Whether you are heading off to college for your first year or if you are going back but changing from a dorm to an off campus small apartment, having your dorm essentials is a must. Some of the must have small dorm appliances include a microwave, air fryer, toaster, tea kettle or coffee maker and on the top of the list a dorm mini fridge.
Finding the right dorm appliances is important as there maybe dorm restrictions against certain appliances. You also want the right size appliances so that you don’t waste space, most college dorms are tight on space and most appliances are not designed with that in mind. Power requirements is not something that most college students think about when looking for dorm appliances, but it is a critical aspect that needs to be considered with dorm restrictions based on power consumption. Last but not least, you want something quiet that will not keep you up all night especially when you are trying to get some of those sweet sweet Z’s before the big exam in the morning.
We decided to look through all those topics above to help you find the most suitable mini fridge for your dorm room and we give you a few reasons we believe you will need one.
Are Mini Fridges allowed in a dorm room, can you have a mini fridge in your dorm?
We recommend you go to your college’s website and look up the dorm rules to see if dorm appliances are allowed. Some college’s allow you to bring appliances but they have a list of what is allowed and what is not allowed. Others give an appliance allowance based on how much power the appliances draw, the reason behind that is they don’t want everyone using high power requirement appliances that put a large strain on their electrical circuit causing power outages and the like
In our experience, most colleges do allow students to bring in small appliances such as microwaves, air fryers, panini makers, mini fridges as long as power consumption is under 1500W, they really don’t want people buying full size fridges or a large oven range or something outrageous like that.
If you are living off campus, you should be able to bring most anything you like as long as it is ok by your land lord and any possible roommates you might have.
Is a mini fridge worth it in college?
Depending on your college dorm room, there may be a community fridge that all the students in a certain area or certain floor can share with each other. While this is nice and may let you think you might not need a dorm fridge, we think its more of an illusion if anything. The reason is that those shared community fridges tend to be nasty as people will leave food there for days on end till it starts rotting or molding up. Do you really want to keep your food there? Plus who knows how often does the college clean those fridges? We feel like those community fridges are a bacteria cess pool and will eventually get you sick. Its just not worth it.
People steal, yes we said it, people will steal your food and drinks in the community fridge. There’s nothing more frustrating than buying a bunch of food and drinks only to have someone else steal them and you can’t enjoy what you bought.
Having a Dorm Fridge is really the only solution to avoid any of these issues. You will feel better knowing that your fridge is always clean, your food is always safe in your room. No one is going to take it while you aren’t looking, anytime you need a little snack its right there in your room, you don’t need to walk down the hall to grab a bite to eat.
Another advantage is being the host with the most, if you like having people over in your dorm, then your drinks and snacks are right there. You can entertain albeit on a budget, but still people like popping in for a quick brewski and chilling with you. Keep them ice cold in your dorm and call people over to chill.
What is the best size mini fridge for a dorm room?
With college dorms, or small college apartments, space is critical. You don’t want to waste any more valuable space than you have to. For that reason we recommend really understanding the size of your dorm room as well as the sizes of the dorm appliances that you plan on buying. The key here is getting the most bang for your space. We do not recommend getting any mini fridges that are larger than 1 cubic foot as it will eat up most of your room’s space. As a single college student you will not need that much food or beverage storage space, so keeping it to the essentials will be beneficial in the long term.
The added bonus of staying with compact appliances in a dorm room is if you need to move out to a new place in a year, you want light appliances that are easily moved not a big massive behemoth fridge that will require multiple people lifting out of your room, down the stairs and into a moving truck. The smaller the appliances are the easier they will be to transport to your new dwelling.
Are Dorm Fridges quiet?
Depends, some mini fridges are whisper quiet, while others can be loud and annoying. Most standard fridges use a compressor which is loud an annoying especially in a small space where any sound is amplified and echo’d through out the space. If you are looking for the best quiet dorm fridge your best bet is to go with a thermo electric dorm fridge. Thermo electric dorm fridges are whisper quiet and very power efficient, they don’t require a lot of power to run while still keeping your snacks, yogurt, and beverages ice cold
What is the Best Mini Fridge for a dorm room or small space?
We highly recommend the Uber Appliance Uber Chill XL as the best dorm Fridge for college dorm rooms or small spaces. Here’s why we recommend it.
The Uber Appliance Uber Chill XL Mini Fridge is compact, coming in at 12 inches by 11 inches by 9 inches, so it is pretty compact on the outside which is important for a small college dorm. Although it has a compact exterior, it is pretty spacious on the inside with its 9 Liter capacity it can hold up to 12 cans of standard 12oz beverages, that’s a full case of brews. It also has a nice little removable shelf if you want to store taller items like coffee creamer, bottles of Gatorade and anything else you can think of.
It uses an efficient and quiet thermo electric Peltier cooler which only uses 60 Watts of power, less than a standard light bulb. It has a pre-set cooling which cools the contents of the fridge all the way down to 32F, allowing drinks and snacks to stay as cold as they would in a standard full size fridge with a fraction of the size. The Thermo electric Peltier cooler uses a small 120mm fan which is the same as on a standard desktop, so its really no louder than a standard desktop and will not disrupt you or your dorm neighbors.
Last but not least, oh that sexy retro design that it has, rounded corners, a chrome locking door handle and it comes in 5 fun colors including Ubertone Red, Ivory white, Navy Blue, Gun metal silver and Matte Black. It also features a cool see through window on the front so that you can feel all fancy knowing you can see the items inside the fridge without having to open it.
Overall we feel pretty confident that the Uber Appliance Uber Chill XL Mini fridge is the perfect Mini Fridge for a college dorm, it hits all the requirements, compact, roomy, light, portable, and quiet. It’s a great value as well and can be used beyond your college years at home, in the office, in a car, truck or RV, or even as a man cave fridge so you can down brewski’s with college friends and reminisce on the best years of your life!
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