LG's small French door fridge feels the squeeze of tight spaces

Hi I'm Andrew Gebhart for CNet. Today I'm taking a look at the LG LFC22770SE. This is a 30-inch wide French door refrigerator and it has the honor of being the first LG fridge we've reviewed that's kind of disappointing. The performance was solid. The main compartment at both the default setting and the lowest temperature setting walks a nice line between 40° and 30°F. The doors when a little bit warm but that's fine. It even has a serviceable even though little bit boring list of features. It's got an automatic ice maker, it's got humidity sliders, it's got an extra deli drawer in there. It even has a spill proof shelf. For me that's a big win, because I'm a messy person, I don't like spending time cleaning things up, and spill proof shelves tend to work really well, so I like that for the price. It's just not as exciting as GE's comparable French Door Fridge. That one's only $1,600, it has a slate finish which I think looks a little better than the stainless The stainless here also smudges really easily and that GE fridge uses its interior a lot better than this one. It's a small fridge that feels smaller than it has to because of really poorly designed shelves. Moving them around isn't tough but there is only so many place that you can put them. So the interior is tough customize and tough to fit taller, bigger items. With every refrigerator we test, we load it up with groceries. And this fridge struggled with the normal stuff, like milk jugs, and cheese, and soda, and condiments, let alone the bigger items we use to stress it, like party platters and cake trays It's hard to imagine it costing that much more for LG to put more hooks on the back of the fridge to allow more positions for the shelf. Yet, that would have made such a huge difference in terms of allowing you to use the space to its fullest. So if you consider 33 inch width, go with GE's model. It's a slightly better performer, but this one's still fine. And it's just easier to use the space. With this fridge, LG just cut a little too much to get the price down. But if you are tight on space it's still a fine performer. For more, be sure to check out my full review on CNet.com. For CNet appliances, I'm Andrew Gebhart.