Which? Don't Buy fridges

The best fridges cool rapidly and keep food safely chilled to ensure it stays fresher for longer, without racking up your energy bill. 

But some of the fridges we test are at the other end of the scale. These terrible fridges are so bad that we've labelled then Don't Buys to help you avoid them when you're shopping.

What makes a Don't Buy fridge?

When buying a fridge, you want a model that excels at the basics and won’t cost a fortune to run. Don’t Buy fridges are slow at chilling food, which is a problem as the longer food takes to chill the more time harmful bacteria have to thrive and spoil your food. 

• We've uncovered fridges that can't complete our chilling tests in two whole days of testing. The best manage the job in a matter of hours.
• Our temperature tests expose dreadful fridges that just can't keep a steady temperature. These fridges will over- or under-cool your food when your kitchen heats up and cools down.
• Some fridges are real energy-guzzlers. Because your fridge is switched on 24/7, these cost a fortune to run.

Finding a fridge that is good at its job can be tricky, but our tests have uncovered some fabulous fridges that will be a great home for your food. 

Join Which? to find out which fridges we’ve named as Don’t Buys.

How we test fridges

Every year, we test and review the latest fridges from all the big brands including Samsung, Haier, LG and Hoover. We don’t want you to end up with a bad fridge, so our lab experts put fridges through an exhaustive series of tests, including investigating how effective and quick each model is as cooling, and how energy efficient they are. 

• Our lab experts load each fridge up with food-equivalent gel packs to simulate food already stored inside and then also test how quickly the fridge cools a load of room-temperature gel packs to see exactly how well the fridge will look after your food. 
• We measure the volume of fridges from the space you can actually use for storing groceries. Some manufacturers include unusable space as they measure with the drawers and shelves taken out. 
• To see whether a fridge is cheap to run for its size, we also rate its energy use against the amount of useable storage space it offers.

All our tests go towards calculating the Which? test score. There's no room for unconscious bias, so you can trust our results and easily compare the best and worst fridges. We're not influenced by third parties and we don't accept freebies from product manufacturers or retailers. We buy all the products that we test ourselves, so our advice helps you to make the right choice first time and avoid costly mistakes.

Our reviews will help you avoid a bad choice when it comes to buying a fridge. Join Which? for instant access to our Best Buy and Don't Buy recommendations.