This LG fridge offers black stainless steel at a discount

Ask any of the major appliance manufacturers, and they'll tell you that black stainless steel is the hot new trend, but they typically reserve it for higher-end models only. That's not the case with the LG LFCS25426D, though. It's an entry-level French door model available in black stainless steel for less than $2,000 (and probably less than $1,500 if you shop around). Click through to see whether or not it'd be a good fit for your kitchen.

Within that classy, black stainless-steel exterior is a fairly simple fridge with a comfortable 25.4 cubic feet of total storage space. You won't find any features worth mentioning -- no movable shelves, no touchscreen smarts, no temperature-adjustable compartments, no nothing. There isn't even an ice maker in the door.

Fortunately, there is an automatic ice maker in the freezer. You'll have to scoop the cubes out yourself, but it's better than nothing!

As mentioned, you don't get a drawer with its own temperature presets like in some nicer models, but you do get a standard storage drawer below the crispers. It runs a few degrees colder than the rest of the fridge, making it a good spot to store meats, cheeses and other delicate ingredients.

Speaking of those crisper bins, they're nothing special, but they do feel sturdy and well-built. Drawers like these often rattle around, but LG did a nice job here.

You won't find any controls on the door of the fridge. Instead, they're hidden up here on the top of the door frame.

Here's the big flaw with this fridge: performance. At the default 37-degree setting, everything is just a few degrees too warm, with multiple hot spots in both the door shelves and the main body of the refrigerator. Not ideal!

Performance was better at the coldest setting of 33 degrees, but we still saw a hot spot in that top left door shelf. The freezer dropped a few degrees, too, which wasn't great since we left it locked at the 0 degree setting.

With mediocre performance and no features to speak of, this black stainless-steel fridge is a pure design play, but the price is pretty tempting. Check out our full review to see if we think the pros outweigh the cons.