Alright, since I’ve already posted a not too glamorous start to my relationship with my new Vintec (http://forum.auswine.com.au/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=12291), I thought I’d put up a more balanced and full featured review of the fridge. The trigger for this was that I finally received the feet (which were initially missing), plus I wanted to move the fridge into a new position and therefore had to empty it. Well, without further ado, lets take a look at the V155 in all its glory.
What we've got here is the V155SGâ€Â2e†which is the large dual zone variant of Vintec’s 110 and 155 series. Let’s take a look at the stats first:
CAPACITY: Up to 154 Bordeaux Bottles
WEIGHT: 112 KGs
DIMENSIONS (HxWxD): 1761.5mm x 595mm x 677 + spacer = 707mm
POWER: 240 V 50Hz / 60 Hz
ELECTRICTY CONSUMPTION: 1 kWh / per day
TEMPERATURES: Top compartment 6-10(deg.C),bottom compartment 10-18.
PRICE: >$3000
Other features include:
- Stainless steel frame glass door - triple glazed
- 13 sliding shelves & 1 half shelf in the base
- Blue internal led light
- Electronic temperature control and display
- Adjustable feet
- Stainless steel rod door handle
- Lock
External Features
OK, that’s the statistics out of the way so let’s start from the ground up.. or should that be feet up. As advertised, the fridge comes with four adjustable feet.
As you can see from the image above, the feet are nothing special. They are a hard plastic type with a rather limited thread shaft. On the positive side, the hard plastic slides easier on hard flooring (e.g. tiles), but a rubber type foot would have been better to create a steadier and more vibration resistant base for the frame. The major disappointment with the feet though is their very limited height adjustment. They only ‘just’ thread into the base of the frame so don’t expect much leeway for levelling if you’ve got an uneven floor.
Whilst at the base, one point to note is that there appears to be an earthing strap or some other kind of insulated wire running very close to the frame at the base. You can see in the photo below that mine had what appears to be some minor chaffing damage, either from the plastic zip-tie holding it in place, or from being dragged along the ground. I’m hoping this isn’t a voltage bearing wire as it could potentially short itself to the frame.
Moving around to the rear of the unit, the vast black and smooth exterior gives way to the compressor and electronics opening. A point to note here (and as seen in the photo below) is that you have to install a spacer above the cavity, which ensures the poor compressor doesn’t get crowded against the wall and die of heat stroke. Vintec advises that warranty will be void if the spacer isn’t installed. I suggest you leave it off until you’ve got all manoeuvring out of the way with, because it’s one of those things that is easy to get knocked and broken because it sticks out like the proverbial thumb. Anyhoo.. the compressor is a Chinese HUAYI (model HY69YH) and is mounted on rubber shock-pads to keep it from rattling the frame. There is a drip/drain tray for catching condensation runoff, the usual electronics, but apart from that it’s a case of “you’ve seen one fridge, you’ve seen them allâ€Â.
Coming back around to the front, the door is nicely crafted and has apparently triple-glazing. Now I’m not sure how to interpret that because the actual glazing appears to be a dual glass, but according to the marketing material there is a third layer of acrylic to minimise condensation forming on the glass.
To give credit, where credit is due, I must say that the door is absolutely beautiful. The finish exudes quality and the large glass panel is adorned with a stylish Vintec logo. I haven’t experienced very humid and hot days yet, but so far the door stays clear of condensation unless opened. The door can also be reversed so it opens from the left or right side without too much trouble. On that point though I should add that you should pre-order it in the direction you require as you will need to peel and re-apply the Vintec logo which would otherwise end upside down.
There’s a single bolt type lock at the base of the front vent and you receive a pair of hex-type keys to play with and keep the dog from raiding the fridge at night. Yes it works, but since it’s only on one long side of the door, and the fact that the key shape is nothing unique, don’t expect that it’ll stop the local burglar from helping themselves to some of your cellar sauce.
Internals
Well, I think that covers the outside aspects, so “Open Sesame†and let’s move to the business end. In this particular model, you have seven full sliding shelves up top and six sliding shelves, plus one base (half shelf) in the lower compartment. Whites go up top, reds below. This actually struck me as strange since you would think that under normal thermal efficiency guidelines you’d put the warmer compartment up top and have the cold one below. Never mind, I’m sure there’s a good reason for it, and capacity in either section is fairly similar but we’ll get to that a bit later.
As far as I could tell there are two circulation fans (one in each compartment). Both are similar to what you’d find in your computer enclosure whizzing away and the sound levels are about the same as well.
The central split between the two compartments is taken up by the thermal controller and user panel.
There’s four buttons (Power, Light, Upper, Lower) and I suppose I don’t need to tell people how to suck eggs here. The panel shows current temperatures and as the compartment buttons get pressed they cycle through the temperature settings one degree at a time. If there’s any criticism here is that I don’t understand why both zones cannot be steered within the same temperature ranges. The upper can only be set between 6-10 and the lower 10-18.
There is a strip of 10x blue LED lights in both the upper and lower compartments. They look fantastic when on, plus the light can be operated even if the compressor is switched off, which is a nice feature if you have the fridge not running during winter I suppose.
