Kenmore  22.4 cu. ft. Bottom Freezer Refrigerator  ENERGY STAR®

Spent WAY too much time researching and looking for a fridge after dependable workhorse developed a short in the condenser and quit after nearly 30 years.

I hated to see it go, particularly after I got a look at the newer models. Old one had plastic, but bins were metal, as were all supports, compartment lids, etc. Shelves were adjustable and space was not a problem, other than overall it was smaller than this model.

That's what I enjoy about this one is the simple fact it has a slightly larger freezer and a little more room in the fridge. But that said, as another reviewer noted, the wide drawer at the bottom of the fridge compartment, while handy every now and then for large pans of food or maybe pizza, takes up space and makes the shelving arrangement above very difficult to manage. As she noted, if you set a shelf high enough to fit say, an orange juice carton or a plastic water bottle, then the shelf above it is so low as to be nearly useless for anything but flat shaped items like bacon or very small items.

The pull out drawers are OK, though all plastic, and the left hand one is difficult to extend fully without swinging the door way open, so it's rarely used. It has a plastic slide on the drawers that is supposed to adjust humidity I guess, by opening and closing a little vent, though I have no idea if this is effective or has any effect at all.

The digital temp settings, one for freezer and one for fridge, is handy, easy to access, and as measured by a thermometer, fairly accurate.

One door bin has a lid that slides up on it, though the lid will not shut all the way. Don't know if this is by design or not.  Bright white smooth plastic throughout the interior really shows up every speck of debris, no matter how small, which makes it a chore to keep spotless, and you almost have to because every little thing shows. It's also impossible to keep from creating mars and tiny scratches in the plastic as it's a shiny finish and so much as sliding a cardboard 12 pack carton across it will leave permanent scratching. Shelves are glass however and hold up well. But I'm very wary of them being easily broken, such as when you put in a metal sauce pan or something similar that is hard and a bit heavy. One slip and I'm afraid they'd break. I would prefer the plastic shelves I had in the old one where there was never any fear of damage, either during use or when removing for cleaning. The glass is perfectly smooth, like a window pane, with no texture to prevent sliding and scratching the surface. I put down paper towels over the glass in an effort to both prevent spills and moisture from just standing on the glass and try to avoid breaking the glass itself by the right bump from a metal container or pan. I'd hope that the glass used is tempered or otherwise break resistant, because all it would take is a can to fall a few inches and it looks like it would break the glass as it's not particularly thick.

One feature that is superior to the old fridge is the slide out shelves. This is particularly useful for me as I keep 12-packs of pop on a shelf and can slide it out a few inches to reach in and grab a can. Because of the issue I mentioned above, the shelf space to fit the 12 pack is very low, so I wouldn't be able to get any pop out without sliding the shelf out for access.

The shelf supports are metal and attach to shelving brackets attached to the rear of the cabinet. They're a bit tricky to change heights, especially if they have anything on them. But once you wrestle with it for a while and get it seated properly, they're very sturdy.

Older fridges used a much more efficient, but ecologically toxic, refridgerant, thus their compressors ran less and at less pressure and consequently could be expected to have a life of 15 to 25 years or more. These newer models use the less dangerous refridgerant which requires compressors that run at higher pressures and run over twice as much as the older models, and they have a life expectancy of a mere 10 years if that.

So this new fridge "runs" a LOT more than the older one, but it's fairly quiet and after a while you tune out the hum. The fan circulating the air around between the freezer and fridge runs most of the time as well, and shuts off when you open the door, then immediately starts again when you close it.  Unlike other models, the freezer and fridge compartments are not isolated from each other, but the freezer circulates cold air up and through the fridge to cool it. Because the air is shared throughout the entire unit, when you close the door, and go to open it within a few seconds, the suction created by allowing in some warm air makes the door very difficult to open. But if you yank on it, it will break the suction.

I'm not thrilled with the pull out freezer design however. The design of the rails and rollers that support the freezer door is very good, and the drawer slides in and out smoothly, though it does require a good tug to get it open to begin with.

