Reviews
4.2
4,536 reviews
Custom Panel Bespoke 4-D FrenchDoorFridge29cu
Finally got delivery of my 4 door/middle drawer Bespoke with custom charcoal glass panels now more than a month old. This is the quietest fridge I have ever owned or heard. Yes you can hear the ice drop but its not nearly as noisy as some claim it to be. The beverage center is working fine so far noting the density of the filter the water does come out slower than expected epsecially if your water source is a well pump and not city water so its a little expected. If you want a faster flow and you dont care about every chemical taken out by the OEM dense filter buy a replacement filter later for taste and oder only which should allow water to flow more freely on fills. The temps are held fairly correctly in the fridge and freezer with this caveate. The ice maker when put in boost mode OR if your at first filling the ice bins will cause the 0F freezer temp setting to be overridden to a temp drop to as low as -20F at times to more quickly freeze the cubes increasing speed of making them. Now Samsung does not tell you this in their start up cheat sheet booklet but if you search on their web site you will find this notation of this occurring automatically and is considered normal operation. At first I thought the freezer was just always freezing at -??F all the time. It floated back to 0F once the cube tray was full enough or through the app or control panel I shut of the ice makers even if they were not full. I have no issues with doors slamming as some complained or heaviness to open and close them and one should ensure the fridge is properly leveled. The beverge pitcher will not fill unless the door is closed so don't put it back in its location and sit around waiting for a fill to start with the door open but you can hear it starting and stopping the fill process once the door is closed. The app has some nice features besides adjusting some of the panel settings remotely. The alarm alert and energy used report features are esppecially usefull as well as turning on/off each icemaker independently. The energy chart suggest 685kwh per year usage while I have been using just 1 to 1.2 kwh per day which amounts to about 450kwh at most for the year which is way better than projections but then again its only me goingin and out of the fridge and not a family.
Love this refrigerator! Has a lot of capacity and is very versatile with regards to the ability to change out the door and drawer panels. This feature is unique to the Bespoke refrigerator. Even custom panels are available from Samsung. Cool feature! My only complaint about the refrigerator is that I wish it had better lighting for the pull out drawer and the freezer drawer. They are lit now, but only on one side (on the left) so the right side of the pullouts is a little darker especially if using in a lower lit room (like at nighttime.) But performance wise, its a GREAT refrigerator with some outstanding features! We really love the Beverage Center, with the way its designed and the auto fill water pitcher in the door. That's a well used item in our household. Also I like the fact that you can easily change settings of the frig using a smart phone. What is especially useful is the ability to turn on and off easily the ice maker which makes two different types of ice (cubed and pellet.) We don't use all that much ice, so I turn on the ice maker, let it fill the ice bin to a level we want, and then we can easily switch it off using our smart phone, until we need to turn it back on in a few days.) Great feature for smaller families that don't necessarily use that much ice in a week. The only other desire I would have liked in the refrigerator, is having pull out baskets in the freezer section. That makes it a lot easier when you are trying to sort through and find stuff in the freezer section. After EXTENSIVE searching online, we did find four baskets that fit pretty well in the freezer section. There arranged two by two, with two baskets on top of two below. Now when we need to find something we just lift out the baskets and its much easier to find something. They are not a perfect, contoured fitting basket, but pretty close. Samsung should make optional pull out baskets that custom fit the lower freezer pull out drawer in this Bespoke refrigerator.
Problematic Freezer and adaptable storage
I bought this in August of 2021, and while the overall experience has been nice we've had a few issues that are souring our opinion.
We enjoy having the right side door shelf access, and the shelving configuration is quite good. An average grocery load fits rather easily, and having adaptability to accommodate a gallon of milk and a crock pot at the same time is welcome. The doors all open easily, but shut firmly and the door alarm has saved me more than a couple times.
However, there have been a few problems, ordered here from least to most important.
The ice maker, while perfectly functional, does tend to frost and ice over quite rapidly. If you go a few days without using ice, it can be a little hard to get started again. It always sounds like you're getting crushed ice, even when dispensing cubes.
Out of the box, the door mounted water pitcher leaked like a sieve from the seal between the lid and the body. I looked into replacing it, and it was surprisingly expensive to replace. Later attempts to remold the plastic, unsurprisingly, failed. A month after, we left some lemons in there too long, and discovered that citric acid can degrade and eat away at polystyrene, of which the inner diffuser and outer pitcher is made.
