47" Wide FlexCount Series 249 Bottle Three Zone Stainless Steel Side-by-Side Wine Refrigerator Reviews

09/01/2015

In short, these coolers (two separate units) have been excellent and I have no serious complaints. The looks great and they function exactly as they should. The shelves are strong and are relatively adaptable to different bottle sizes, the controls are simple and intuitive and it's not nearly as loud as some other reviews for similar models suggest.

My only complaints are related to the actual design. And I complain only because the designers were so close to getting it perfect. All they had to do was add about an inch to the width and an inch to the height and then all but the fattest champagne and pinot bottles would fit without issue. I know that the product description points out these two bottle shapes, but in practice there are many higher-end wine makers that use heavier, thicker, and sometimes slightly taller bottles that all will create issues with trying to get 11 bottles on a shelf. Standard bottles - no problem. Everything else - could be a problem. And it's not just the width of the shelf, it's also the height. Some bottles (not just pinot noirs) are tick enough that you can't close the shelf while some are close and only scrape the label off. Not the end of the world, but disappointing. Now, there are 3 shelves on the left and two on the right that are capable of holding all of these fatter bottles, but that may not be enough. In real world usage, knowing that there aren't many people out there that are going to spend a few thousand dollars on wine storage and then fill it up only with $10 bottles of wine, these coolers probably hold a little less than 200 bottles. I've got a pretty good mix of Californians, French, Italian, Spanish and southern hemisphere wines, and that's about where I'm at.

The thing that's so frustrating is the coolers only had to be slightly larger. It's not like these are standard sized for any particular space as they are designed now. Make each side 1 inch wider and taller, charge $20 more for the additional parts and materials, and they would get 5 stars in my book. So close!

Even so, they are excellent. I'd give them a 9 out of 10, but I can't rate them at 100%.