Samsung Fridge Freezer SRL3626B > Reviews (2)

This is a great fridge freezer for a small family. Our family is two adults and a child, and it copes very well with the weekly shop, although can be pretty packed.

Starting at the top, from the outside, there are six buttons at the very top of the machine, three to either side of the digital display. The first on the left is the power button, which as you would imagine is used for switching the whole thing on and off. This is however an 'electronic' on/off switch therefore there will still be power going to the device if you don't switch off at the socket.

One thing we noticed with these buttons is that they can quite easily be pushed 'in' and end up further back behind the facia than they should be. A gentle touch is all that is required!

The next button 'SUPER' is essentially a fast freeze button, which will run the freezer continually - although it does switch itself back to normal automatically.

The next two buttons are the freezer (-17°C to -25°C) and refrigerator (+1°C to +6°C) temperature selections, which are displayed on the temperature display while setting. After a moment the display will revert back to showing the set freezer temperature. If the power fails at any time, the display will reset to two dashes (--) to indicate there has been a failure. This is cleared by pressing one of the temperature buttons.

The ECO button, automatically presets the freezer to -17°C and the refrigerator to 6°C. For us, this was just too warm a temperature in the fridge. We prefer it colder so don't use the Eco setting, opting instead for 4°C in the fridge, and -18°C in the freezer. The final button 'VAC' is the vacation setting, which keeps the freezer running as normal, but switches off the fridge altogether. Again, we've never really used this, as we tend to have some longer life stuff left in the fridge when we go away, so it's never really completely empty.

The lamp inside is a fluorescent strip type, which can take a second to come on when you open the door, but does give a very good white light when it's on. The door also has an alarm if it is left open for too long (or if it is left open a crack). This has certainly helped avoid catastrophes that we had with previous fridges!

The door trays are fairly good, and reasonably deep compared to some, although because they lift out upwards, if you cram in items (such as bottles), the whole shelf can sometimes lift out (and crash to the floor), as you pull the bottle out. we've learned to make sure things aren't squashed in too tightly! The shelving is quite flexible, with two full shelves and two half shelves, one of which we removed as we like to have a fairly large jug of water stood in the fridge, which couldn't be accomodated with all the shelves in place.

The cooling system is all hidden and therefore there is no frost/condensation on the back wall. Everything is done via cold air flow which is directed via seperate outlets into each shelf position. The cooler boxes for salads and vegetables have adjustable ventilation and they keep things very fresh we've found.

The freezer has three drawers and an ice cube maker section. This was quite nifty - essentially it is two trays for icecubes in a rack with dials at the front, turning the dials turns over the trays and flexes them slightly, causing the ice cubes to fall out into the collection drawer underneath. You can make up quite a lot of ice by simply refilling the trays every few hours and having it set to 'SUPER'. The second half of the top shelf is a narrow, but full depth drawer. The second drawer is the largest and can accomodate a pizza right to the bottom, however not a really large one! The bottom draw is even more restricted as it does not go as far back - obviously there needs to be room for the compressor somewhere, so that must take up the room behind the freezer at the bottom.

Noise wise, you can certainly hear it when running, as with all fridges, and it isn't exceptionally noisy, however it could be quieter in my opinion.

The fridge is very heavy and quite difficult to maneuver, particularly to get it back into a tight space. However it can be managed with a lot of effort, huffing and puffing. We also had to move the door so that it opened the other direction. This was possible as the fittings simply needed to be reversed, however there were no clear instuctions on how to do this, and some of the blanking covers, when moved, no longer seemed to fit as snugly as they had in their original position. It took a while to work out by a process of deduction how to go about doing it.

Overall we really like this fridge, and like the 'alarm' feature if the door is left open (although it does tend to go off when you're packing everything in from the supermarket shop). There is no ice or frost build up in either the fridge or the freezer. It's been very reliable so far - after 18 months. The main drawback would be the size of the freezer drawers which are quite small really.