Shelves shelves, as far as the eye can see. They do appear to be nicely made, using a hardwood which gives the end result not only a quality look but also a sturdy feel. The slats that come in contact with the bottles have a chamfered edge which ensures a snug hold and stops any bottles from rolling about. Along the base of each long edge is a strip of powder coated metal which is obviously there so that the rollers in the tracks don’t start cutting into the wood. All good so far. The front is covered in a moulded stainless steel strip and although this looks nice, you’ll see below that this can actually cause some issues. Each rack can potentially hold ten bottles in a neck-to-neck type pattern, but unless they’re standard Bordeaux size though, don’t hold your breath (as we’ll go into in a minute).
The receiving track inside the fridge is nothing flash. It is a simple assembly of three (non-ball bearing) plastic wheels on a hollow metal strip which is screwed over the top of the plastic sliding racks inside the fridge cavity. The runners protrude quite extensively which can cause issues with the wine bottle which lives in the outer edge of the rack below it. I’ll go into this a bit more below, but I want to finish by saying that the sliding action works well enough and there’s no worries about a shelf popping out on you. To remove a shelf you have to slide it out about ¾ to line up a recess against the retainer (you can see this in the pic above). The entire shelf can then be lifted and removed from the fridge.
Now, down to the business end… let’s start stacking the wine. Yes, all this must fit!
First, I’ll start by coming back to the issue of the shelf tracks impeding on the outer rack space. As you can see in the photo below there are two examples. On the right there’s a fairly standard size Semillon Sauvignon Blanc and the left is a Shiraz. As you slide the shelf closed, the bottle will be pushed over by the track from the shelf above it. Not an issue if you leave a gap, but if you’re rack is fully loaded across with bottles then you will not be able to close the shelf.
Unfortunately the space restrictions don’t end there. The image below illustrates how tightly spaced the shelves actually are. The SSB has virtually no breathing room at all. If you look closely at the cross brace which underlines each rack, the bottle has very little clearance. At least this this is still workable even if you lose a couple of bottle on the outer edges of the rack.
The Shiraz sized bottle on the other hand is where the issue becomes serious. Here’s a Shiraz-Viognier but typical of the bottle type. You can see that this doesn’t even make it under the outer edge, yet alone the internal cross brace.
If you insist on jamming the rack into place, then be expected to come up against two new issues. First is that the shelf above it will undoubtedly be pressed upwards. Even if the pressure is slight, this has a cascading effect which eventually means you run out of space somewhere above the problem rack. The second, and more damaging problem is that the sharp lower edge of that nice stainless steel trim will slice your labels neatly off your favourite bottle as you try and bring out the rack. Not good at all!
There are three ways you can get around this problem.
1) You can use one of the taller shelf areas in the fridge. There are three of those. The very top has plenty of room (even for magnum size bottles). The top shelf in the lower compartment also has more headroom because it doesn’t have a shelf or the track runners impeding on it.
2) The second option is to remove a shelf and double-stack your bottles.
3) The last option is to use the lower base shelf, which although it isn’t full depth, has adequate height for double-stacking a collection.
Performance
The following table provides a rack-by-rack measurement I’ve taken. Note that racks 6 & 11 are not measured because I removed these so I could fit my collection. These were all taken using a digital probe thermometer placed on each shelf and then left for at least 5 minutes to settle the temp back down after opening the door. I also confirmed the readings with an infrared/laser probe and although the readings varied a bit, the overall pattern seemed to stay pretty much the same.
The measures were taken with an ambient temp of 24 deg. C. and the fridge set at 10(upper) & 16(lower). Shelves are counted from the top down.
One disclaimer to the above is that I did not get the opportunity to measure variance between a hot day and a cold one. The temperature indications from the control panel inside the fridge haven’t wavered much at all (maybe ± 2deg.). Now whether this is due to the accuracy of the temperature probes inside the fridge or the inner workings will remain to be seen. The top compartment seemed to show a much broader variance in temperature. I'm not sure why this occurred as the lower one was considerably more consistent.
Conclusion
Overall this is not a bad wine fridge. It looks wonderful, never fails to produce “ooh’s & ahh’s†from visiting wine fanatics, and holds a stack of the good drop whilst doing a reasonable job at keeping your prized wine from boiling away into vinegar. The good points don’t deter from the fact though that there are some rather serious design flaws in this model. At this price point, and given the fact that Vintec promotes itself as the leader in this field, I would have hoped that the internal design was more accommodating and better thought out. The sliding racks are very simple and would have been better if they were internal ball bearing rails with no lower protrusion. You can see features like this on much cheaper variants from other manufacturers so there’s really no excuse.
Shelf spacing is also something that should be looked at. If the internals are all custom built for Vintec then it’s simply unreasonable to cater only for Bordeaux bottles. I suspect the spacing is largely determined by the plastic injection moulding of the inner lining since the shelf runners are screwed over the top of these.
The electronics and compressor internals appear to be all Chinese, so does that make it any better than other manufacturer options? I’ll let you be the judge of that. Regardless of the hardware you cannot deny that Vintec is considered a quality brand and one would expect that the money spent on a fridge such as this not only goes towards quality components but also a superior level of customer service should anything ever go wrong. I would like to believe that at least in reference to the latter point, this model should be considered a serious contender on anyone’s list when searching for a large wine fridge.
Mystery Parts?
I initially left this out of my review, but as an added note, there were two clear plastic containers inside the fridge when I received it. I'm not sure what their purpose is, where they might go or if they're even from Vintec in the first place. If anyone can shed any light on this one, I'd appreciate it.
