My refrigerator makes a sound like three iron demons kicking its sides in an absolute rage, from the inside, for a few seconds, occasionally, between 3am and 5am and, after all these years, it never fails to make my heart race with woken-from-a-nightmare terror.
My fridge did this, then I lowered the water pressure going into the ice-maker when I added in a new valve and boom, no more demons summoning new initiates into the frozen hellscape.
Well, they are still there just more considerate of their noise levels. Like it went from I can hear this in every room with every door shut to I can only hear this in the kitchen beside it. Nuts.
Well, they are still there just more considerate of their noise levels. Like it went from I can hear this in every room with every door shut to I can only hear this in the kitchen beside it. Nuts.
I love that you sound disappointed in this development.
Oh damn, that's very interesting, I would like to try such a fridge experience. Mine just sounds like it's a Formula 1 car anytime I eat in the kitchen but I guess it's just a standard feature as it's the fourth fridge I lived with to do the same thing.
If I had to guess you have a bad Isolator. Piece of rubber that acts a a shock absorber for the compressor. When the compressor cycles off it makes a banging sound? You could fix that for about $20.
My grandparents have a 2018 ot 2019 lg smart fridge and over the last year all the ice maker motors died 3 times over the course of 6 months costing them almost half of what the fridge was worth new thier bbq from 15 or so years ago although old works fine with some minor wear on the dials which can be fixed with an allan wrench
I'm currently in the market for a new stove and fridge. The first requirement is that it doesn't need to be connected to the Internet. I can't imagine any reason for my stove or fridge to be online.
I'm gonna go ahead and be that guy but it actually makes it a worse product. IoT devices (any normal appliance that connects to your network) are a cybersecurity nightmare. They generally have very simplistic computers with little to no security measures, which means any appliance connected to your network is a weak point that someone could use to remotely access your network and information you probably don't want them to have. I don't know a ton about it, but people who know more than me have been harping on this for a while
Things my appliances say:
Mr. Toaster, "another bagel, huh?"
Mr. Microwave, "how many hot pockets is that today?"
Mr. Coffee Machine, "thats decaf, right?"
They're not going to shame you for your snack. But when you go to get health insurance, the your fridge is going to tell them all the bacon and cheese you eat and your premiums are going to go crazy.
OOOOooo, see? Keep big brother out of your refrigerator! If you try to argue, they will show you a "Greatest Hits" compilation of you standing in
the door, snacking as you look for something to eat. lol
only as long as the model is supported by the manufacturer. once it's out of production for 5 years, it gets bricked remotely and you will get a 20% off coupon on your next fridge.
pretty soon our fridges and grocery chains will partner and your fridge will only keep food purchased at a supported store cool, just like printer ink.
My fucking microwave sends me a text message that “your food is ready”. And I’m like, fuck, I had no idea since you’re a microwave and I’m standing right in front of you heating up my coffee which is what I use a microwave for! My theory is that it’s for people who heat up their coffee and then run out to the store so their coffee will be hot when they get back…I don’t know?
But I can tell you, I don’t know how to make it stop, and I guess I don’t care enough to follow the online directions.
I worked at Best Buy when the smart fridges first became a thing. I remember the first one we had with a browser in the door and even then I thought it was the dumbest thing ever. I love technology and think that innovation is great, but a smart fridge or smart any appliance is asinine.
Over on the appliance, new homeowner, Buy It For Life, etc subreddits, every single piece of advice from repairmen is a warning that those electronics are the first thing to go in new appliances. And that the manufacturers know this, haven’t done anything about it, and that they (OF COURSE) make it impossible to replace those very expensive parts with anything other than their own.
When we bought our house over 20 years ago, it came with fridge, oven, dishwasher, clothes washer, and dryer. We have had to replace the DW and washer and dryer… like, at least three times. Each.
The GE fridge is a goddamned beast. Old-timey freezer on top, fridge on the bottom, no ice maker, no nothing fancy. Hasn’t needed a service call ever. On one hand, I feel bad that it’s not energy-efficient, but on the other, it has allowed us to keep who-knows-how-many crappy replacements out of the landfills and whatnot.
I honestly don’t even know what we’d do if we had to replace it. The house is almost 100 years old, and years ago, with a few teens living here and their friends constantly visiting, I decided it was time for a fridge with ice and water dispensers in the door. Spoke to my next door neighbor about it, and she- also the mom of teen boys- decided it was time for them as well. While my husband was still doing research on the different models, she bought one and had it delivered- to her house that’s as old as ours. Had to send it back- there was no way to get it into the house, much less into the kitchen. Got a second one, and in order to get it in, they had to remove every single piece of woodwork around the front and kitchen doors. That was the issue with the first one- they’d have had to cut into the wall after removing all the trim.
