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Comment by quartz | Hacker News Reader

Wait is this actually better? It's well presented in the ad but:

- that removable veggie holder in the door looks crazy heavy and super awkward to put back in place (lining up at a sharp angle while gripping likely slick sides)

- you have to open the refrigerator door to get at the freezer

- the door compartments are narrow and probably can't handle odd sized containers

- the shelves have holes in them so anything that drips off that uncovered plate of food gets all over everything below it

- the ice ejector is completely unnecessary in our current world of ice makers. I doubt that fridge has a water line coming into it

- the shelves don't look like they have adjustable height so you're stuck with 3 shelves that can't fit a gallon of milk

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Yeah the only two features that this fridge has that my fridge doesn't have are the pull out shelves and the removable bin for vegetables.

I've got no idea why you'd really want the removable bin for vegetables. Carry all my veggies over to the sink first and then pick out the ones I want? And look at how small that thing is.

Pull out shelves seem nice I guess, but they'd only be useful on lower shelves. My fridge seems to be about a foot taller than the one in the video. This person wouldn't be tall enough to see all the stuff on the top shelf if it were pulled out.

Does your fridge not have crisper bins for veggies? I've had that in pretty much all my fridges, and the bins are always easily removable.

Pull-out shelves not so much (all the fridges I've had, had adjustable but "locked" glass shelving, I would assume for hygiene as a glass shelf is much easier to clean regularly or after a spill, plus they don't block light so much), but they are available on expensive or professional fridges.

The pull out fridge doesn't even seem that great, I just think of shit sliding off the back or you push them in and then you push everything off the front.

You could easily solve this the same way pull-out shelves all over solve it: a small lip or some other sort of securing. I don’t think that’s too much of a concern.

However it strikes me as a necessity for deep and rather badly organised fridges so while I can see the value (it’s pretty much the only not-useless thing I can see in the ad) it seems limited unless you’re at a pretty high level of use e.g. you use a literal ton of fridge space or you commonly need to swap entire shelves of e.g. desserts in and out.

Unsurprisingly slide out racks and trays seem pretty common on professional fridges.

The pull out feature can be found on modern fridges, my previous LG fridge had it.

> I've got no idea why you'd really want the removable bin for vegetables.

They say in the video that it's for when you bring a bunch of fresh vegetables home. You put the bin next to the sink and then load the vegetables into the bin as you wash them.

Who pre washes vegetables before putting them into the fridge? Wouldn’t that significantly decrease shelf life?

My fridge has pull-out shelves. They are very nice the 2x per year I use them.

Agree. It gives that "nifty!" impression, but I don't think it would be so useful in practise. Especially, I don't think the vegetables would keep well in that box. When I replaced my older (90s) fridge, vegetables kept much better in the new one, which had ciculation of air that the older fridge missed, and thus better humidity control. I suspect that tight box would not be good for durability of freshness.

Imagine how much hassle it is to wash that veggie container in sink.

How much gunk can get into shelves rails.

I clean fridge twice a year and would like not to do it more often.

Modern fridges are optimized for easy cleaning.

- you have to open the refrigerator door to get at the freezer

Not to mention that this freezer is likely: 1. Not self-defrosting, and likely to build up ice since you open the door each time you open the fridge. 2. Definitely less convenient. I have a fairly cheap, small refrigerator - one that fits in my attic apartment - and the freezer has pull-out drawers. Since it sits under the fridge, this is usually nice.

The hinged box in the door will live till it gets left drop-open. Then it will break the hinges, stop points (and I fear it will require the entire door replaced), and give foot injure.

Sliding shelves -- I see stuff sticking to the upper shelf and falling behind onto the lower one, making it impossible to draw this one back and close the fridge. (Occasionally you have to stuff things in plastic bags onto each other, because of lack of space, and they push onto the upper shelf; or sometimes bags get pushed to the back wall and freeze to it -- and it's no problem on still shelves.)

This reminds me of cellphone Sony J70, with a scrolling wheel. I wanted one badly in 2002, bought one -- and turned out it wasn't much more convenient (the wheel wasn't smooth) and it broke the very first time I dropped the phone on the floor. Repair was costy. That's how I learned that seemingly cool features have downsides to them.

I was able to find a print ad for this thing[0], and it has 9.5 cubic feet of storage. Modern "full size" fridges have 2-3x as much storage (20-30 Cubic feet!), are going to be vastly cheaper to run/use, and have built in ice and water makers.

And you get can similar sized, simple fridges (that are still probably vastly cheaper) for like the same price as that one, but minimum wage is like 8x higher today.

[0]: https://www.ebay.com/itm/256058911098

[1]: https://www.thekitchn.com/refrigerators-under-500-23525115

In those days you went to a small market nearby and bought a meal sized portion of food. They didn’t have Costco.

The people purchasing the top of the line, best in class Imperial refrigerator marketed toward postwar suburban families were not going to the small market nearby, they were going to a supermarket in their car to live the American Dream.

See the difference between the normal[1] and top of the line[2] friges.

[1]: https://www.automatice.org/cgi-bin/index.cgi?showdoc~1275~Fr...

[2]: https://www.automatice.org/cgi-bin/index.cgi?showdoc~1595~Fr...

> the shelves have holes in them so anything that drips off that uncovered plate of food gets all over everything below it

My childhood fridge had wire shelves. The most common problem was when mom's sourdough starter would get frisky and blow the lid off its plastic container, spreading starter goo to all sorts of things. Seemed to happen at least once a year.

Not to mention that it has an on/off compressor, much less efficient than modern, inverter ones.

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