LG 24 cu. ft. Refrigerator review:

With 24 cubic feet of total storage space, the LG LTCS24223S is as big as top freezers get, with even more room for groceries than some French door models.

It also boasts an attractive design with recessed handles but it's cooling performance wasn't as sharp as we've seen with other large-sized top freezers, most notably the nearly identical Kenmore 79432.

If you're in the market for a bigger fridge, you can save some cash by skipping a trendy French door model and going with this king-sized top freezer, instead.
Top freezer fridges get overshadowed by flashier French door models, but there's value to be had by bucking the trends and sticking with something simple. Take the LG LTCS24223S, for instance. At a price of $1,200, it's one of the biggest and fanciest top freezers you can buy at retail, and yet it still costs less than the cheapest, most feature-sparse French doors.

That positions it nicely as an upgrade that won't break the bank, but it's not a clear slam dunk. Kenmore's comparably priced lookalike model offers sharper performance and a few extra features, including a water dispenser and sliding dividers in the in-door shelves. And, of course, a less expensive top freezer like the $800 GE GTE18GMHES might offer better value if you're on a tight budget (or if you don't need the LG's whopping 24 cubic feet of storage space).

 

Still, the LG LTCS24223S gets enough right to qualify as a legitimate upgrade over almost every other top freezer on the market. Unlike many of those, it doesn't feel like a fridge you have to settle for, and that makes it an interesting option in its class.

Design and features

The LTCS24223S ditches the usual refrigerator handles in favor of recessed grooves along the top of the fridge door and the bottom of the freezer door. This, combined with the stainless steel finish, gives it a modern, flat-faced look that helps set it apart from a good deal of the competition, though not all of it -- shop around, and you'll find plenty of other models employing the same trick, including some higher-end refrigerators that use it to even greater effect.

The refrigerator's size also helps to set it apart. At 33 inches wide, it's as fat as top freezers come, and with 24 cubic feet of total storage space, it's also the most spacious in it's class. That's great if you need lots of room for your family's groceries, but the big, boxy bulk of the thing is an obvious tradeoff. Something else worth mentioning: the stainless steel finish isn't magnet-friendly. That means you'll need to relocate your kids' artwork and report cards to someplace else (that, or pick up a roll of tape).

Passable performance

I was eager to test this refrigerator's cooling performance for two reasons. First, LG fridges have consistently done well in our tests, showing greater temperature accuracy and fewer hotspots than any other brand we've reviewed. Second, the previously mentioned Kenmore 79432 is our top-performing top freezer to date. Given that the 79432 is more or less last year's version of the LTCS24223S, I was optimistic as I started my tests.

Though it didn't necessarily disappoint, the LTCS24223S fell short of my expectations. At its default setting, it successfully kept the main body of the fridge below 40 degrees Fahrenheit, a benchmark for food safety set by the FDA, but only just barely. The in-door shelves and crisper bins both ran warmer, which isn't a bad result, per se -- the doors and bins will almost always be warmer than the body of the fridge. Still, it wasn't nearly as impressive a level of performance as the Kenmore 79432, or as some of LG's other models, like the LDC24370ST bottom freezer.

Too. Much. Space.

Sometimes, it gets tricky writing about a refrigerator's storage capabilities. We have a standardized set of test groceries along with six large-sized stress test items. We try and fit as much as we can into each fridge, then we take everything out and rearrange the shelves to see if we can then fit a little more. As a result, the takeaways are often highly conditional, having more to do with your fridge-tetris skills than with the actual capacity at hand.

That isn't the case with this fridge. It's big. Bigger than any other top freezer we've tested. Big enough to hold all of our test groceries and all six of our stress test items (a casserole dish, a roasting pan, a pitcher, a cake tray, a party platter, and an extra large pizza box) without requiring me to move a single shelf. As said before, my only storage qualm was that I couldn't fit a tub of Country Crock into the smallish butter bin.