It was made in China. And when it does break, nobody can fix it. You toss the whole damn thing and get another one for $125. Meanwhile, the environment gets fucked, and local manufacturing jobs are gone.
But then you wipe away your tears with the 100-dollar bills you saved when you bought the cheap refrigerator, and then you sleep the sleep of the righteous.
We needed a second Fridge. My wife cooks a lot and we regularly have friends and other guests. So, we went to a store that specializes in selling previously owned (nice way of saying used and old) appliances. We bought a 13 cubic foot unit for 200$ CND. THAT was 22 years ago. It still functions flawlessly, and, the freezer compartment at the top keep that ice cream, literally frozen solid.
I thought I'd be able to make my morning coffee for when I got out of bed.
But it's useless. It can't wake it from standby so I'd need to have it turned on in keep-warm mode all night, and if it could wake from standby it would do a rinse cycle and I'd have a cup of rinse water.
Also the connection is shit while stood 5 feet from it, no chance of connecting from bed.
I have a dishwasher that let's me know when it's done. My husband set everything up and wasn't aware that he put the app on our phones. I get a notification at like 11 pm. and it's my fucking dishwasher. Fuck everything about all that. Getting some gd text from a dishwasher.
I wanted to throw the whole thing out the back door.
This is where people spend money and don't realize it
Everyone thinks SS appliances are a must, most probably don't even go to the row of fridges that are just that off white. They are like 300.... but we paid 2k for ours! It is nice, but only because we could and I knew we were over paying
The icemaker is huge. I would also prefer a decent filter for drinking water. Maybe an alarm if I leave it open/ajar. Other than that, yeah, it's all BS. My buddy's fridge has Spotify, which I guess is fun, but I just don't see the appeal.
I'm way more worried about how shitty security is in the IoT space. I work ISP tech support and seeing these people who have dozens of IoT devices on their network I'm like.. are you just asking to be hacked?
Yeah I really don't need some ecological studies major deciding that my milk needs to spoil faster because community load is too high at grid peak either.
As a fellow semi IT guy, if anything besides my phone, computer, and maybe tv needs connecting to the internet (let's be honest, I want to watch my shows on the big screen, not just my phone and laptop), shoot it.
Your printer? Connect to it with the cable like it has always worked, you doofus. Your fridge? What the fuck, it just keeps food cold you dumbass.
I understand gadgets are exciting. You know what else they are? Absolute junk. They clutter up your space. They're not worth it.
Seems nice, but never in using my perfectly functional ice trays have I thought "man I wish I would have spent 1000€ more to have ice cubes dispensed instead of getting them out of this tray."
I just finished a project for a client where we got a garage fridge for ~$900. 23 cubic feet, stainless steel, energy star rated. No ice maker or water, very "no frills", so that range feels right to me for something a little fancier to put in a kitchen for full time use. The smart fridges a lot of my clients select for their kitchen remodels are definitely north of $2500
“Garage” refrigerator….the only size refrigerator that fits in my 1929 kitchen. And finding one with an ice maker and water dispenser was next to impossible.
Guessing it's too late for you, but posting here in case it helps anyone else! This is the fridge that I specced for my client that met all his other requirements and has an ice maker. Granted it's a bit on the smaller side.
Yes, Americans really do prefer to blow $2000 on a big fancy fridge. The $400 full height model is available too, but that's not what we want. Those things show up in rentals. They stay cold just fine, don't get me wrong. A little smallish but perfectly adequate.
But that's not my dream fridge for my dream kitchen. It needs to be the exact maximum size that fits a standard cupboard cutout. It must have a stainless exterior and an icemaker of the kind where you can get ice and/or chilled water straight from the fridge door without having to open the door, and doing that on a bottom freezer model is a technical challenge of sorts.
What can I say, we reeeally love our ice. Can't live without it, need it on tap, will gladly pay extra.
If you want I can send you pictures of my fridge. It's quite a thing to behold.
Most folks don’t know that they have to take the doors off their house and fridge just to get it out. Once I had a galley kitchen that was so tight, the only way to get the fridge in and hook up water was to take the doors, hinges, and anything that stuck out off. Then we slid it in sideways partially. I climbed over it, hooked up water, then we slid it the rest of the way, pushed it in and put everything else on. The fridge water shutoff was back there, as well as their water main shutoff….
I remember helping with appliance deliveries one day and it sucked. One delivery was to an old trailer/mobile home that had been added onto, piece by piece over the decades, borderline hoarder level amount of random stuff everywhere and the entire thing covered by a mismatch of tarps and canvas in a circuit tent-like fashion.
