During testing, we outfit each refrigerator with thermocouples in a climate-controlled chamber and monitor it for a month, collecting more than 5.4 million temperature readings that identify warm and cold spots, to determine which models will keep your food fresh longer. We also factor in survey data from thousands of CR members to judge brand reliability and satisfaction.
All that data—and then some—informs CR’s refrigerator ratings and each model’s Overall Score. Our ratings are sorted by width, so you can easily find the best refrigerator that will fit in your kitchen. The most common widths are 30, 33, and 36 inches. One of the best large refrigerators we’ve tested, a built-in model, is an outlier at 42 inches wide.
