Why You Can Trust CNET LG LFCS25426D French Door Refrigerator review: Poor performance kills this LG refrigerator's bargain appeal
It's one of the most affordable French door fridges available in black stainless steel, but it runs too warm for us to recommend it.
- 10 years product testing experience with the CNET Home team
Let's start with a wild assumption that you're shopping for a new fridge (you are, after all, reading a refrigerator review). For the sake of argument, let's say that you want something modern and nice-looking, but you don't want to spend that much -- and you couldn't care care less about fancy features like door-in-door compartments or touchscreen smarts.
LG LFCS25426D French Door Refrigerator
The Good
The Bad
The Bottom Line
If that sounds like you, then the LG LFCS25426D might look like an ideal pick. Despite the suggested asking price of $1,900, the roughly year-old model can currently be had for less than $1,500 at a number of major retailers, making it one of the most affordable big-brand French door fridges available in a classy, black stainless steel finish. It isn't anything special, but it looks sharp enough, and it won't break the bank.
There's a problem here, though, and it's performance. With hot spots above 40 degrees F in both the door shelves and the main body of the fridge, the LFCS25426D isn't a model I'd recommend, even for bargain hunters.
These are the average temperatures throughout the fridge at its default setting of 37 degrees. See all those orange areas? Not good.
Dialing it down doesn't help very much, either. Even at the coldest setting of 33 degrees, we saw one of the door shelves average out to 40.7 degrees F, which is warmer than the FDA recommends. That's enough for me to pump the brakes.
Still, I give LG credit for bringing black stainless steel to such an affordable model. It's the same basic shell as a lot of LG's fancier, more feature-rich French door fridges. The thing is, all of those features have been stripped out.
That means you don't get a door-in-door compartment or movable shelves, and you don't get a drawer with its own adjustable temperature settings. Heck, you don't even get an ice maker in the door -- it's relegated down to the freezer.
What you do get is that black stainless-steel finish, putting this fridge right in line with the current trends. If that's something that matters to you, then that's a win, and if it's all that matters to you, then this fridge looks like a safe bet.
It feels decent, too. A lot of midrange fridges have flimsy shelves and crisper bins that rattle, but the LFCS25426D feels sturdy and well-built. And, with 25.4 cubic feet of storage space, 17.6 of which are allocated to the fridge, you're getting a slightly more spacious interior than you should expect at the $1,500 price range (especially since there isn't an ice-maker eating up storage space). It's a basic fridge, but it gets the basics right.
We still saw a hot spot in that top left door shelf at the refrigerator's coldest setting. The freezer dropped a few degrees, too.
The same can't be said of performance. It's not just the hot spots in the fridge -- the freezer is also a little suspect, showing about a 3-degree swing when we switched the fridge from the 37-degree setting to the 33-degree setting. The freezer setting stayed locked at 0 degrees for both tests, so that isn't ideal. What you want is a freezer that performs the same regardless of what setting you're using up above it.
With better performance, this fridge would have been an easy recommendation for design-minded shoppers looking for a deal. Unfortunately it runs just warm enough to spoil the bargain. I say keep shopping.