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Hotpoint RLAV21P
by Seven17
@ About @
(+) I bought this fridge 3 years ago, and the whole reason I bought this particular fridge, was because of its A energy rating. I have a home energy monitor and right now it's only using about 147KWh per year, pretty good for a fridge so less wattage means lower bills. Its a great fridge, comes well packaged but not ... too much plastic to throw away. Mostly cardboard.
(+) The actual "user guide" that comes with this is in lots of different languages so it may look thick but it's only a few pages in English about simple tips and advice for set up and maintenance. The fridge took less than five minutes to unpack, and only a couple minutes to get it running. You can use the manual to help fully set up, which has clear concise instructions of what you can and can't do. For instance, it explains that the shelves are safety glass, weight limits, and gives clear advice on care for your fridge such as best ambient room temperatures (10*C - 38*C)
@ To live with @
(-) There is one absolute nightmare with this fridge that I didn't stop to think about when I bought it, and I do regret not rethinking. The internal light. The whole point of having a fridge with an internal light is that it shines "internally" into the fridge when you open the door. But no, the light is situated at the top of the fridge right on the inside of the door above the little shelf. I can not begin to comprehend how big a design flaw this is when you're getting things out the fridge in the dark.
(-) Yes, the light shines towards the centre, but becomes immediately pointless when you open the door, so the light ends up being pointless. I recommend opening the fridge with your room light on, it's much easier to see inside.
(+) One positive of the light for me is that after 3 years it hasn't blown. That's been great, but I wouldn't replace it if it did. Day to day it opens and closes at least six times, and therefore, looses a lot of cold air to the room temperature. It copes with this quite well and gets back down to temperature quickly, even if you put something quite warm in there for a while. Very handy for baby bottles.
@ Noise @
(+) When you first turn this fridge on and it needs to get down to temperature, it makes a bit of a vibrating rumble, and that's it. You won't hear it do that for a long time, because it just tops itself up with cold air as and when it needs to. During the time it is switched on it makes a faint humming noise now and then, but that's it, it isn't vibrating like mad, even at the very back of the fridge.
@ Capacity and Storage @
(+) As for fridge space, inside is more than suitable for a small family, and we get by easily without any hassle, the space in between shelves is enough for butter tubs and medium sized pieces of meat. Granted, you won't fit a great big Christmas turkey in there but to be honest, you could fit a lot of vegetables in without having to cram and squash them inside.
(-) The long shelves on the door are a little smaller than they appear in the pictures you see on the web. A six pint bottle of milk indents when it touches the sides of the shelf but does slide in without too much force. Smaller 2 pint bottles will fit lengthways into the shelf no problem, with a little space left over.
@ Cleaning @
(-) one negative is the time it takes to clean the inside, the shelves are easy to clean because you can just get some cloth and wipe them down, but the door and edges of the fridge, really take some scrubbing, particularly around the roof and door, where lots of gunk builds up. The strip that seals the door when you shut it generally collects the most, and requires some time and effort to clean.
(+) cleaning the outside is not as hard because you can just wipe down the surfaces, and there are no gaps, bumps, or tiny grooves to get into. The top of the door is the worst area to collect dirt, but you can simply run your finger along the top to remove this dirt.
@ Wear and tear @
(+) The outside of this fridge is quite scratch resistant, our fridge has multiple magnets on it and so far it has been pretty tough, this is a pretty strong and well built fridge. The door is solid and has not started creaking or becoming wobbly, with little wobble from the hinges either.
(-) The inside looks good, but has shown a little weakness with paint wear. We regularly slide plates and cartons in and out and along the side of each shelf there are marks from where this has happened, which appeared just months after we bought it home. It doesn't take much to get the paint off.
(+) Mechanically though this fridge is in tip top condition. Nothing has broken down, the bulb hasn't gone, and the safety glass hasn't cracked. It still maintains cold air even on really hot days, and has never spoiled any food. I am most pleased with the durability, and it deserves another star for this. The door once sealed does not let any of the cold air out, you put the palm of your hand over the top of the door to test for escaping air, and there's not even a trickle.
