4 out of 4 people found this review helpful.
Fisher/Paykel Refrigerator
Date of Review: Oct 28, 2008
The Bottom Line: If you have a small kitchen, but want a nicer than standard refrigerator, this could be for you
We bought our unit from ABT electronics. Delivery went well, one small ding at the bottom of the unit from getting it from the truck to our second floor. Fit and finish are great, small,weird pinging noise from the lower hinge of the refrig door when you open it. We got used to it. I had read a previous review about noisy operation from an owner on-line. We've now had our F/P long enough to hear what they're probably writing about. The compressor is normally very quiet, but there is a cycle that doesn't seem to be related to ambient temperature of your house, and when the compressor is kicked into this "High" cycle, it gets more louder than usual. Not a killer amount of noise, but more noticeable than the usual running sounds.
This refrigerator will dispense chilled water from the outside of the top door, but not ice. All controls are also mounted in the front operation panel, you adjust your top or lower freezer temps from here, along with turning the display to either US or Metric readings. You can also set this refrig to Sabbath mode, which basically turns all the display and lights off.
The unit will level via threaded wheels at the front for a correct mounting and operation. Clean-up is very easy, even with being a stainless steel clad unit since F/P uses a polymer film over the stainless steel to keep fingerprints from happening. Only time will tell if the clear film changes color with age and sunlight.
You need to specify your 'swing' of the doors, they are not reversible like some units. Standard is a right swing, doors open and swing to the right. We needed and got a left swing unit for our small kitchen. Ice maker/water hook-up is a simple push-on coupler connection, no need for a threaded compression fitting like in the past. The single water connection will feed both valves just inside the bottom of the unit , one for your chilled water tank and one for the ice-maker. The power cord seems to be of standard appliance length
We have one real complaint. No output of ice from the ice maker. It truly has a mind of its own. It has two modes of operation, either it's making its small cubes[smaller than an American unit, about half the size of a regular ice cube] regularly, or it refuses to make ice at all.
We've had a service call for it. the refrig got cute and started making ice the night before the serviceman came out, after not making ice for 10 days!. It was fine for almost 2 months, and now just stopped again this week. No repairs were made at the previous visit because the unit had started making ice again. The arm at the rear of the freezer that gets tripped 'on" by the sliding shelf/ice bin checks out. Seems to be either a control unit issue or the water solenoid valve at the rear isn't always working. We always have water available for the front mounted chilled water dispensor, so we know there's water available for the seperate solenoid valve that feeds the ice maker.
This unit isn't for everyone. The biggest difference for an American consumer is that the bins,shelves and storage area is really designed with a global view in mind. We're used to buying large sized items like 2 liter bottles or a gallon of milk and just popping it into our frig. You will have to rethink your purchases in terms of package sizes if you buy this refrigerator. We worked it out easily since we also have a full size refrigerator in our basement. The Fisher/Paykel was only going to be in our kitchen. I seriously recommend taking an empty container of something you normally buy along with you as a sizing guide when you go to look at this unit at your local store. The storage design will become very obvious , esp. with your plastic jug or bottle in hand.
