Best Refrigerators of 2021
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The refrigerator lab at Consumer Reports is a busy place. Our testers are constantly evaluating new models and adding them to our refrigerator ratings, which include about 250 fridges in all the configurations: bottom-freezer, built-in, counter-depth, French-door, side-by-side, and top-freezer.
The lines between these categories are blurring. Today’s fridges have more doors, and once-exclusive features are trickling down to more affordable configurations, such as top-freezers and side-by-sides. “We’ve even seen models that give you the capability to convert some compartments from freezer to fridge and vice versa,” says Larry Ciufo, CR’s test engineer for refrigerators.
Below, CR members can read ratings and reviews of the best refrigerators for each type we test. They include models in a variety of widths and from several brands: Blomberg, Dacor, Frigidaire, GE, LG, Thermador, and Whirlpool.
During testing, we outfit each fridge with thermocouples in a climate-controlled chamber and monitor it for a month, collecting more than 5.4 million temperature readings that identify warm and cold spots to determine which models will keep your food fresh longer. We also factor in survey data from thousands of CR members to judge brand reliability and satisfaction. All of that—and then some—informs CR’s refrigerator ratings charts and each model’s Overall Score.
To help you find the ideal refrigerator, we organize our ratings by the width of the appliance—the best fridge in the world is useless if it doesn’t fit the slot in your kitchen. You can see the top models by width in our comprehensive refrigerator ratings charts.
