LG LMXS28596S 28 Cu. Ft. Stainless French-Door Smart Wi-Fi Enabled Refrigerator

Linear compressors are cheaper and there are a few other advantages for refrigerators: however, none of that makes up for the failure rate of the design used by LG.

The failure rate is so high, LG has settled two class action lawsuits in the last few years regarding the compressor, yet LG refuses to change the design, switch to a more reliable compressor type, or even admit the problem.

All appliances produced now days have reliability issues. Part of the problem is US and European governments forcing companies to make more and more efficient appliances. The more efficient compressors and refrigeration equipment become, the less reliable they are. Add that to the poor quality control in Chinese and Korean factories, and the consumer is losing big.

For example, AC units that have a very high seer rating (high energy efficiency) fail more often and cost more to repair than low seer units. Any savings on energy is over shadowed by repair costs over the life of the equipment. The government doesn’t care how much we spend replacing and repairing appliances because they want to show everyone how much they’re doing to help the environment. It’s a bogus objective that comes at a very high cost to consumers. And there is more of it coming–water heaters (barely work now), washing machines and more refrigerator crap.

Of course, LG has more reliable options so who knows what their internal costs are and the internal politics. You can bet that LG has looked closely at the economics of replacing the sealed cooling system with a more reliable one versus paying the claims, etc. They do what’s in their best interest not yours.

I’ve personally had two $3000 LG fridges fail within 5 years. Both still had a compressor warranty, but it was going to take several weeks to months to get all the parts and do the repair, so I don’t bother repairing them, I just buy new ones. In my experience, repairing sealed systems using linear compressors is usually a very short lived solution (as in likely to fail again within 2 yrs). But others may disagree.

I won’t buy any more LG refrigerators until they change the cooling system despite how much we like all the other LG features.

As an aside: in my opinion Samsung closed systems are better than LG’s, but they’ve got ice maker problems that they can’t or won’t fix. They’ve had to settle claims also. The Samsung design is not nearly as functional as the LG, but it may last longer.