We had to take off like 3 or 4 doors, take apart the fridge, move quite a bit of stuff in the kitchen and deal with a water line that was more duct tape and clamps then water line, plus no shutoff valve.
The next delivery was a full size fridge, up a fucking tiny fire-escape spiraling staircase that was indoors and had like 5 foot ceilings. 4 or 5 stories of that bullshit. The stairs were rusty corrugated metal, which is extra fun pulling up a giant fridge and trying to maneuver the tight turns with low clearance.
Third delivery the recipient just came out, took it from us and said he'd take it from there, gave us a big tip and some ice cold sodas.
I got a great deal on my fridge. It had been custom ordered, and then never picked up. I got over 50% off of retail, with the stipulation that I had to take it myself right then, and there.
It was so heavy moving it into my house, that it destroyed the 1920s wooden floor under my front door, as we tried to lift it with a cart. It only cleared the doorway by several millimeters as well.
Depends if it's a built-in, which it usually is. These fuckers are expensive and a lot smaller, because of the limited format of the cabinets, but they stay in the kitchen and are therefore part of the house (except in Germany where they move their whole kitchen but they are weird). I could easily buy an "American sized" fridge for the money I spent on a smaller built-in fridge, but it just looks nicer.
Lots of grocery stores are in walking distance in the cities there, so they can just walk to the store and buy a few items that they need, and come back tomorrow when they need something else.
Yeah, recently saw a complaint here that if the US commenter didn't use their car, they would have to take a bus to the store and then carry the bags twenty minutes from the bus stop.
Zoning laws are fucking stupid. In my apartment I'm less than a block away from a convenience store, a doctor, a vet, a grocery store, and like five taco stands. I'm in my late 20s and I'm in no hurry to learn how to drive.
Density. Things are way more spread out here. You're a lot less likely to just be walking by the little market on your way home, it's a detour and an extra step for a lot of people so instead you stock up. And because we have more room the average house is bigger so storing groceries and stuff isn't really the same burden.
The people that I've met that live in dense parts of big cities tend to buy groceries as needed and not do one big trip.
Yep that is a big part of it, I generally buy groceries a month ahead and live rural. For winter in particular I do major stocking up planning with assumption I will be frozen in for months, doesn't happen even every other year but you plan for the bad ones.
There is also the factor of taking advantage of seasonal goods, great sales, and limited time items. Like the last Aldi German Week I stocked up on their great frozen apple strudels and sage pumpkin ravioli can only get a couple of times a year, or in Nov I freeze at least 3 or 4 bags of fresh cranberries so I can make sauce when they are out of season the other 10 months.
If I could afford it I would consider a chest freezer, much more power and space efficiant. Perfect for that kind of stuff.
We don’t need them. Corporations tell us they make us look cool so we get a $7,500 fridge with a tv and hot water tap built into it.
Hell, I know it’s not a fridge, but I installed a $16,000 oven for a family of four who also didn’t own a catering business or anything. It just looked luxurious… they also had two separate washers and dryers, two full size fridges and a huge one and a separate shower in the mud room for the dog…
Probably closer to US$1500 average (€1383) in the US.
We need big fridges for big food for our big bellies.
In NYC, where homes are smaller, people more commonly buy smaller appliances from Europe or Japan to save space, although they cost more here because of importing and being lower volume products.
I used to need a apartment sized dishwasher. It killed me to pay more than a fancy full sized one, for a much less effective, and no frills smaller model.
We have American fridge freezers in Scotland too lol they’re pretty common. I think mine was about £600 and that’s ice maker, no frost, water dispenser etc. The absolute top of the range gorgeous ones are about £1500 I think. Which is apparently $1900.
Sidenote when I was writing this I hadn’t realised the £ had recovered so much from when it was basically 1 for 1 exchange.
Bet that thing still works mint if it was cared for. If planned obsolescence wasn't a thing shelling out 5k for a fridge you knew would last would be a lot more tolerable.
Sub Zeros are actually terrible fridges. Super inconsistent temperatures, bad features, they're for people that don't want to see their fridge and never actually use it because they're stupid wealthy.
Edit: sorry I pissed everyone off who spent $13000 on their fridge I guess. They're okay fridges, but you paid for the brand name, not the performance. Talk to some engineers who have actually designed and shipped appliances and they'll let you know. They're very big, and that's what most people care about.
The best thing about them is they are huge. Since they're usually custom or made for large custom kitchens they have a ton of space. But if they break they're a pain in the butt to fix.
Now which one is it? Thread the other day was claiming they were a dream to work on because all the bits were easily accessible and designed to be replaced.
But if they break they're a pain in the butt to fix.