The main freezer bin is shaped in a way that makes it difficult to use the space efficiently as it doesn't have square sides and the rear slopes up to accomodate the "guts" of the refridgerator located behind it. Fitting boxes in this compartment is difficult and you can only fit a few. The rest of the space has to be filled with small items or items in bags like frozen vegetables that can conform to the odd shape.

Thank goodness it has a pull out basket above the bin, as that really provides some extra room for things that will not fit into the bin. It's hard for me to say whether a conventional door set up would be any handier, though it seems inefficient to have the entire freezer open with the drawer pulled out as there's nothing at all to keep the cold air inside. This loses a lot of cold while trying to dig through the bin to find something.

As with the previous reviewer, I didn't attach the ice maker, as the previous fridge's icemaker had broken down fairly soon, and the existing water line didn't work. Having an ice maker just wasn't worth the extra time, mess, and expense of either installing a new water line or attempting to fix the one that exists. Like her, I prefer to have the extra storage space, though I did leave the ice bin in place.

One important note to those who buy this .... the fridge comes with the ice maker switched to on. As a consequence, I started the fridge and the icemaker was trying to run with no water supply. This isn't good. I quickly thought to check on it and discovered a small switch where you can turn the icemaker off. Be sure to do this if running fridge without a water supply attached or before you make the attachment.

For ease of moving, the fridge has casters and/or rollers that make it relatively easy to move. This is a great improvement over the old model that simply stood on hard legs. With the way this fridge is set up, you can only adjust the height by the legs in front of the unit. The rollers on the back are not adjustable.

I like my fridge to be set so the door will SLOWLY close itself, and not slam shut. The installers had it set at an angle that made the door shut too quickly, so I removed the baseplate and set out to adjust it just right.

But to my surprise, even when I had backed the adjustment legs in as far as they would go, the unit was still raised in front by a good amount. So there was no way to get it to lean a bit more towards the front. Likewise I couldn't adjust the left to right tilt without causing it to be unstable. But the door shuts OK with it set as low as it will go, so it's not a problem.

One thing that is annoying, if not a true problem as far as preserving food, is the amount of condesation that seems to be constantly present inside the fridge.

The manual says that if this occurs it's due to leaving the door open too long or excess humidity in the air. I don't leave the door open for longer than 10 seconds, and the air in my house is so dry it's uncomfortable. Yet there's a constant layer of moisture all over everything, and it's especially visible on the clear plastic parts.

This is definitely a problem with the way the unit is designed. As I said, it likely doesn't affect anything as far as preserving the food, though if there's anything that is affected by moisture, it surely will be. And it's a little disturbing to have moisture all over everything in the fridge at all times. Even the coated cardboard boxes that frozen food comes in become soft and almost soggy in the freezer. It's not to the point of dripping off of anything, but it's definitely there. And of course, this means that every time you touch any part of the fridge, you leave a smear or a mark. I guess on the bright side, you don't need to use a moist towel or paper towel to wipe things down because everything is already pre-moistened.

The defrost method is different from older models as well, and only runs when the fridge detects that it's needed. I haven't had any major frost issues at all.

But once the freezer compartment was full, I noticed that things were not being kept frozen hard, despite it being set to 0 degrees as recommended. Ice cream was soft, though not gooey, etc.  I ended up setting it down to -2 in hopes it would correct the problem, but it still didn't freeze the ice cream to the point it was hard to scoop as I expected it to. For some people this might be a plus.

I've had the fridge for 4 months now and haven't had any major problems (I should hope not) except those I've noted. The unit is attractive and I liked the ability to reverse the way the door swings open as it works better in my kitchen to have it the reverse of the way they ship. The switch wasn't too difficult and the extra holes, etc. are all disguised well. The exterior is easy to clean.

As you can see, my gripes are all relatively minor, and aside from them, the unit is performing as expected.  Now to keep my fingers crossed that it continues to work for many years to come.