Hisense RQ768N4GVE

Design and features

• Flexible compartment can be a freezer or fridge
• Vacuum drawer
• Large space

Only 60cm in depth, the Hisense RQ768N4GVE is a Perfectly Kitchen Fit Model and will fit next to other cupboards and counters without protruding into the room. And, with only a 3mm gap between it and any cupboards side by side, all the doors can open. That’s brilliant, as you get the benefits of a snug fit that an integrated model gives, but without sacrificing any internal space.

Hisense calls this a Cross Door model, but it’s really a French Door fridge freezer by any other name: the fridge is in a compartment at the top, and the freezer sections are at the bottom. I love this kind of layout, as the fridge is wider, so can store bigger items more easily, and most common items are reachable without bending down.

I love the look of this fridge freezer, with glass covering the stainless steel exterior. The only downside, for some, is that it stops fridge magnets from working.

The fridge has a massive 381-litre capacity, which is more than you get on the deeper Hoover H-Fridge 700 Maxi HSC918EWXK.

The double doors can be opened together to get the full fridge space, or you can open each individually if you know where the item you want is located.

Each door has three door pockets, with the middle pocket able to go in one of two positions, depending on what you want to store. In general, I found that I was able to put milk cartons, even 4-pint ones, in the bottom pocket of either drawer.

Middle pockets are ideal for condiments, while the top ones are for smaller items, such as butter and eggs.

Inside the main fridge, I love the layout. There are three main shelves, with the lower one able to be positioned in two different ways. If you go for the lowest position, there’s space underneath for 2-litre drinks bottles; go higher, and you can fit some jars or bigger containers.

Otherwise, there’s a good amount of room on each shelf, allowing you to fit larger ketchup bottles or tall cans. I’d, ideally, like a split-level shelf or bottle rack, but otherwise, the space is good.

In the middle is a large, full-width drawer for fresh items such as vegetables. It’s on runners, so has a better feel to it, similar to the Liebherr CBNsda 575i.

At the bottom are two drawers. The one on the left is the Vacuum Fresh Drawer, which keeps food fresh in a vacuum. Opening the handle equalises pressure, with a rush of air like an air-lock. This drawer is on runners, too.

Using the front control panel, the vacuum drawer can be set to Chill mode (meat and fish), Fruit and Vegetable, or Cheese mode. The environment it keeps helps preserve food for longer.

On the right is the Humidity Control Drawer, which slides out on runners. There’s a humidity control on the front which lets me set low, medium or high levels of humidity.

The control panel is also home to all the fridge freezer’s temperature controls, and it locks automatically after inactivity to prevent kids from tapping away and changing settings.

A full-width LED panel lights up the fridge compartment from top to bottom, so it’s always easy to find what I’m looking for.

To prevent odours and bacteria, the Hisense RQ768N4GVE has Hi-Nano tech. When the status bar at the top reads 100%, the system is ready to use the mode to remove odours and deactivate viruses and bacteria.

At the bottom are two compartments, with a total of 210 litres of space (105 litres per compartment). The compartment on the right can be converted into a fridge, or it can be run as additional freezer space; the compartment on the left is always freezer space.

It’s nice to have this flexibility, as extra fridge space can be useful if you’re having a party. Otherwise, the spaces are identical, with two pull-out trays (wide enough for pizzas) and four drawers, with the bottom drawers slightly smaller. It’s a good, useful space, and each side is lit by its own LED.

Performance

I loaded the Hisense RQ768N4GVE with freezer blocks to emulate a full load of food, and then added temperature sensors to monitor how well the fridge freezer cools. I used the automatic door opener that we developed at Trusted Reviews to mimic the fridge being opened and closed.

After two weeks, I found that the fridge temperature averaged 4.23°C, which is just 0.42°C different to the target of 4°C. Although the top of the fridge was a bit warmer (5.16°C) than the bottom (3.67°C), that’s a very good result overall.

Temperatures mostly fluctuated by +/-0.4°C, which is an excellent result and shows that the temperatures are stable without any large deviations from the average.

With the freezer, the results were similar, with an average temperature of -18.22°C, which is just 0.22°C colder than the target temperature that I’d set. In this compartment, there was little difference between the top, middle and bottom sections.

Standard deviation showed that temperatures were incredibly stable, with fluctuations from the average of +/-0.53°C. Anything below 1°C is a great result here.

I also measured the vacuum drawer, when set to the chill mode. Here, the average temperature was 1.42°C, with temperatures fluctuating by only +/-0.55°C.

Measuring power usage over two weeks, and then extrapolating for a year, I estimated that this E-class fridge freezer would cost £57.25 a year to run, or just 10p per litre of space. That’s very competitive for a large fridge freezer, and you typically only see much lower running costs when buying a smaller model.

Should you buy it?