X
CNET logo Why You Can Trust CNET

Our expert, award-winning staff selects the products we cover and rigorously researches and tests our top picks. If you buy through our links, we may get a commission. Reviews ethics statement

Samsung RH25H5611SR review: Samsung's most affordable Food Showcase fridge passes the test

If door-in-a-door fridges have you intrigued, then this model merits a close look.

Ry Crist Senior Editor / Reviews - Labs
Originally hailing from Troy, Ohio, Ry Crist is a writer, a text-based adventure connoisseur, a lover of terrible movies and an enthusiastic yet mediocre cook. A CNET editor since 2013, Ry's beats include smart home tech, lighting, appliances, broadband and home networking.
Expertise Smart home technology and wireless connectivity Credentials
  • 10 years product testing experience with the CNET Home team
Ry Crist
7 min read

I must confess that door-in-a-door refrigerators don't do much for me. Pitched as a time-saving feature that allows for easier access to your groceries, door-in-a-door fridges like the Samsung Food Showcase RH25H5611SR let you open the refrigerator's front panel, exposing the in-door shelves without opening the door itself. I just don't get it. You're still opening a door and grabbing your barbecue sauce. As features go, it feels a bit frivolous for my tastes.

7.7

Samsung RH25H5611SR

The Good

The $2,100 version of Samsung's Food Showcase side-by-side refrigerator surprised us with how well it performed in our cooling tests. Though door-in-a-door functionality might seem a bit gimmicky, the Food Showcase feature is well executed nonetheless.

The Bad

The design is pretty plain, especially compared with the more expensive Food Showcase side-by-side, which looks fantastic. Storage space is also a bit cramped in the body of the fridge, even by side-by-side standards.

The Bottom Line

We like it more for its performance than for its novelty factor, but if adding door-in-a-door functionality to your kitchen is a must, this well-rounded version of Samsung's Food Showcase refrigerator makes the most sense.

I might be in the minority, though. The door-in-a-door feature has been on the rise ever since LG introduced its first "Door-in-Door" models a few years ago. Samsung quickly followed suit with its own door-in-a-door lineup, dubbing them "Food Showcase" models. Of all of them, I like the RH25H5611SR the best. It isn't nearly as distinctive a side-by-side as its more expensive older brother, the RH29H9000SR , but it performed better in our tests, and offers much better value with an MSRP of $2,100 (retail discounts typically bring the price well below $2,000). If door-in-a-door fridges have you intrigued, I think it deserves some close consideration.

A more modest Food Showcase fridge from Samsung (pictures)

See all photos

A modest build

Samsung sells a more expensive version of the Food Showcase side-by-side fridge , model number RH29H9000SR. It's a visual stunner, with a flat-faced front and strikingly modern recessed handles.

The RH25H5G11SR is not that refrigerator. It's a much, much more basic build. Perhaps "modest" is a better word for it. While the $3,000 version flaunts the high-end modernity of its Food Showcase feature, the RH25H5611SR all but hides it. The only hint that its a Food Showcase fridge at all is the small raised groove on the refrigerator handle indicating where the trigger that opens the inner door is located.

Enlarge Image
Tyler Lizenby/CNET

Pull that trigger as you're opening the door, and you'll instead pull open the entire front panel of the refrigerator, revealing the in-door shelves. It's similar to the "Door-in-Door" feature found in high-end LG refrigerators, and in both cases, it's pitched as a convenience. I don't personally see the appeal, but as a feature, it's proven somewhat popular -- enough so for both brands to expand their selection of respective door-in-a-door models in recent years.

Between the two approaches, I think I prefer Samsung's. With many of the LG models we've tested, including the $4,000 LMXS30776S French door and the $4,300 , the Door-in-Door feature has felt a bit clunky, with plastic barriers on the inside of those in-door shelves that block you off from using them normally. There are no such barriers on either side of the Food Showcase shelves.

