Miele KD 4052 E Active

Verdict

Solidly built, reliable and with flexible space, the Miele KD 4052 E Active is a relatively compact 60cm-wide fridge freezer with excellent temperature control to keep food fresh for longer. I found the lack of freezer temperature control disappointing at this price, and I’d like one more taller door pocket. Those complaints aside, this is a great-looking fridge freezer for those who don’t have much space.

Introduction

Whether you have a compact kitchen or simply just don’t need to store enough food to last an apocalypse, a smaller fridge-freezer, such as the Miele KD 4052 E Active, could be for you.

Exceptionally well-built and not expensive to run, this fridge does a brilliant job of maintaining temperature.

It’s a little basic, with no freezer temperature control, and the door pockets are a little shallow, but if you want a solid, reliable fridge freezer, this is a good choice.

Design and features

• Compact and neat-looking
• Flexible internal space
• Shallow door pockets
• No freezer temperature control

It can be hard to make what’s effectively a stainless steel box look neat, but Miele has managed this with the KD 4052 E Active. Neat and to the point, this fridge freezer looks great without ever dominating.

At 60cm wide and just 176cm tall, this fridge freezer is quite compact and should even fit under a short wall cabinet in a kitchen. If you’ve got a fairly compact space to put a fridge freezer and don’t want the limitations that built-in units bring, then this size is a good compromise.

Despite the relatively small dimensions, this cooler packs in a decent 195-litre fridge and a 94-litre freezer. That’s enough for a week’s worth of fresh food, plus drinks, milk and the like, for a regular household, plus enough freezer space for all of the staples.

I like the layout of the fridge, as it’s very flexible. Miele provides four glass shelves, three of which can be moved around, plus a bottle rack. You can rearrange to get the layout that you want, or even pull out an entire shelf if you need more height.

I found that the top shelf was good for taller bottles, while the other shelves can take a mix of drinks, cans and smaller items, such as blocks of cheese, pies and other packaged food.

With the bottle rack, I could fit three 2-litre bottles, with space in between for two wine bottles; five wine bottles would easily fit in.

At the bottom is a single crisper drawer. It’s nice to see that this has a humidity slider on it, so you can adjust the setting depending on what you’re storing, keeping food fresh for longer.

In the door are three pockets, with the middle one height adjustable. There’s a good amount of height between them, so it’s easy to both reach items and store taller jars. However, only the bottom pocket has tall sides.

Shallow pockets are fine for jars, but put anything too tall in and there’s a risk that items will topple over when the door is opened or closed. I’d have liked the middle pocket to have deeper sides.

Inside the freezer, it’s straightforward: three drawers, with one XL extra-deep drawer in the middle.

There’s room to keep frozen pizzas inside, and three drawers divide up the space easily, so you shouldn’t have to hunt too much to find what you’re looking for.

Miele provides a simple ice cube tray with this fridge freezer, but that’s the only accessory you get; there’s not even an egg tray.

Controls are very basic on this model. There’s a temperature selector for the fridge, but not one for the freezer, although both are controlled via different cooling elements. This isn’t a huge problem, as my test results show.

This model isn’t frost-free, but has Miele’s ComfortFrost technology, which means it will need defrosting less often than a regular fridge freezer.

Performance

• Excellent temperature control
• Good running costs

I loaded the Miele KD 4052 E Active up with ice blocks to simulate a well-loaded fridge and freezer, and then set the fridge to 4C°. I couldn’t set the freezer to -18C°, as I normally do, as there’s no temperature control for this.

I then used temperature sensors to take temperature readings every 15 minutes, with automatic door openers opening and closing the fridge throughout the day. On average, the fridge was 3.98C°, which is just 0.02C° away from the target temperature. That’s incredible accuracy.

I also measure standard deviation, which measures how far from the average temperatures vary. Most temperatures in the Miele KD 4052 E Active’s fridge varied by +/- 0.44C°, which is brilliant; anything under 1C shows stable control.

In the freezer, it was a very similar story: the average temperature was -19.97C°, which is 1.97C° cooler than the ideal temperature of -18C° that I would have set.

Standard deviation showed that most temperatures fluctuated between +/-0.6C°. Again, this is well under 1C°, showing that this fridge freezer maintains temperatures well.

Although an E-rated appliance, I estimated that this model would cost £52.59 a year to run, which is pretty good, although the larger LG GBB92MCBAP is even cheaper to run.

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