I’d give this wine fridge 3 stars, based on how it seems after having it about a two weeks.
The fridge arrive undamaged in a sturdy box with good styrofoam packing inserts to protect it. It looks nice, but the inside light is not much use.
I’ve bought a lot of wine fridges in my day. I like it that this one is compressor-cooled because the compressor models seem to last a lot longer than the thermoelectric models, which usually poop out after about a year because the fan in the thermoelectric units has to pretty much run constantly to maintain 55 degrees. I have one big compressor-cooled wine fridge (250 bottles) that I’ve had for about 10 years without any problem except for occasional humidity and mold issues because I live in a very hot and humid climate, and I have a small thermoelectric unit that holds 18 bottles that I’ve repaired a few times, and now I have this one I bought because I’ve run out of room in my other two wine fridges.
As everyone has noted, this fridge is unlikely to hold 35 of your wine bottles unless the only kind of wine you have is in a “standard” bordeaux style bottle, which is probably less than 20% of the bottle types. Anything even a tiny bit bigger is probably going to get the label scratched when you put the bottle in or remove the bottle to see what it is. Damaged-labels are heartbreak to “wine-collectors,” but I’m a “wine-drinker,” not a “wine-collector.” However, it does cause me a little pang when the label on a bottle I’ve been lovingly saving and aging for five or ten years gets scratched. It’s not a big deal, but I’d rather not have the labels get scratched.
Anything much bigger than a standard bordeaux bottle, aside from label damage, might not fit because the vertical space between shelves is too tight. You can remove or raise a shelf, but that means you lose space for 5 bottles. So for any bottle bigger than a basic Bordeaux bottle, you’ll have to remove a shelf (or multiple shelves) to have enough vertical space between shelves, and you’ll get only 3 or 4 bottles from side to side. Even after removing shelves to free up vertical space, i doubt you could fit 5 pinot noir or chardonnay bottles per shelf because the horizontal space from side to side is too tight. And for taller bottles, like standard rieslings, the only available place to hold them is at the bottom behind the little metal gate thingy, where you could maybe put four or five riesling bottles. As for hefty champagne bottles, again you could get 4 bottles at the bottom, but good luck with champagne bottles unless you remove a shelf to make room vertically, and you’ll probably fit only three bottles side to side.
In fairness, as advertised, this fridge will hold 35 standard 3-inch-wide bordeaux-style bottles. But unless you have a wine collection of 200 bottles, it’s unlikely that 35 of your bottles will be the standard bordeaux size. All your pinot noirs, your rieslings, your champagnes, your chardonnays, your typical French or American rhône blends, your red and white burgundies, your fancy thick-walled bottles of every variety including most good Napa Cabs, most of your NZ and OZ sauv blancs, simply will not fit very well in this fridge. I bought this fridge knowing of this limitation because I do have enough standard bordeaux-size bottles to fill it up.
Also, the last sliding shelf at the bottom is really only a half a shelf, with the back area that that back half of the bottle sits on being the top of the indentation under which the compressor is located. That shelf is weird to pull out and push in because only the front half of the bottle is actually on the shelf. Hard to explain, but take my word for it, it’s quirky.
Now, as to the operation of the fridge: The temperature setting is easy to operate. The fridge is reasonably quiet for a compressor model, but does make a disconcerting clunk when the compressor kicks off. It also vibrates a bit more than I like for storing wines I want to age gently for 5 or 10 or 15 years (vibration is a no-no for properly aging wine), so I will not be putting any of my nicer bottles in this fridge for long-term aging. Also I’ve noticed the temperature tends to drift up to 60 degrees before the compressor kicks in to bring it back down to 55 where I have it set. I understand that to keep the compressor from wearing out too quickly because of cycling on too often, it shouldn’t kick on every time there’s a one or two degree temperature change, but 5 degrees is a bit too much. Again, for proper long-term aging, you want no vibration and a temperature as constant as is reasonably possible. Any issue with too frequent cycling of the compressor should be address with better insulation rather than with a minimum 5 degree temp increase before the compressor kicks on.
So I won’t be using this fridge for long term aging, and won’t be suing it for my better wines, and I can’t really efficiently use it to hold bigger bottles. Lucky for me, I have more than 35 bordeaux-sized “daily drinkers” that I just want to keep out of 72 degree room temperature heat and that I’m not planning to keep more than a year or two before I drink them, so this fridge is okay for them.
Also, in fairness to this seller, most wine fridge sellers kinda fudge on how many bottles their fridge will hold. Almost all wine fridge sellers refer to standard bordeaux bottle as their unit of measure for calculating how many bottles the fridge will hold. But most wine fridges will give you a bit more space per bottle than the standard 3-inch bordeaux bottle, usually at least another half inch vertically and another quarter inch horizontally. With this fridge, when they say thirty-five bottles that are 3 inches wide, they mean exactly 3 inches, not 3.1 inches, and definitely not 3 and half inches, which is pretty normal,for a pinot noir, or syrah, or chardonnay bottle.
One other thing, I had bit of trouble fitting the screw properly into the hole to attach the door handle. When I first put the screw in the hole in the back of the door, it got stuck sideways and was hard to get out. You have to have a good aim to put the screw straight into the hole in the back of the door so it will reach through to come out the hole in the front of the door so you can screw it into the handle. The screw is just barely long enough to reach from the back of the door out to the front of the door, and if your aim is a little sideways, the screw won’t go all the way through and instead will kinda get stuck. Be patient, and eventually you’ll get it. A strongly-magnetized screwdriver and a strong screwdriver cocktail will probably make this process less irksome.
For me, based on the fact that I have enough small-sized bottles to get maximum use of this fridge, and based on the fact that I got this fridge at an incredible discount on Black Friday, it’s a three-star wine fridge for me. Unless you’re planning to use this fridge as a short-term overflow storage, and unless you have a lot of small standard bordeaux bottles or only need to store about 25 bottles, and unless you get a nice discount, this will probably feel like a 2 1/2 or 2 star fridge for you.
If you really do need space to store 35 bottles, you probably need space to store at least 150 or 200 bottles, because once you see how great it is to have a broad selection of wine available for dinner every night, and once you see how great it is to buy several bottles of a nice wine that needs aging, and you keep them for 10 or 15 years until they’re in a perfect drinking window, you’re going to realize that a 35 bottle wine fridge isn’t nearly big enough. So maybe you should consider going whole hog and getting a much bigger, better-quality wine fridge, or consider installing a built-in refrigerated wine space in a closet, or along an unused wall, or under a staircase. If you’re a handy do-it-yourself person, a built-in refrigerated wine-space is not terribly expensive to construct. Yes, a built-in cellar-space is my next plan, if I can convince my spouse that we absolutely must have a built-in cellar space big enough for 500 bottles—or I’ll die. It all starts with an innocent-looking 12-bottle fridge you picked up on Amazon for less than a hundred bucks. Before you know it, you’ll be selling your kids’ stamp-collection to feed your habit.
Octavio Figueroa 
aspahn
Astonishing