Samsung shows off slimmer fridges at CES

Samsung appears to be more ardently courting the midrange market with its recently announced refrigerators. Known in the kitchen for its decadent and costly Chef collection, Samsung will now bring its Food Showcase Fridge and its T9000 fridge with triple cooling to those without giant kitchens, by sizing them to counter depth.

Food Showcase

Samsung first showed off its Food Showcase concept at last year's CES. Similar to competing door-in-door models from LG , a Food Showcase fridge allows you to open an outer door to see the food and grab common, smaller goods without opening the fridge all the way. In theory, this keeps the main compartment cooler, so when you do open the main fridge, everything is fresher.

The outermost door of the fridge in this side-by-side model features a metal finish on the inside that supposedly also helps keep in the cool. Both the shelves inside the fridge, and on the door are adjustable, so you can customize what you want where to an extent.

At the 2015 International CES, Samsung is showing off the counter-depth version that will ship immediately. Hopefully you'll still have enough room to store useful items in both compartments. The Food Showcase aspect will be truly useful if you're not just reaching for condiments, but can keep the inner door closed even when you want to grab a jug of milk or a bottle of soda.

We look forward to testing this practical functionality soon, as well as whether or not opening a small outer door actually does keep the interior cooler than opening a normal fridge door.

T9000

Cutting back from 30+ cubic feet to 23 cubic feet for the sake of accommodating the depth of a normal counter, the new T9000 retains the features of its bigger counterpart. With four doors, three fans and a compartment dedicated to flexibility, the T9000 can fit in a modern kitchen while theoretically maintaining premium performance.

A french-door refrigerator sits on top of the T9000. The bottom left door opens on the freezer. Bottom right can be switched back and forth, or set at a temperature in between.

Each compartment contains its own fan to help partition environmental control from one area to the next. Samsung calls this its triple-cooling feature and boasts that it can keep the fridge humid enough to help keep fruits and vegetables fresher longer while separately maintaining an ideal dry freezer.

All of these features can currently be found on its existing T9000 available now for $3,999 in the US, £3,699 in the UK and AU$4,199 (for a roughly equivalent model). Hopefully the more compact version now being shown at CES can keep this zone independence intact when it rolls out to stores this spring.