Enlarge Image
Tyler Lizenby/CNET

Inside of the fridge, you get a pretty basic build, which isn't uncommon with side-by-side refrigerators. The narrow design makes it tough to squeeze in additional bells and whistles. You do get spillproof shelves, though, which a klutz like myself will always appreciate. The rims guarding against drips are a bit shallow, though -- "leakproof" might be the better descriptor.

I also appreciated that all three of the shelves in the main body of the fridge slide out like drawers, making it easier to grab items in the back. I also liked that they glided out smoothly, even with heavy items sitting on top. The same couldn't be said of the slide-out shelves in the Frigidaire FGHC2331PF side-by-side .

Enlarge Image
Tyler Lizenby/CNET

That's really about it for features, though. You get three bins in the bottom of the fridge, but they don't have controls for humidity or temperature. There aren't a whole lot of positions for you to rearrange shelves into (and zero extra positions for the in-door shelves). There's no butter bin in the door, either.

Still, the more expensive version of the Food Showcase side-by-side isn't much better, so comparatively speaking, you're getting better value for your dollar with this model. You can also downgrade from stainless steel to white or black to knock $100 off of the asking price.

samsung-food-showcase-refrigerator-heat-map-37.jpg
Enlarge Image
samsung-food-showcase-refrigerator-heat-map-37.jpg
With no orange hotspots in the body of the fridge, this is a very decent result for a side-by-side refrigerator at the default setting. Tyler Lizenby/CNET

Performance in the Showcase

The Samsung Food Showcase RH25H5611SR is a patently better performer than the better-looking Samsung Food Showcase RH29H9000SR, which retails for an additional $900. It's a surprising gulf between two fridges from the same manufacturer, with the same chassis, and in the same specific product lineup.

It's a real one, though. Testing both fridges out at the default setting of 37 degrees F, the more expensive version came back hot throughout the entire door, no shelf averaging less than 42 degrees F, and the bottom shelf averaging a very poor 48.3 degrees F. The RH25H5611SR had hotspots, too, but much less severe ones, with an overall average temperature of 41.1 across all in-door shelves. The bottom shelf was, again, the worst offender, but it came in about 5 degrees cooler than the bottom shelf in the more expensive model.

How we test refrigerators (pictures)

See all photos

Performance was noticeably better in the body of the fridge, too. The more expensive model held steady at 38.3 degrees on its main shelves, but produced averages above 40 degrees F in each of its two drawers. The less expensive RH25H5611SR, on the other hand, kept temperatures on the main shelves even closer to the 37 degree target, and kept all three of its drawers below 40 degrees, as well. That last bit is undeniably impressive for a side-by-side model -- even our previous top-scoring side-by-side, the LG LSXS26326S, saw its bottom drawer come in above 40 degrees in the default setting test.

samsung-food-showcase-refrigerator-heat-map-34-and-34-fs.jpg
Enlarge Image
samsung-food-showcase-refrigerator-heat-map-34-and-34-fs.jpg
Tyler Lizenby/CNET

Performance was slightly less impressive at the minimum setting of 34 degrees F. While they all came in well below the FDA's food safety benchmark of 40 degrees F, temperatures in the body of the fridge were all less accurate than before, coming in about 2-4 degrees warmer than the target. The door ran warm, too, with the bottom two shelves both finishing with averages higher than 40 F.