In December of 2023, we noticed problems with the Freezer maintaining setpoint (SP = -8°F, Act. = 26-39°F). Contacted Samsung, and they sent out a tech who diagnosed and recharged the refrigerant. Now, 4 months later we're starting to have the same problem again with food thawing. Keeping food cold is the primary purpose of a refrigerator, and a paltry 2.5 year lifespan is appallingly fast to experience problems like this.
We enjoy having the right side door shelf access, and the shelving configuration is quite good. An average grocery load fits rather easily, and having adaptability to accommodate a gallon of milk and a crock pot at the same time is welcome. The doors all open easily, but shut firmly and the door alarm has saved me more than a couple times.
However, there have been a few problems, ordered here from least to most important.
The ice maker, while perfectly functional, does tend to frost and ice over quite rapidly. If you go a few days without using ice, it can be a little hard to get started again. It always sounds like you're getting crushed ice, even when dispensing cubes.
Out of the box, the door mounted water pitcher leaked like a sieve from the seal between the lid and the body. I looked into replacing it, and it was surprisingly expensive to replace. Later attempts to remold the plastic, unsurprisingly, failed. A month after, we left some lemons in there too long, and discovered that citric acid can degrade and eat away at polystyrene, of which the inner diffuser and outer pitcher is made.
In December of 2023, we noticed problems with the Freezer maintaining setpoint (SP = -8°F, Act. = 26-39°F). Contacted Samsung, and they sent out a tech who diagnosed and recharged the refrigerant. Now, 4 months later we're starting to have the same problem again with food thawing. Keeping food cold is the primary purpose of a refrigerator, and a paltry 2.5 year lifespan is appallingly fast to experience problems like this.
Poor Design and Support
I have had this refrigerator for almost 5 years and I will never buy a Samsung Refrigerator again--or any other Samsung appliance. There are two main issues.
First, the ice maker. (If you've read other reviews, you're shocked!) After the first year of ownership, the ice maker began continuously frosting up--the entire back of the ice maker would be solid ice and the ice in the bucket would begin turning slushie. I have had to defrost and remove the ice maker every two or three months. I have taken to turning off the ice maker until I run out of ice--this slows down the icing up, but doesn't eliminate it. I replaced the icemaker unit with a redesign (more on that later) and it was good for half a year, but it has started again. The thing is that Samsung knows about this and refuses to acknowledge the poor design or do anything about it. (Just do an internet search for details.) I found a Samsung Service Bulletin that discusses all the possible solutions to this; the final step was replacing the unit with a (slightly) redesigned ice maker. This service bulletin came out a year before my refrigerator was manufactured--but my refrigerator still came with the old, defective ice maker! This tells me that I cannot trust Samsung to do what is right.
Secondly, the middle drawer has the wiring for the drawer in the tracks on the side of the drawer. Over the course of time, the shielding on the wires has become frayed and the controls for the drawer (along with the freezer light) no longer work. And sometimes the drawer doesn't close all the way because of this. Since the drawer still stays cold (I assume at the regular refrigerator temp) I just put up with it.
I like the rest of the refrigerator, but because of these two things, I cannot give it anything but one star. I have to spend too much time dealing with something I shouldn't have to think about ever.
First, the ice maker. (If you've read other reviews, you're shocked!) After the first year of ownership, the ice maker began continuously frosting up--the entire back of the ice maker would be solid ice and the ice in the bucket would begin turning slushie. I have had to defrost and remove the ice maker every two or three months. I have taken to turning off the ice maker until I run out of ice--this slows down the icing up, but doesn't eliminate it. I replaced the icemaker unit with a redesign (more on that later) and it was good for half a year, but it has started again. The thing is that Samsung knows about this and refuses to acknowledge the poor design or do anything about it. (Just do an internet search for details.) I found a Samsung Service Bulletin that discusses all the possible solutions to this; the final step was replacing the unit with a (slightly) redesigned ice maker. This service bulletin came out a year before my refrigerator was manufactured--but my refrigerator still came with the old, defective ice maker! This tells me that I cannot trust Samsung to do what is right.
Secondly, the middle drawer has the wiring for the drawer in the tracks on the side of the drawer. Over the course of time, the shielding on the wires has become frayed and the controls for the drawer (along with the freezer light) no longer work. And sometimes the drawer doesn't close all the way because of this. Since the drawer still stays cold (I assume at the regular refrigerator temp) I just put up with it.
I like the rest of the refrigerator, but because of these two things, I cannot give it anything but one star. I have to spend too much time dealing with something I shouldn't have to think about ever.
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