This Kenmore French door fridge wins CNET's Editors' Choice
Kitchen & Household
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Hey, I'm CNET's Ry Crist's here with the Kenmore Elite french door refrigerator, model number 72482, winner of our Editor's Choice.
Now like all Kenmore appliances, this is actually another manufacturer's build that Kenmore has bought to sell at Sears under the Kenmore name.
In the 72482's case, it's an existing LG model that they're selling.
Now it's not exactly the same, but it's quite a bit like the LMXF 30786S.
A very nice LG french door fridge that I reviewed a few weeks back.
It's a model that offers great features, very solid performance, and good overall value, despite a pretty high price tag.
This offers all of that as well, at a much lower price tag, selling for $2950, compared to well over $3000.
than other LG models.
So you're getting all the LG bells and whistles here, at a much lower price.
Chief among those bells and whistles is this pantry drawer, this is the custom chill drawer from LG, but Kenmore just calls it a pantry drawer.
Like the custom chill drawer, you can adjust the temperature in this thing from a couple of different presets that are specific to different ingredients.
I like it a lot.
It adds a lot of storage space to the overall fridge capacity.
I also like that you get plenty of vertical clearance.
Here about five inches of height to work with .That's one of those subtle little specs that actually makes a big difference in the overall usability of this fridge.
Inside you've got a lot of the standard high-end French doors features you want to see, you've got spill proof shelves, you've got a slide in shelf that you can push back to make room for tall items.
And you've got this slim indoor ice maker that's the same as the space plus ice maker in LG fridges.
I like this a lot.
It moves the ice maker out of the body of the fridge.
And puts it totally into the door and keeps it flush.
So that those shelves there easy to get things in and out of.
Now combined with the pantry door.
You get over 2100 cubic feet of fresh food Storage space, which is just a terrific number.
We had no problem whatsoever fitting all of our test groceries into it, all the stress test items.
Didn't have to move around the shelves at all.
It all just fit and there was plenty of room to spare, just fantastic.
Performance was solid too with very accurate temperatures.
Slightly above the target temperatures.
The only drawback I found was that like some of the LG fridges we've tested, that right door tended to run a little warm with hot averages across the three shelves.
Not that bad, not that big a deal.
But still something to keep in ind.
Another drawback.
You can only get this fridge in a white finish or a black finish so if that's a deal breaker for you, if you have a stainless steel kitchen and you want something to match, this won't do the job.
Still, as such a well-rounded high-end fridge at less than 3,000 dollars, this is just a terrific value.
And if I'm looking to buy a high-end, large size french door for my kitchen, this is the one I'm gonna go with.
And that makes it an Editor's Choice.
You'll find plenty more on my full review on CNET.com, and feel free to field any fridge questions my way on Twitter.
For CNET Appliances, I'm Ry Crist.
