Insignia Refrigerator

Model NS-RTM18WH2 Rev A (30-inch wide, 18 cubic feet)

★★★☆☆

We’ve had this refrigerator for about three years now. Nothing fancy, but it was relatively cheap for a refrigerator (Insignia is one of Best Buy’s store brands), and it does its job: keeping food cold or frozen as needed.

But the shelves are spaced awkwardly, the drawers are annoyingly shallow, and the lack of real handles (just recesses on the doors) has gotten frustrating over time.

It’s mostly stopped making noises like a dying moose. (Not that I know what a dying moose actually sounds like, and to be fair I don’t want to know, but it’s what I’d imagine a dying moose would sound like, if not as loud.) Sometimes it still sounds like it’s experiencing gastric distress.

Reversing the door was a pain, but at least that was a one-time problem.

It’s also way too easy for the freezer to pop open slightly when someone (like, say, a hungry teenager in a rush) slams the refrigerator door closed. And while it has a chime to warn you when the refrigerator door is left open, it doesn’t have one for the freezer. So occasionally I’ll walk into the kitchen in the morning and find that the freezer has been leaking cold air for however many hours since the teenager got himself a midnight snack, and condensation has been forming on stuff that I hope hasn’t warmed up too much overnight.