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

Keurig has changed the face of coffee, and snagging one of these for less than $70 is a solid deal. Read Review

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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

  • 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
  • Conclusion

Introduction

Much in the same way that Kenmore's exclusive deal with Sears limits sale opportunities, Home Depot is the only retailer selling this fridge and so price hunting is essentially pointless. That said, the MSRP for this fridge is $1499, but at the time of this writing, Home Depot has it for sale at $1298; it's a hit or miss depending upon what's on sale and when.

Front

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The front of this fridge has a shimmering stainless steel finish. It's somewhat reflective, so prepare to be blinded a bit if your kitchen gets a lot of direct sunlight. The left door, which opens onto the freezer, has a through-the-door ice and water dispenser. It also serves as the location of the appliance's control panel. The right door covers the fridge compartment.

Like most stainless fridges, this one is very susceptible to smudges. Fingerprints will be as noticeable on this machine as a fan of classical music attending a punk rock concert. If you've got small children or curious house pets, be prepared to spend a lot of time cleaning up after them.

The controls strike an excellent balance between comprehensive and intuitive. There's a thermostat which displays the temperature on a small screen, and separate buttons to make the fridge and freezer warmer or colder. There are buttons to select between the dispenser's various outputs, be it crushed ice, cubed ice, or water. Additionally, you have buttons that lock the controls, toggle a door alarm, and notify you when the water filter needs changing.

The handles are also finished with stainless steel, and curve at either end to wind up flush with the door. They're fairly large, so people of any height should be able to open this {{product.brand.name}} without any problem.

The water and ice dispenser is found on the exterior of the freezer door. It's set fairly deep into the door, meaning you'll be able to set your glass down when filling it, though it's not big enough to rest something as large as a jug. There's also a button that turns on a light which illuminates the cavity, making for easy access to a late night beverage.

The device is operated using a single paddle; selecting between your choice of frozen or fluid water is as easy as pushing one of the three buttons found at the bottom of the control panel.

Interior

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When you open the doors, you find the freezer on the left and the fridge on the right. They're lit with blue LED lighting that gently increases in brightness when you open the door. Both sections have a multitude of shelves and adjustable racks to allow for customizable storage space.

The interior of the CDWT980VSS.

The main interior of the fridge portion contains four shelves and three drawers. Three of those shelves are adjustable, with one of them serving as the lid to the Snack Pan. The fourth fills a similar purpose for the Fruits & Vegetables drawer. At the very bottom is the Sealed Pan, a humidity-controlled drawer ideal for items such as defrosting meats or other items that can easily drip or spill.

The water filter is located in the upper right corner at the back of the main section. It's easy to get to when the shelf is clear, but can require some shifting of items if you typically have a fully stocked fridge.

The fridge door has a very plain layout. There's a large dairy bin at the top, with three adjustable shelves under it. The three shelves are large and deep enough to comfortably fit gallon or liter-sized items, as long as you leave enough vertical space between them. There's a fourth adjustable shelf on the bottom which is somewhat shallower than the other three.

The inside of the freezer can prove to be a bit more cramped than the fridge. Near the top is the device that holds bulk ice. Above it is a small section above this which is just large enough to serve as practical storage space. Directly below the ice maker is a shallow wire shelf, with three deeper ones underneath that. At the very bottom is a small pull-out drawer, also made with wire.

A large portion of the freezer door is taken up by the ice maker. Above it, you will find a very thin storage rack, just deep enough to fit thin items like popsicles or a few ice cream sandwiches. Below the ice maker are three slightly large shelves, all of which are adjustable.

The ice maker takes up a fairly large portion of the freezer storage space. Any bulk ice that has been made can be accessed in one of two ways: you can either pull the ice maker out of the freezer completely, or you can simply lift the small flap located at the front and reach in.

Back

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The back of the {{product.brand.name}} is covered with a full sheet of metal. There are tubes running from the water supply to both the ice maker and the water filter.

Sides

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To match the front of the appliance, the sides have been finished in gray with a matte texture. The matte design makes it a bit more smudge-proof than the front, while the coloring allows for a pleasant uniform look if your counters don't hide it completely.

