The mini fridge market ridiculously broad, encompassing everything from a car fridge, water dispensers and USB can coolers. However, not all of these items are going to be useful to everyone. If you’re in the market for a small fridge, there’s a certain amount of narrowing down that you’ll have to go through before arriving at a manageable list of choices. Everyone’s situation is different, whether they’re students, people who work from home, office managers, etc. The list goes on and on.
Therefore, it will benefit you greatly to take a moment and go through this list of considerations. Some of this information has come from my own personal experience, while others are from helpful websites that I’ve checked out as part of my research. There’s not going to be any mind-blowing conclusion that you’ll be able to draw from the answers to the questions, by the way. This is merely a list of things to keep in mind that are easy to gloss over when you’re facing down a seemingly endless of products in the search for the best balance of features and price!
Some things to consider:
Space Requirements
First of all, how much are you going to need to store in the small fridge? If you’re a college student, you can probably get away with a “dorm sized” fridge, typically holding between 1.5 and 2 cubic feet in volume, and generally measuring around 20 inches on the sides (give or take). These small fridges, also referred to as “cube fridges,” are very space efficient but very energy-inefficient.
On the other hand, you might have slightly bigger aspirations for the fridge. For instance, you might want a small wine fridge to service a wetbar in a remote location of your house, far away from the main kitchen. If this is the case, you’ll want to look for something that will allow you to easily organize and shift the bottles around. There’s little point in having a small bar fridge full of high quality white wine if you can’t get to the stuff in the first place.
Power Consumption
Another big consideration for purchasing a fridge is power consumption. This won’t effect a home owner that lives fairly comfortably, but for those of us on a budget or living away at school, it can be a real issue. For instance, a college student should be aware of the power consumption policies at his dorm. It’s a real pity when someone buys a fancy mini fridge only to be told that they can’t use it because it eats up too much energy. One phone call to the dorm before moving in will remedy a potentially irritating situation, so do your due diligence!
Dietary Needs
Like many of the considerations in this article, this one applies mostly to people living away from home at school in a dorm. If you have a flexible diet, a standard small fridge will do just fine for you. However, if you’re a vegetarian or vegan, the mini fridge will take on a whole new meaning for you. After all, most dorms don’t cater very well to vegetarian diets. If this is the case, you may very well be preparing your own food quite often. As a result, you’ll want to consider a fridge that has crisper drawers in it (GE makes some nice ones); you’ll be able to store fresh fruits and vegetables for longer, and without absorbing the odors that are lurking in the rest of the unit.
The Freezer
Unfortunately, mini fridges have never been known for great freezers. While the features keep getting fancier (auto defrost, icemakers, etc.), the basic design remains deeply flawed. Specifically, the freezer is almost always too close to the refrigeration unit. This results in frost forming on the fridge contents, often rendering them useless or at least less tasty. Here are the two lines of thinking as I see it:
- You get a fridge that doesn’t have a freezer. This would be a good option if your dorm has a communal freezer. Of course, the issue then becomes whether some joker is going to steal your food. I remember college, and stuff like that happened all the time.
- While you’re not going to move a full sized refrigerator into a dorm room, you might be able to split the difference and get a mid-sized unit that is better at separating the freezer from the refrigerator. In general, the bigger the fridge, the better the separation will be. On the flipside, the bigger the fridge, the more power it will consume (see the section about power consumption above).
This is one area where you’ll want to consult reviews on Amazon.com and elsewhere. The mini fridge market is changing constantly as appliance companies struggle to compete with one another, so one of them might have figured this out already. Nothing beats reviews from real customers when it comes to purchasing appliances that are known to have a certain issue. Once in a while, a company will capture “lightning in a bottle” and come out with a wonder product that revolutionizes everything.
Lesser Known Alternatives
These are the devices that almost no one knows about, but actually provide alternatives to traditional mini fridges. Whether these are viable replacements to the traditional units is widely variable. One particular example of this is the “USB Mini Fridge.” These units are powered by a typical USB port found on most computers. Just plug it in and a cooling system will be powered up and ready to keep your food fresh…
…Or at least that’s what they want you to believe. Unfortunately, out of all the reviews I read on these little units, the technology is just not yet up to par with traditional small fridges. Being an insufferable geek, I desperately wanted this product to be a practical reality and I even ordered one of these units to try out in preparation for this article. I was sorely let down. I found a small market of USB powered toys that don’t really get the job done. The unit was essentially a simple processor fan mounted on a plate. The plate, itself, formed the bottom of a small compartment that was big enough to accommodate a soda can. I knew that these units weren’t really meant for getting the can cold, but rather for keeping it reasonably cool after being refrigerated. However, the USB cooler failed at even this modest task.
The bottom line is that these little products are a great idea, but they are sorely lacking in execution. I’ll keep my eye on this market for anything that seems worthwhile and post about it here.
On the other hand, you might be able to make a much nicer product on your own:
Conclusion
To summarize, here’s a checklist of important things to keep in mind when shopping for a small fridge:
- size needs
- dietary considerations
- power consumption
- dorm use vs. home use
- freezer issues
Want more water dispenser information? Head to the front page of the site for more!
If you’re looking for an ice maker to pair with your portable fridge, check out this post on the Whirlpool ice maker.
