Haier HNSE045BB Review

Introduction

Compacts are meant to be convenient and cheap. The Haier may be cheap, but it’s far from the most convenient model that we’ve tested.

Design & Usability

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A dorm room staple since… wait, when did they start putting beer in cans?

Inside, this machine is one big fridge cavity, with a small tray for frozen goods at the top. The fridge consists of three official shelves. We say "official" because the plastic tray at the top, while usable as storage, is designed to catch any water that drips from the freezer if the door is left open too long. And no, there aren’t any parts missing: The very bottom has an indented cavity under the lowest shelf, right where you might expect a drawer to be found. There’s a small spout at the back designed to filter runoff trickling down the back of the fridge interior. Make sure this stays unblocked, or you may wind up with soggy groceries. The fridge door consists of four fixed shelves and a can dispenser. The dispenser can fit up to four standard-sized cans at a time.

The freezer—and we use that term reluctantly—is essentially a glorified shelf placed at the top of the fridge next to the control dial. There’s a small flap in the front, presumably installed to try and keep cold air from escaping every time you open the door. A tiny knob set next to the freezer shelf has a scale running from zero to seven. The knob itself is easy to turn, but it’s far enough in that you'll have to stoop down to see it.

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Features

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There are almost too many shelves, plus the freezer’s a pain to get at.

You’d think that a compact would be small enough to prevent food from getting lost in the back. The fact that there are three adjustable shelves in the fridge, however, means that no matter how you arrange them, two will be fairly close together. Since the fridge is so low to the ground, getting to food at the back of the shortest shelf may require some crouching. Also, the freezer’s flap door can make getting bulky items in or out a bit of a pain in the neck.

The control knob, located next to the freezer shelf, works without a problem, but there are still two small gripes that we had with it. First, it’s set rather far back into the fridge, which means you’ll have to bend down in order to adjust it. Once the fridge is calibrated, it shouldn’t be much of an issue, but that brings us to our second complaint: There’s no actual thermostat, so you’ll have to get an external thermometer if you want to make sure you aren't freezing your beer.

One thing we should mention is how loud the Haier HNSE045BB is. In fact, it's probably the noisiest fridge we’ve tested in a long time. It’s definitely going to let you know when it’s working, whether you want it to or not. The fact that the compressor turns on and off with some regularity even when the door has been shut means you’ll want to keep it away from wherever your bed is located.

Performance

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Performs as well as you might expect, given that it lacks both an enclosed freezer and a vegetable drawer (i.e., not very well).

Naturally, the closer you’re storing something to the freezer shelf, the colder it’ll be. For such a small fridge, though, a difference of about five degrees on average from top to bottom is quite a lot. That’s usually quite disappointing in a full-sized model, so to have that much of a discrepancy in such a tiny fridge is that much more disappointing. Keep the most perishable food right in the middle, though: That area managed to maintain an average temperature of about 37 degrees—the ideal for fresh food storage.

The freezer shelf was too small to have much temperature fluctuation from one spot to another. The good news is anything you store in there will be kept at roughly the same temperature. The bad news is that there’s no spot where you’ll be able to escape the 1.5 degree shift over time. Eat your frozen food quickly, otherwise it’ll develop some pretty nasty freezer burn.

The lack of a vegetable drawer doesn’t mean consumers won’t still be putting fresh fruit and vegetables in here, so we tested the moisture retention of the area where a drawer would theoretically have been located. It probably comes as no surprise that the lack of a drawer resulted in pretty dreadful moisture retention: Our test materials lost an average of 0.33 grams of moisture per hour. Buy this fridge and you may find yourself shopping daily and buying only what you need for the next 24 hours.

Conclusion

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Even with the relatively low price, the Haier HNSE045BB is still a flawed fridge.

The Haier HNSE045BB performs pretty well for a fridge that'll set you back as little as $145, but its interior layout is problematic. While the fridge had a surprisingly consistent temperature over time and the freezer chilled food rather quickly, the poor accessibility on this Haier and lack of freezer space should make consumers think twice about purchasing it.

Science Introduction

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Fridge temperature was inconsistent from top to bottom while the freezer section fluctuates over time, meaning that freezer burn is a real possibility. The worst offender, in terms of performance, is how quickly frozen foods will defrost if power is lost.

Fridge Temperature

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A wide temperature variance from top to bottom disappoints.

The fridge had a temperature variance of about 5 degrees from top to bottom, which is pretty disappointing on a fridge this small. The middle of the fridge stayed at about 37 degrees, which is the ideal temperature for fresh food; any other area within the fridge differed too much.

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Power Loss

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This Haier is not well insulated.

A small plastic flap does not good insulation make. Anything frozen inside this fridge will thaw out in a shockingly brief span of time that amounts to just 218 minutes, or about three and a half hours. At least you can't hold much in the freezer section, so any food you need to toss due to an outage won't amount to much.

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Freezing Performance

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Surprisingly fast at freezing food.

The small freezer shelf managed to be surprisingly effective at freezing room temperature items. Our test materials were frozen in just one hour and 24 minutes, a very respectable length of time indeed. To give you an idea, an hour and a half freezing time is fairly average in full-sized models with fully enclosed freezers.

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Other Tests

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