Frigidaire - Gallery 22.3 Cu. Ft. Side-by-Side Refrigerator - Stainless Steel

I received the unit in a damaged condition. I was given the choice of not accepting the item, receiving a monetary discount on the item, or order a replacement item. Seeing as it took 6 weeks to get the current item delivered, and it was cosmetic damage that wouldn’t really be seen (and a replacement could be damaged worse), I opted for the monetary discount. Set up was pretty straight forward, although the plastic protective film was a time consuming challenge to get completely removed. All components were included with the unit, and it has been operating as designed since installation. I was only home a couple of days before I had to leave town, but the unit was operating as designed at that time. Nicely lit interior, water and ice dispensers working, exterior controls function as they should. Over all I am happy with the purchase so far.

The fridge itself is great, so far (has been installed for about a week). The fingerprint resistant stainless is fantastic and a lifesaver with two kids. Ample lighting, decent amount of adjustability with the shelves. The fridge itself would be 5 stars, except I ran into two challenging issues. First, the plastic that protects the stainless steel doors is very thick. It performs well in protecting the fridge in transit and when it was moved into the house. I was looking forward to that satisfying peel once I had it in place. Instead, it took over an hour to remove all the plastic and tape, and there are pieces of plastic still stuck in the crevices where the ice & water dispenser and the gasket are. I imagine it will take another hour or more to remove all of it. Second, Zues himself installed the leveling feet. I tried an adjustable wrench to turn the plastic portion of the feet- no dice, it just turned on the metal stud. I then had to fabricate a ~14mm(ish) “wrench” out of some leftover 1/8” plate steel I had. The space is so small that you can’t even fit a regular open-end wrench on it. To try both of these methods, I had to lift the front of the fridge up with a bar to gain access. It was crude, and it worked, but it chewed up yet another hour in setting this fridge up.

I have no regrets buying this refrigerator. It's the largest one I could get that would fit in the spot that had at least some shelf adjustability. It would be nice if you could have more granularity in shelf placement and the little plastic pieces that hold the shelves in place didn't feel like they would break if you look at them wrong, but at least you can change the shelves to increase usable space. With most other refrigerators I looked at, your shelving options were: you put the shelves where there are brackets or you don't use the shelf at all. I love finally having a refrigerator with filtered water on the door. There are four other things that I find annoying though. Some more annoying than others. Getting crushed ice can be quite messy with little ice bits getting everywhere and the larger pieces are still quite large. When you want ice, it's difficult to have the refrigerator dispense the amount of ice you want. Sometimes, it takes a second or two for any ice to come out; other times a bunch shoots out at once. I mostly just get cubes, but it's also a problem with crushed. Another thing I find annoying is the touch sensitive panel. If the kitchen isn't bright enough, you can't find the place where you need to change between ice and water. I'm sure the rest of the panel has the same problem, but I often switch between water and ice, I don't change the temperature of the refrigerator. The last thing is trying to snap the panel at the bottom of the refrigerator into place. The water line gets in the way, so it took some time to get it to snap on. While this isn't something you don't have to take off too often, I'm not looking forward to any time I remove it to clean the refrigerator. I did have some milk go bad on me already, but that might not have had anything to do with the refrigerator. Because I can get water from the dispenser, I have been drinking more water, so the milk was close the expiration date when I dumped it, but not past it yet. It's hard to tell if this was a problem with the milk or the refrigerator, but it has only happened to one gallon of milk, so it's more likely just bad milk. One last thing I would like to note, be prepared to buy a water hammer arrestor. This isn't a direct problem with the refrigerator. It has to due with the water pressure at your home. I had to get two for my washing machine (hot and cold water lines), so it came as no shock that I had to get one for the refrigerator. Over all, this have been a great refrigerator so far. I love that it's much larger than my old refrigerator and I can actually see everything in it. I shouldn't have the same problem like when some kiwis got pushed to the back of the refrigerator and the only reason I knew what these little fuzzy brown balls were that I found some time later was because they were still in the container that said kiwis.