That isn't a terrible result compared with other side-by-sides, most of which typically struggle to match the temperature consistency of other form factors due to the narrow, vertical design of the fridge. It's also a better result than we saw with the more expensive Food Showcase side-by-side -- that model saw the majority of the door yield averages above 40 degrees in our 34-degree test, along with one of the drawers in the main body of the fridge.

samsung-food-showcase-side-by-side-rh25h5611sr-temp-graphs-34.jpg
Enlarge Image
samsung-food-showcase-side-by-side-rh25h5611sr-temp-graphs-34.jpg
We ran the 34-degree test twice, replacing the door openings with Food Showcase door openings on the second run. It made virtually no difference. Ry Crist/CNET

We're usually finished after testing a fridge at the default setting and testing it at its coldest setting, but with the RH25H5611SR, I decided to run a third test. During each run, we'll open the fridge and freezer doors for set intervals twice a day. You can see those five door openings in the minute-by-minute graphs above -- they're the five biggest spikes in each graph. For the third test, I repeated the 34-degree run, but replaced the refrigerator door openings with Food Showcase door openings to see if using the Food Showcase door helps the fridge hold the cold (and save you money).

As you can pretty plainly see, there's virtually no difference between the two graphs, aside from spikes at the door openings that are ever-so-slightly less turbulent (and a little bit harder to pick out). The average temperature in each region held steady, and while none of them rose in the second test, none of them dropped by more than 0.2 degrees, either. If the Food Showcase door has any impact on performance, it's fractional at best.

samsung-food-showcase-refrigerator-storage.jpg
Enlarge Image
samsung-food-showcase-refrigerator-storage.jpg
Things got cramped fast, especially when I started loading in our large stress test items. Ry Crist/CNET

How much does it fit?

Side-by-side fridges will never get especially high marks for their storage capacities. Even the largest ones are still narrow, which gives you a lot less flexibility with larger items.

That's certainly the case with the RH25H5611SR. While I was able to fit all of my test groceries inside with room to spare, I found I didn't have the flexibility needed to keep items well spaced out, or grouped together in a sensible fashion. With only a few of the in-door shelves offering enough space for tall items, my condiments ended up weirdly dispersed throughout the door, with a ketchup bottle ending up with my butter up top and a bottle of maple syrup ending up squeezed in with the beer and wine at the bottom.

samsung-food-showcase-refrigerator-storage-2.jpg
Enlarge Image
samsung-food-showcase-refrigerator-storage-2.jpg
Even after rearranging the shelves in the fridge to make more room for my tall items, I was only able to fit three out of six stress test items inside with my groceries. Ry Crist/CNET

After the groceries go in, we try to stuff in our six large stress test items, as well. The extra-large pizza box was too wide to stand much of a chance (we've yet to find a side-by-side that fits it), but the other five all managed to squeeze in one at a time. However, when I tried to see how many I could squeeze in at once, I found I could only fit two: a cake tray on the top shelf and a casserole dish on top of my two packs of soda.

Our final test is to take everything out, rearrange the shelves to optimize space as much as we can, then try again. As said before, you can't rearrange the in-door shelves, so my options were pretty limited. I was, however, able to lower the top shelf one notch, allowing me to move my milk jugs into the body of the fridge, where they belong. That freed up valuable door space, and also made room in the fridge for a third stress test item, a tall-sized pitcher. The last two -- a party platter and a roasting pan -- had to join that pizza box on the "no-go" shelf.

Three out of six stress test items is a bit worse than the side-by-side average. With most of the other models we've tested, we've been able to get four in at once. With 15.6 cubic feet in the fridge and not a lot of flexibility with where you place your shelves, it's an interior that leaves a lot to be desired.

Enlarge Image
Tyler Lizenby/CNET

The verdict

Remove the wildly different exterior aesthetics from the equation, and this is essentially the same fridge as Samsung's original Food Showcase side-by-side. The key differences are that it performs better and costs less. If the plain-looking design is fine by you (and if you don't need an excess of storage space), then I say it's clearly the better value at $2,100.

Pass up on the door-in-a-door approach altogether, and you'll be able to save some money. At $1,500, the LG LSXS26326S is just one solid side-by-side alternative on the market. Still, with strong performance, the Food Showcase side-by-side has more going for it than a nifty door, and merits consideration even if you're a door-in-a-door skeptic like I am.

7.7

Samsung RH25H5611SR

Score Breakdown

Features 7Design 7Performance 9Usability 7