Best Mini Fridges of 2024
The top models, from companies such as Danby and Insignia, outperform their rivals on cooling performance in our tests
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Whether for your home office or your teenager’s first college dorm room, mini fridges are deceptively simple little appliances. They all look roughly the same and offer next-to-no features beyond keeping stuff cold (at least compared with full-sized refrigerators), but our tests found that mini fridges can vary significantly in their cooling performance, energy efficiency, and noise output.
Consumer Reports brought eight popular mini fridges into our climate-controlled test chambers for a thorough evaluation. Below you’ll find the five best mini fridges from our tests, including a couple of mini fridges with freezers. The list includes models made by Arctic King, Danby, Magic Chef, Midea, and Insignia.
To see how all of the mini fridges performed in our tests, check our detailed mini fridge ratings. And if you need help shopping for a new mini fridge (or a full-sized refrigerator), head to our refrigerator buying guide.
Best Mini Fridges
Below, we highlight three of the best mini refrigerators from CR’s tests that make the most of the extra room in lieu of a freezer compartment.
Best Mini Fridges With a Freezer
There aren’t many great freezer-laden mini fridges in our ratings, but Midea stands out with above-average performance. We also highlight an alternative that’s less than stellar but considerably more affordable.
How Consumer Reports Tests Mini Fridges
Despite their diminutive size, mini fridges go through much of the same rigorous testing as full-sized models in our climate-controlled test chambers. Our test engineers then compile the results into four test scores: refrigerator performance, freezer performance, energy efficiency, and noise.
Do Mini Fridges Use a Lot of Electricity?
With “mini” in the name, you’d think these little refrigerators wouldn’t use a lot of energy compared with full-sized refrigerators, but that’s not the case.
“Mini fridges are true energy hogs,” says CR test engineer Bernie Deitrick. “They use almost as much energy as the most efficient, and smallest, top-freezer refrigerators in our ratings.”
Keep in mind that the smallest top-freezers you can buy are still three to four times the size of a mini fridge. That means that while you can get a lot more bang for your buck at home if you go with a small top-freezer refrigerator, a mini fridge is still a better choice for tight quarters.
BEST TIME TO BUY:
