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Door-in-Door Refrigerator Design: Yea or Nay?

By Rain Noe - July 24, 2012

in Object Culture

As an incompetent cook and a bachelor living in a city filled with delivery options, I am not the ideal person to comment on the design of a refrigerator; I only open my mostly-empty Hotpoint (terrible name for a 'fridge, by the way) when I want beer. But this week LG caught my eye when they announced their new "Door-in-Door" French-door refrigerator, which operates thusly:

(The 'fridge in the video is actually a Kenmore that was released earlier this year, but Consumer Reports reports that "LG actually manufactures many Kenmore refrigerators," and I believe they're the same machine.)

As for how it works, the inner door is magnetically sealed; hitting this button with your thumb...

...deactivates the magnet.

For those of you that are members of a heavy-'fridge-using family of four as seen in the video, do you think this is a worthwhile design innovation, or a gimmick? For their part, LG claims that the door-in-door design provides an energy savings, in that opening just the sub-door to retrieve a commonly-needed item allows less cold air to escape than throwing the whole thing open; this made the needle on my BS meter quiver uncertainly. I do wonder, however, how many sixes of Miller Lite that front door would hold.

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P Johnston

11 years ago

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Kenmore had a similar product that my mom & I each purchased 20 years ago. The freezer was on the top and the door to the fridge had a "door in door" feature horizontally (it opened like a tailgate & was about 1/4 of the door. I wonder why it took so long to recreate this idea. I loved it. Mom's fridge is still in use. (I made the mistake of replacing mine with a counter depth fridge) Can't wait to get this one.
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powers

12 years ago

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Brought to you by the family who doesn't have anywhere to be until 10AM!

Could be handy though. I guess if you're going to get a new fridge...
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Jon

12 years ago

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This is an interesting idea, but I have to question it's real impact. From an actual cooling standpoint, the air represents only a tiny percentage of the thermal mass inside the fridge. It doesn't take much energy at all to reduce the temperature of the warm air that is cycled into the cooling compartment. Most of the energy is expended on reducing the temperature of the items placed in the fridge. Once the contents are cool, they are happy to stay that way, even if some warm air is cycled in.
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Peter

12 years ago

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Iirc this feature has been on fridges for the Korean market for a few years, I'm surprised it took this long to come to the US.

Regardless depending on your habits this may or may not be very useful. It looks to be mainly meant for drinks and condiments, while the 'snack drawers' on other fridges won't fit a gallon of milk they can hold lots of other things that this can't.
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Nick

12 years ago

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The design definitely makes sense. Every time you open the refrigerator, most of the cold air is swept out and it needs to be cooled again once the door is closed. The door-in-door concept would allow most of the cool air to be trapped behind the second door and only allows a fraction of that air to escape. Of course, if you're opening the fridge as often as that family, I don't think it really matters...
As Kyle said, "No one lives like that!"
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Anthony P

12 years ago

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I think its a great idea. I'd venture to say, as a response to Jamie, this would be easier to clean. most of the stuff we forget about in the fridge is due to it being hidden in the back. And all the time spent moving things out of the front to pull something from the back is diminished. I come for a large household so my fridge is always jam packed.

Glass door fridges are impracticable but this seems like a reasonable solution to how people interact with there fridge. Think of it as a separate cabinet for drinks and accoutrements.

But if I where you I'd be less worried about the credibility of its energy saving capabilities and more worried on why you would ever have miller lite in your fridge. :)
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Kyle Parisi

12 years ago

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The promo video was absurd. No one lives like that!

But I do concur with your last question.
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jamie

12 years ago

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i think it's not that practical. even though a fridge can preserve the shelf life of a food product, you still have to see and check on a regular basis which items in your fridge are still good or has expired. one might forget they've stored something behind that inner door, or the bigger door. it's already a pain in the butt to clean a whole fridge. an extra door would make the task more inconvenient.

the most energy-saving practice people can exercise is to have a running inventory of the foodstuff they have in their fridge. think of what they have to pull out of the fridge before they open the door.
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IDAL

12 years ago

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I can't believe this! I've been sketching this solution today xDD
It seems a good way to save energy, not the most comfortable but it may save a few euros every month. In my opinion, specially useful when you stay still in front of it with the door widely open while thinking about what to eat or cook.
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og

12 years ago

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fuking amazing design. Kenmore one is the most beautiful piece of plastic and metal ever forged by human hands since the dawn of time
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