Kalamera Mini Fridge 18 Bottle – 12 inch Wine Cooler Refrigerator, Built-in or Freestanding, with Stainless Steel & Double-Layer Tempered Glass Door, and Temperature Memory…

I purchased this wine cooler a couple of months ago for Christmas, after reviewing various options, which admittedly isn’t a lot. Very few name brand/reliable options, and the ones I did find that would work were well over 50% more pricewise. So I opted to save money on the purchase (who pays $900 for a mini fridge essentially?), and chose this brand based on it’s availability among many retailers, and the overall number of reviews that seemed to be positive. We are using this as a standalone, it is between a wall and cabinet where we have about 16″ of space, so it fits perfectly, but is not under a counter or anything like that. We have loaded it up with about 20 bottles of various sizes, and have space to fit at least another half a dozen or more. The wider bottles fit on the taller bottom shelf. The top shelf is also a bit taller and can fit wider bottles. You may need to slide out the shelf, put the bottle on it, then slide it in to get it to fit in.

What I love:
It cools wine.
It’s silent when it’s not cooling.
It looks nice inside and out, and was packaged well, and easy to setup per instructions included.

What I don’t like:
When it’s cooling, it’s noisy. Even my 9 year old asked why it was so loud. I measured it at 55Db right in front of the fridge, above the fridge it was 60Db. It’s kind of a grinding/scraping noise. It is not coming from the fans/inside of the fridge, it’s coming from the back. I emailed the manufacturer before the return window ended to ask about it, and they never responded. It is the noisiest fridge/freezer we have in the house, and can be heard all over the house when cooling.
The lights inside are on or off. By you pushing a button. There is no auto on/off when the door opens.
I have a fridge thermometer inside of the door so I can view it and monitor without opening the door. We are not fans of red wine, so we have mostly white and pink and keep the temp set at 40. The temp will get up to about 50 before it kicks on and cools it back down, as cool as 37 degrees. Since it doesn’t keep a steady temp, at least it kicks on less frequently so it helps to put up with the noise when it happens less often throughout the day.
The shelves are a neat little slide out design. They are not on drawer slides. They just slide all the way out off the plastic bump outs inside after you angle the shelf up and through a notch that is cut out on them. That notch/bump keeps them from coming out all the way and falling otherwise. It’s a neat design, for a cost conscious system. For the price here though, I would expect real drawer/shelf slides.

So to sum up my experience, less noise, better shelves, more consistent temp, and a manufacturer that responds to inquires would be nice to have and are all missing here.
I purchased the extend warranty from Amazon with it, since I was unsure of this brand and it’s quality. At this point, best case scenario is it dies in a year or two, and I can use the warranty for money back or a replacement. In hindsight, I’m thinking spending more on a name brand wine cooler, would not have been a bad idea.

On a side note, another thing missing here that I am unsure how common it is in other coolers, is storing of open bottles. There is no tilt to the shelves, so if you put an open bottle back in, and it’s not sealed properly, it leaks everywhere. My wife put a pink Moscato (big spenders here) back in that ended up leaking, staining several of the shelves and making a mess. As a result, on the larger bottom shelf, I now have put a 6″ board crosswise at the front of it. So any open bottles will be propped up at a bit of an angle to avoid any potential leaks.

I have two of these next to each other, replacing a 30 inch wine fridge that was built in. In doing so, I needed to have one side open left and one side open right. I like that the door is reversible, but it looks a little weird with the name written upside down, and one door having the writing at the top and one at the bottom. My suggestion would be for the company to have the writing on both ends, and the bottom of the writing facing toward the center of the door so that no matter which way you turn the door, it looks natural. But as for Turing the door, it wasn’t too difficult. Some of the screws were hard to get to with normal length screwdrivers, and my power screwdriver couldn’t turn the screws to loosen them. And if you want the door straight, you’ll probably have to do this as the one I flipped is now level and straight, but the one that I didn’t mess with is slanted slightly. As for noise, it isn’t real loud. Yes you can hear it when the compressor kicks on, but honestly, I’ve slept on the couch next to it and it didn’t phase me – where as when my compressor went bad in the one that I replaced with two of these, the clicking noise was louder and disturbed me more. It makes just slightly more noise than my small space heater that I use in the bathroom when it’s cold out – that’s the closest noise comparison I could come up with. Hope this helps.

We have had three wine refrigerators of this size since 2015. The first one was an Edgestar with side by side doors and it lasted about 4 years. When it failed, I was unable to locate a refrigeration company willing to work on it. One actually told me to throw it away and buy a new one, so that is what we have been doing. So we bought a Newair unit (still available on Amazon) to replace it because the reviews were better. Unfortunately it only lasted about 4 years as well. When it failed recently, we purchased this Kalamera unit, again with the hope that it would last longer.

When I was shopping for the unit, I thought the Kalamera resembled the Newair quite a bit. Once I received it and had them side by side, the Kalamera actually seems to be a clone of the Newair refrigerator. To say they are ‘similar’ is an understatement – the compressor and other components appear to be the same, shelves were 100% identical, etc. There are some very slight differences, so not sure if the unit is made by the same plant in China or Kalamera just copied the Newair fridge using the same components. Probably the former but at the end of the day, I really don’t care as long as it lasts longer than the others.

Anyway, we have only had the Kalamera fridge about a month and it’s working fine. The unit does what it is supposed to and functions as advertized. Based on the track record of these little wine refrigerators though, I am obviously sceptical about the product’s life.

I’ll try to update my review after some time.