drips. LOVE the full-width deli drawer within the refrigerator section. Tremendously useful for small or flat stuff that would otherwise have to be tucked in or stacked among other stuff on the shelves or the deep bins and be hard to find. Freezer does a great job. LOVE the upper slide-out drawer. Tilt-out door is a clever feature. We appreciate the LCD display on the exterior of the left-hand door, offering personal choices such as whether to light the water-ice dispenser full-time, whether to engage the door-left-open alarm, and when to do a major cool-down. Easy-to-clean virtual buttons. Icons are a bit dorky, but can be appreciated as purposely down-scale. The only thing I truly don't like about this machine is the prospect of the expensive replacement water filter. Does it have to cost that much? Owners' manual says to replace every six months, but obviously, different families will use water at different rates and different cities have different degrees of water hardness or impurities. I'm going to watch for diminished water-stream (as the manual suggests) as my criterion for replacing the filter. I am also using an in-line filter (the scheme that the previous refrigerator used) upstream to pre-filter the water in hopes of prolonging the life of the one in the new refrigerator. Will see.

Our most helpful negative review

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... Ice maker fan is bad (Er IF fault code) April 03, 2011

This particular model is loud and the ice maker is poorly designed ... dispensing a cup of ice takes up to 30 seconds.

Woke up this morning and ice isn't dispensing b/c of an error code on the panel, "Er IF". Googled the code -- ice maker fan, mother board or controller may be bad. My fridge is 14 months old ... and 2 months past warranty.