Olympus SZ-31MR iHS side views

Running Cost

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This {{product.brand.name}} is a fairly large appliance, and that bulk is very much reflected in its power consumption. Using a standard rate of $0.09 per kW-h, we determined that it would cost about $67.40 to operate this appliance for a full year. This is certainly on the more expensive side of things, though if you never used the ice maker, you could see the electric bill drop slightly.

Power Use Per Cu Ft

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Even though it may cost a lot to power a large fridge, that doesn't mean it's using the energy inefficiently. So with that in mind, we figure out just how much energy is been used to cool a single cubic foot of usable storage space. Unfortunately, this {{product.brand.name}} is not only expensive, it's also not very good at distributing energy. Using 0.13 kW-h per cubic foot of space, it's actually one of the less efficient appliances of its type that we've seen.

Fridge Temperature

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The fridge in the {{product.brand.name}} was, unfortunately, rather disappointing. The top and middle thirds of the fridge averaged just under the ideal 37 degrees, but they fluctuated over half a degree over time. The more temperatures fluctuate, the faster food will spoil. It also fluctuated near the bottom, but the difference here is that the average temperature was 39 degrees, almost a full three degrees warmer. Produce is usually alright when it's stored at a slightly warmer degree than other refrigerated items, but there are other fridges that do a better job of creating a uniform temperature.

Freezer Temperature

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The exterior thermometer might have said the freezer was at zero degrees, but our test meters showed something quite different. At the top of the freezer, right near the ice maker, temperatures were almost two below zero, with an average fluctuation over time of a degree and a half. The bottom of the freezer, on the other hand, averaged about 5 degrees Fahrenheit—that's a seven degree difference—and had an average fluctuation of about half of a degree. Side-by-side's have traditionally had difficulties matching the temperatures at the top to those on the bottom, but this much of a gap is far larger than it should be. At the very least, those fluctuations aren't huge, so even though your food isn't freezing at a consistent temperature, it should take a little while before freezer burn sets in.

Vegetable Drawer

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Continuing the trend of questionable performance, we found that the {{product.brand.name}} did a rather poor job of retaining moisture in its vegetable drawer. Despite turning up the controls to the highest humidity retention level possible, this machine lost an average of 0.23 grams of moisture per hour. At that rate, vegetables will start to wilt faster than they would in many other models that we've tested; any carrots that started out fresh could very well become shriveled orange toothpicks if you leave them in there too long.

Power Loss

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The {{product.brand.name}}'s freezer managed to keep food frozen after 36 hours, though it did get perilously close to breaking that degree barrier. If your appliance loses power for longer than that, you may end up having to throw out some formerly frozen items.

Freezing Performance

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It took an unusually long time for the {{product.brand.name}} to freeze our room-temperature test materials. Ideally, it would take no time at all to freeze an item, a technique referred to as "flash freezing." Unless you're getting an industrial freezer, this simply won't happen, and some of the better appliances that we've tested can get the time down to about an hour at the most. The {{product.brand.name}}, however, took nearly twice as long—our materials only reached freezing after 1 hour and 54 minutes. This is long enough that frozen meats and other items could have a substantially reduced texture quality when thawed.

Usable Space

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Side-by-sides aren't exactly known for being cavernous; the tall, thin compartments make for narrow storage space. That said, the {{product.brand.name}} can fit in an average amount of food in its fridge. With 10.51 cubic feet of usable space spread out over four shelves and three drawers, it's neither impressively large or disappointingly small.

That total also includes the ample storage available on the fridge door. With four self-contained buckets shelves and a dairy bin, this door can actually hold more than many similar models. The three larger shelves are deep enough to hold two gallon-sized containers each, as long as you leave enough vertical space for them to fit.

The sizable ice maker inevitably means that the freezer in a side-by-side is going to be significantly smaller than the fridge portion. However, this {{product.brand.name}} actually has as much storage as some top and bottom-freezer models, which typically offer more space. With four shelves and a pull-out bucket, this appliance can hold an impressive 5.52 cubic feet worth of items.

The freezer door also suffers as a result of the through-the-door ice dispenser. It has a small, shallow shelf at the very top, as well as three adjustable shelves on the bottom. The lower ones aren't nearly as big as the ones on the fridge door, but they can hold things such as a pint of ice cream or an ice pack with relative ease.

