Frigidaire vs Kenmore refrigerators: an incident-report comparison

What this Frigidaire vs Kenmore comparison is based on#

Two federal complaint records are counted on this page: 273 CPSC SaferProducts incident reports naming a component on a Frigidaire refrigerator between 2011 and 2026, and 373 doing the same for a Kenmore refrigerator between 2011 and 2025. Every share below is a share of one of those two totals. Neither total counts refrigerators sold, shipped or still running, so nothing here converts into a rate.

The two columns are close enough in size to be read against each other row by row, which is not true of every pairing in this set. That matters more than it sounds: when one record is six times the other, most apparent differences are resolution artefacts. Here they are differences between the records themselves, whatever produced them.

One component carries the Frigidaire record#

The ice maker is named in 28% of the Frigidaire reports — 77 filings out of 273, more than a quarter of everything submitted. Nothing else in that column comes close. The compressor is second at 10%, and the third row, the wiring or power cord, is at 5%. The distance from first place to second is 18 points; the distance from second to eleventh is 10.

In the Kenmore record the ice maker is a 9% row, 35 filings out of 373. That is 19 points of separation, and it is by a wide margin the largest gap on this page. It is also the one gap here that cannot be explained away by corpus size or by a handful of reclassified reports: 77 filings against 35, in two records of comparable size, is a real difference in what people wrote in about.

What it is not is a measurement of how often either brand's ice maker breaks. Both numbers are shares of complaints, and complaints are not a random sample of failures. A component that produces a visible, memorable, water-adjacent event draws a report in a way that a component which quietly stops working does not.

Kenmore's record is led by the compressor#

Kenmore's column has a different shape entirely. Its leading row is the compressor at 11%, 42 filings, and its second is the ice maker at 9%, followed by the control board at 7%. The gap between first and second place is two points; in the Frigidaire column that same gap is 18. One record has a subject and the other has a top three.

The compressor is also the flattest comparison on the page: 10% of the Frigidaire reports against 11% of the Kenmore ones, 27 filings against 42, a single point the table marks as within one-report noise. Whatever separates these two records, it is not the sealed system, and that is worth stating because the sealed system is what a refrigerator buyer usually worries about.

The control board runs the other way#

The second real difference here is easy to miss because both numbers are small. The control board takes 7% of the Kenmore record — 25 filings — and 1% of the Frigidaire one, which is three filings out of 273. Six points, in the direction opposite to the ice maker.

Three reports in 273 is close to an absence, and it is worth being precise about what that means. It means Frigidaire complaints in this window rarely named the board. It does not mean Frigidaire boards do not fail: a report that describes a symptom — the fridge stopped cooling, the display went dark — without identifying a part lands in no component row at all, and those reports exist in both records.

The two directions together are the argument against reading this page as a ranking. If one brand's owners simply filed more freely than the other's, the gaps would lean one way. They do not.

The water valve, the wiring, and the tails#

Two smaller rows follow the ice maker's direction. The water valve or line takes 4% of the Frigidaire record against 0% of the Kenmore one — eleven filings against one — and the wiring or power cord runs 5% against 3%. The first of those is a four-point gap on a decent count and belongs with the ice maker as part of the same water-side emphasis in the Frigidaire reports.

Below that the two columns converge and thin out. The motor sits at 2% on both sides. The condenser sits at 1% on both. Frigidaire adds a defrost system at 1% and a heating element at 1%; Kenmore adds a thermostat or sensor at 1% and an evaporator at 1%. Rows of one or two filings are the edge of the classification rather than a finding, and neither column supports conclusions there.

Two windows that do not quite match#

The Frigidaire record runs to 2026 and the Kenmore one stops in 2025, so the most recent Kenmore submissions are simply not in the set. Against fifteen years of filings that is a modest asymmetry, but it caps what the small rows can carry: where the two columns differ by a single point, the difference is not worth more than the missing year.

Reading the pair together#

The practical content divides cleanly. On a Frigidaire, the reported trouble concentrates on the ice maker first and the compressor second, and those two rows account for 104 of the 273 filings between them. On a Kenmore, the compressor comes first and the control board is a genuine third, which it is not on the Frigidaire side at any weight. Beyond those three rows the two records run together, and neither of them is a rate.

Frigidaire vs Kenmore refrigerators: what the reports mention#

Both columns are shares of their own corpus, and the corpora differ in size. Frigidaire: CPSC SaferProducts incident reports for Frigidaire refrigerators, 2011-2026, n=273. Kenmore: CPSC SaferProducts incident reports for Kenmore refrigerators, 2011-2025, n=373. A difference no larger than one report on either side is marked "within one-report noise".

About the corpus: these are CPSC SaferProducts reports — incidents someone chose to report, not units sold — so the shares on this page are shares of the reports and never a failure rate. The corpus is weighted toward safety events: 12,007 of its 20,581 records (58%) are fire, smoke, burn or melt reports, which over-represents the components that burn and under-represents the ones that merely stop working.

Frigidaire refrigerators: the reported component split#

Frigidaire refrigerators — every share in this table is a share of: CPSC SaferProducts incident reports for Frigidaire refrigerators, 2011-2026, n=273.

Shares of reports, not failure rates — see the corpus note above.

Kenmore refrigerators: the reported component split#

Kenmore refrigerators — every share in this table is a share of: CPSC SaferProducts incident reports for Kenmore refrigerators, 2011-2025, n=373.

Shares of reports, not failure rates — see the corpus note above.

How to use these numbers#

What this comparison can settle: which components the reported incidents of each brand actually concentrate on, for this appliance. What it cannot settle: which brand fails more often. That would need units sold, and no public source states it. Use the component split to plan for the repair each brand is most reported for, not to rank the two.