@ Overall @
I can only award this fridge 4 stars. Size, durable materials, and space all contribute to this, but the major design flaw is the light and thats just not practical. If you intend to buy this fridge, and need a good internal light, it's not recommended.
If you need a durable, well built, good sized and low price fridge without needing the light, then this is most definitely the fridge for you, and I can certainly recommend it. You need some time to clean the inside, and just a bit more general care when putting things in and taking them out to stop paint wear.
@ Information @
* Total capacity: 130 litres
* 3 safety glass shelves
* 2 litre deep storage
* Covered dairy compartment
* Full width salad bin
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Argos 4 Litre Mini Fridge
by chrisandmark
My partner regularly goes fishing (yawn) so during the summer I treated him to this Mini Fridge from Argos, it was actually a bit of a silly buy as while he's sitting on the edge of a windy lake there's nowhere to plug it in... Never mind, after giving my head a quick slap I decided that instead of returning it with some fake problem or ... other we'd keep it in the dining room for when we're chilling (excuse the pun) in there. Our fridge is the one you see above, but other colours and designs are available including a gorgeous pale pink covered in polka dots - which would so not have been Mark's colour, but in retrospect I wish I'd bought that one now as it would have looked fab in the dining room.
This fridge has a 4 litre capacity, which might sound pretty big but let me tell you now - it's tiny. Using Argos' own description, it'll hold only six normal sized cans (the 330ml variety, not beer can sized) and when we took it on a recent weekend away I was disappointed that I wasn't able to store the small amount of chilled food I had bought from Tesco to sustain us in munchies through the night. To give you an idea of the size of the interior of this fridge we managed to squeeze in a small block of cheese, a half-sized packet of butter, two ready made sandwiches (taken out of their plastic wrappers and re-wrapped in kitchen roll), a one-pint bottle of milk and two decidedly squashed fresh cakes. Hardly survival, is it?
The shelf is removeable, and I have indeed removed it as I've found the fridge holds much more when it's all stacked on top of each other instead of trying to shelve it all as you would in a normal fridge. If you do add the shelf you're losing far more room than just the slim width of the shelf itself, restricting yourself to placing only shallow items on the actual shelf as it will only actually fit in one place.
The fridge is very easy to keep clean and despite the very 'plastic-ey' nature of it the interior doesn't seem to hang onto smells from food, an important point as after using our previous mini fridge to take a batch of very onion-intensified cheese and potato pie to my sister (then a student and seemingly incapable of cooking for herself) I just couldn't get rid of the stink of the onion. I tend to use a baby wipe to clean it inside and out, the silvery finish smears a bit when cleaned like this but this is easily dealt with by drying with a tea towel and buffing the marks out.
The four large stubby feet are made of a non-slip rubber, which is handy as the fridge itself is so lightweight that it could easily be knocked if you were faffing around in its general vicinity. There is a chunky carry handle located on the top of the fridge, but we never use this as it feels very loose in it's fittings and I worry that it won't hold the weight of the fridge even while empty - there's no chance I'd risk it if there was anything being stored in the fridge as that just adds weight to an already struggling carry handle.
Not only is this a fridge, by flicking a switch on the back you can also turn it into a food warmer. I must admit I haven't used this function myself but switching it over to 'heat' this morning I can confirm that it does warm up nicely and I think it would be fine for keeping small amounts of food warm for short periods of time. When used for it's 'proper' purpose (ie. keeping food/drinks cold) it works admirably, I've no idea of the temperatures it reaches but it keeps everything chilled almost as well as when stored in my normal fridge - a good example being the milk I kept in there recently which was cold and delicious (as always, gotta love milk) after being kept in this fridge for two days.
My only issue is with the handle of the fridge (the actual handle on the door, not the carry handle) as sometimes it sticks and needs a slap with the edge of my hand to release it and enable me to open the door. This has happened several times now and it's quite annoying, especially as sometimes I've had to ask Mark to come and open it for me - allowing him to bring forth a stream of 'manly' comments.
Overall though I'm happy with it, the £30 price tag seems a bit excessive now as I've seen similar fridges available for a good tenner less than this but at the time it seemed reasonable as I really couldn't be bothered shopping around.
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