Best 33-Inch-Wide Refrigerators
Here are the top refrigerators at this in-between size from GE, LG, Maytag, and Whirlpool
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If your kitchen cabinetry doesn’t have the standard 36-inch-wide slot for a refrigerator, it can be tough to find one that fits. According to the market analysis firm OpenBrand, just around 8 percent of refrigerators come in a 33-inch width.
If you’re in the market for a fridge this size, don’t worry: We’ve compiled this list of the best 33-inch-wide models and screened each with testing that involves taking millions of temperature readings over a period of months.
- Best 33-Inch Refrigerators: Top-Freezer Bottom-Freezer Side-by-Side French-Door
- How CR Tests Refrigerators
Best 33-Inch Top-Freezer Refrigerators
Top-freezer refrigerators tend to be more budget-friendly than models of other types, but their doors often require a wide space to swing fully open, and they’re more likely than other fridges to lack icemakers and water dispensers.
Best 33-Inch Bottom-Freezer Refrigerators
Bottom-freezer refrigerators allow easy access to fresh food items, but you’ll have to bend to reach the freezer bins. Most of these have less storage than top-freezers.
Best 33-Inch Side-by-Side Refrigerators
The narrow doors of side-by-side models make them an ideal pick for tight kitchen spaces, but you might have trouble storing wider items, like pizza boxes.
Best 33-Inch French-Door Refrigerators
French-door refrigerators are the most popular pick among our members, and they generally come with more features than top-freezers or bottom-freezers. On the flip side, they tend to use up more energy.
How CR Tests Refrigerators
We rate refrigerators based on their thermostat performance, temperature uniformity, noise output, ease of use, energy efficiency, crisper performance, and icemaker performance (if they have one).
Every refrigerator we test gets wired with 15 temperature sensors. We then monitor those thermocouples for more than a month in one of three temperature-controlled chambers, collecting more than 5.4 million temperature readings for each fridge we test. The results tell us how well a refrigerator maintains a set temperature and how temperature varies in different areas of a fridge, so we can determine which models will keep your food fresh longer.
Our testers measure the noise when the compressor starts up and the steady hum while the fridge is running. For ease of use, we examine the fridge’s layout, controls, and lighting.
We measure each fridge’s true usable capacity, subtracting the space taken up by filters, lights, and other components. To see how efficient each fridge is, we measure the electricity consumption per cubic foot of that usable capacity.
We also factor in survey data from thousands of CR members to judge brand reliability and satisfaction. All of that data and more inform CR’s refrigerator ratings and each model’s Overall Score.
Take a look into our refrigerator labs for more information on how we test.
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