We live in Northern California without A/C and in the summers, the outside temperature can get to 113 deg. F. Our house is well insulated but this last summer, we had a heat wave and the nights did not cool off to allow the house to cool down. Subsequently, after a few days of constant heat without the nightly cooling cycle, the ambient inside temperature of the house climbed to about 92 deg. F. That's too high for good wine storage conditions. So, I was on the lookout for a refrigerated wine cooler for our best wines in order to ensure their safe keeping. I found this Haier, 20-bottle unit on sale as a close-out item at a good price ($129). So I brought it home. That was a month ago. We're pleased with it so far.

It's a very attractive looking unit. It is a compact unit about the size of a small compact refrigerator but a bit taller. The cabinet dimensions are 19.9" W x 30.7" H x 21.7" D with a 10 cu. ft. interior capacity. The cabinet top is an embossed silver plastic material with painted steel sides and back to match. The embossed pattern helps to prevent fingerprints and adds some strength to the top piece. The curved, clear, dark plastic door gives it a very stylish appearance. The door looks black until the interior light is switched on. There is an exterior, mechanical, key-operated door lock.

The unit has adjustable four adjustable legs at all four corners of the cabinet for leveling the unit. Leveling is required to ensure proper closure of the door. There is no door latch mechanism. It depends on the magnetic door seal to hold the door closed. Leveling the unit allows the magnetic seal to do its job of keeping the door closed. Leveling is also required for good cooling performance by the sealed refrigeration unit.

The interior has 3 wire rack shelves designed to comfortably hold 4 regular bottles of wine, horizontally, placed front to back, on each rack. The racks have depressions in them to prevent the bottles from rolling around . The bottom portion has a removable wire rack that slides into place with two shelves to store 4 bottles, horizontally, on each shelf but positioned at 90 deg. to the bottles in the top 3 shelves. This arrangement is designed to accommodate tall bottles that would not fit in the normal front/back orientation. There is sufficient space between the bottles for sufficient cool air circulation. It's a nicely designed interior.

The unit has digital temperature controls with a clearly visible L.E.D. read-out on the top right side of the unit. There are only 3 small buttons on the top right side of the front edge just above the door. One button selects the interior temperature for red wines preset to 55 - 60 deg. range. The second button selects the temperature for white wines preset to 45 - 50 deg. and the third button is the switch for the interior light. It is possible to select other temperatures, manually. To enter the manual mode, simply depress and hold both the red and white wine switches simultaneously for 3+ seconds. The temperature can now be manually selected by using the red wine button to increase or the white wine button to decrease the set temperature. Each push of the button will increase/decrease the setting by one degree. The variance for the controlled temperature is plus or minus 3 degrees.

The Owner's Manual suggests setting the temperature manually to 50 deg if both red and white wines are to be stored and putting the whites at the bottom and the reds at the top. There can be up to a 10 deg. difference between the top and bottom of the unit. This would mean the top would be near 55 deg. and the bottom near 45 deg. A check of this idea by placing a digital thermometer inside the unit for over an hour at the top and the bottom sections confirms these temperatures. We did set it at 50 deg. since we do have an assortment of red and white wines.

The unit is quiet in operation and it doesn't seem to run excessively. To me, this indicates that there is sufficient thermal insulation that ensures quiet and efficient operation without excessive power consumption.

It is attractive and works well. We're very pleased with it thus far!

Jim

Recommended: Yes

Amount Paid (US$): 129