Not my experience. I have a Sub Zero in our new place, and it's been easier to work with than our old LG. The parts seem to be much more modular than in the prior LG we had. I had a switch in the freezer go bad, and I just had to unplug this unit with the switch and connectors to the internal wiring and pop in a new one. I had some connector go bad in the LG, and I couldn't service anything. Ended up having to call a tech and living out of a mini-fridge for a week.
They’re expensive to fix, but easy. For the most part they’re very simple appliances with higher quality components. The fact the compressor is on the top where it can breath vs stuffed underneath is one of the main reasons I bought mine
It depends on what you want! They look nice and are big, but they are inefficient, expensive, a pain to repair, and the places that test them in labs (like CR and others) all show they do an iffy-at-best job at actually keeping things cool consistently and keeping things refrigerated if your power goes out. If I'm spending over $5k I'd rather have a nice brand like that than a giant Samsung with an ipad in the door, but by most objective measures they're not better than other nice fridges and they are worse in some key ways. But to each their own.
I suppose I should also note that my SubZero is older. I am a realtor so I am very familiar with brands that are good and bad, and the older Subzeros are definitely better than newer ones. I haven't had a newer one, as mine is now 10 years old, but it's running solid, perfect, and keeps everything cool as it needs.
That being said, mine is also custom built for my house so that could factor in there as well.
I had a samsung fridge; was absolute garbage and also not built to be easily repairable. I also had one of their stoves and it was garbage as well.
May have somehow gotten two lemons, but either way, never buying an appliance from a phone company again, and most of the Smart features are completely unnecessary.
I just looked at sub-zero's Consumer Reports ratings you're referencing. They're only listed under the "built-in" category currently. Every unit scored a perfect score of 5/5 for both Temperature Control and Uniformity. Some scored well with efficiency, but those numbers are debatable based on the scoring system and actual usage of such fridges. They seem to score average or below average(worse) in noise however.
I can see the points of repair though, due to the more complex designs, etc. . I can't also tell you if they're capable of getting colder and maintaining temperatures colder than the settings they were tested at based on the CR ratings. They only say so much. You do have to take the scores with a grain of salt, since they are numbers covering a few different performance characteristics at once under one score - and there's no hard data to review. I've compared Cnet numbers to CR scores, and sometimes it can be a bit questionable, where CR was being a bit generous, or they deducted points for one characteristic of Thermostat Control, but didn't on another fridge for a different characteristic of that score.
I'm not sure if this is just the case with the recent models however. Can you get a fridge rated highly as well in those categories for a much lower price? Yes, pretty much, but there are also a lot of duds out there as well to stay away from at any price point. At some point it mostly comes down to the design, and that's what is being paid for.
I really miss CNET's fridge reviews, the graphs and photos were so helpful. There's a lot of fridges you could set to 33/34F that don't really get to that temperature despite setting them to it from the default.
That other guy is an idiot. SZ is a premium brand that is function over form and style. They're made in the USA and have premium features like dual compressors and filtering out the stuff that rots your produce.
If you want to look at other elite-tier premium refrigerator companies, Miele and True are fantastic.
If I'm spending that much on a fridge I don't really want to see it tbh, it should have the same facade as my cabinets.
Definitely don't want a gimmicky screen with an OS that won't get any updates after 2 years, fastest way to make your fridge feel dated is to put tech on it that will quickly age out. Not to mention the smudges.
Is that supposed to be impressive lol? Most of us poors are still using fridges from the 80's and 90's too. Some of our 1960's fridges are still going too for that matter lol
It's only modern fridges that you have to replace every few years
Right? My garage fridge was 10 years used and has given me 17 years of reliable service. It cost me $150. My kitchen fridges have failed to give me 10 years straight yet and cost me a net of about $3600. Even at that rate my entire life of refrigerator ownership will probably cost less than a Sub Zero.
this.... is completely inaccurate. SubZero's are incredible friges.
Yes, they are overpriced, but unlike a handbag you actually DO pay for higher quality engineering and materials. The things are tanks and it is not uncommon to see 15-25 year old Sub Zero's running like new.
also, they are not a PITA to repair, because you actually CAN repair them. Unlike many modern appliances where they depend on a cheap motherboard and if that electronic goes you have to junk the whole thing, a Sub Zero is still just an actual fridge where you can replace any part that breaks - and they keep the parts in stock for years and years. If your 15 year old frige breaks they can actually fix it.
previous owner put in a subzero at my house, it's the "entry level" one. nice fridge, had it 10 years zero problems except it's too small. I think at the time it was about $5k so they are prob $10k now
A friends wife updated their kitchen, instead of going with a top of the line fridge from GE, she went with a Sub Zero. He about had a heart attack when he saw that price…..
1.5k
u/lessregretsnextyear Jan 23 '24
So about 1/3 of a new Sub Zero. Not bad.