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 shelves both inside the compartments and on the doors are actually quite easy to access. Despite the narrowness of the two sections, the doors open wide enough that you should be able to get at any items without too much of a hassle. The lower shelves, especially the one under the Snack Pan, can be a bit trickier to navigate if you're trying to get something way at the back, but otherwise you shouldn't have any difficulty.

The three drawers in the fridge all have different levels of smoothness that make any stickiness all the more prominent: the Snack Pan can be a pain to get out, and is the only drawer that cannot be removed entirely; the Fruits & Vegetables drawer is the smoothest of all of them; the Sealed Pan falls somewhere between the two. The pull-out bucket in the freezer, on the other hand, is just an utter pain to get to. It doesn't slide out very far, holds very little, and what with it being so close to the ground, it can be difficult for taller consumers or those with back problems to reach.

Controls

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The controls strike an excellent balance between comprehensive and intuitive. There's a thermostat which displays the temperature on a small screen, and separate buttons to make the fridge and freezer warmer or colder. There are buttons to select between the dispenser's various outputs, be it crushed ice, cubed ice, or water. Additionally, you have buttons that lock the controls, toggle a door alarm, and notify you when the water filter needs changing.

Normally it's a blessing to have a fridge with a thermostat that actually tells you what degree the inside of your appliance has reached, as opposed to an arbitrary scale of one to four. The {{product.brand.name}}, however, takes this a step further. Not only does the thermostat tell you what degree you want it set to, it also tells you what the temperature inside your fridge actually is. If, for instance, you need to defrost some items or chill a baked good at a certain temperature, you can adjust the thermostat, then check back in a few minutes to see if the ideal degree has been reached. The other buttons on the control panel are explicitly labeled, and the whole thing is quite easy to use.

Water Dispenser

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The water dispenser is perhaps one of the smoothest-working features on the {{product.brand.name}}. It operates using a single large paddle inside the cavity on the front of the freezer door. The cavity is tall and deep enough to fit even slightly larger drinking glasses with ease, though you'll have to hold onto anything large than that. The small light source makes getting a cool beverage on a hot summer night that much easier, as well.

Ice Maker

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The ice maker takes up a fairly large portion of the freezer storage space. Any bulk ice that has been made can be accessed in one of two ways: you can either pull the ice maker out of the freezer completely, or you can simply lift the small flap located at the front and reach in.

Cleaning

Noise

Other Features

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Conclusion

Energy Efficiency

This was one of the more expensive fridges we tested as far as electrical costs. Frequently, high energy prices are offset by quality energy distribution, but that wasn't the case here, either. Not only does it cost a lot, but the {{product.brand.name}} lacks the high energy efficiency of other models out today.

Performance

The {{product.brand.name}} was disappointing in every test that we conducted. Temperatures in the fridge and freezer had even more of change from top to bottom than is usual for a side-by-side, freezing times were much longer than we like to see, and moisture retention wasn't quite adequate. There's nothing about this fridge's performance that really earns it any praise.

Storage Space

The fridge portion of the {{product.brand.name}} was about average in terms of storage space. The amount of room available in the freezer, however, was one of the few good things about this appliance. Despite the large ice maker, there was actually more storage in here than in many other side-by-side freezers.

Usability

Shelf access is actually quite good in the {{product.brand.name}}. Most parts are quite easy to get to, despite the narrow nature of a side-by-side's compartments. The only real hassle there is with the drawers in the fridge and freezer—all of them have some issue, whether it's plastic-on-plastic stickiness that makes them hard to open, or not coming out far enough to make accessing the contents easy. One other positive aspect, though, is the control panel: they're intuitive, easy to read, and very simple to use.

Meet the tester

Matthew Zahnzinger

Matthew Zahnzinger

Logistics Manager & Staff Writer

@ReviewedHome

Matthew is a native of Brockton, MA and a graduate of Northeastern, where he earned a degree in English and Theatre. He has also studied at the Gaiety School of Acting in Dublin and spends most of his free time pursuing a performance career in the greater Boston area.

See all of Matthew Zahnzinger's reviews

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