Two years and still working, but it consumes more energy...$150 per year more!
I purchased this unit because it was cosmetically a match to my Wine Enthusiast 28 bottle fridge. It was also $100 cheaper, but the NewAir unit ran all the time! I emailed NewAir about my issue and they said it was normal. However, my Wine Enthusiast fridge runs for a couple of minutes and then it shuts off.
So I purchased a KillAWatt and tested both units for a 24 hour period. Both were set to the same temperature and tested within 48 hours (so no season changes). Here are the averages for each unit:
NewAir - 3.22kwh
Wine Enthusiast - 1.33kwh
As you can see the NewAir unit draws 2.4x more energy to keep my wine at temperature. If I would have know that I would have paid more and got another Wine Enthusiast cooler.
Beware of ambient temperature requirement!
So we bought this wine cooler on reading the specs in the description, and not by finding the manual online and reading it, which was a big mistake. The description says "This wine refrigerator has a black cabinet with stainless steel trim and chrome plated racks. It's sure to complement just about any room in your home." Yeah, as long as your room temperature is between 77-80 degrees (stated in the manual). Our experience in regular room or a little cooler (60-65) -- it is winter here in New England, the cooler just got colder and colder -- as low as 40 degrees -- no matter what the setting was. We pretty much have decided to keep it though, and put it on a 48/0n/Off settings timer -- like 30 minutes to 1 hour on and 90 minutes to 2 hours off. That seems to be keeping it in a pretty tight range (we are using one of those thermometer with min/max readings).
Good value for the price
I've owned this unit for roughly 1 month now and have been relatively satisfied. Before I purchased the unit, I had read a number of reviews of this unit and several other units from other manufacturers and had decided that this one would be best suited to meet my needs within my price range.
With respect to initial research, I obtained most of my information either from other customer reviews or by calling customer service directly. Customer service was extremely helpful in detailing the unit's internal dimensions and technical characteristics, as well as explaining the Repair Master warranty in more detail. They were also kind enough to send me a PDF version of the user manual so that I could review it before purchase (since the link on the website was broken).
As previous reviewers have noted, the shelves are closely spaced, so larger bottles with wider diameters or that are taller (internal depth of roughly 13") may not fit. I purchased the unit expressly to...
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