Samsung RF197 "Happiness ?"

I have a samsung 24 cf in the house and a RF197 here in the coach. I will say it is the best upgrade we did. I love the fridge and it works very well. I wish they would just make a 12volt version. It is a great unit to have in the coach.

Gator48.....I read some of those online reviews before I installed the Samsung in my Monaco. A lot of them criticized the refer for being too small. Really.....you buy an 18 cubic foot refer and then complain it's too small. That's like buying a white car and complaining that it's white.

Thanks all for the input. I an feeling a lot more comfortable about this now.


Dave

I did our conversion during the period 6/11 to 12/11. We did our trip to Calif from Branson Mo that winter and then in the summer of 2012 did a trip to Maine and down to the Jersey shore and into Tenn and back to Mo. We are now in Calif on our third trip with the 197. It has performed flawlessly keeping food far longer than the NotCold we had before. We are running it off a MSW inverter and the four 6v batt configuration the coach came with. We've boondocked twice in Quartzsite with it and other than having to run the generator twice a day to keep the batteries up (we had to do this before we installed the 197) we had no issues.
Ron

When I referred to online reviews they were NOT RV reviewers. Rather they appeared to be purchasers who apparently lived in regular stick homes. In fact most reviewers who indicated RV usage were happy. This was why I asked here. It seems almost everyone who responds to the usual Norcold vs. residential posts seem to respond positively to the residential.

If you are thinking of doing it like I am and search the web for Samsung RF197 reviews it seems like night and day away from the RV community. I retire next month and I don't want to hit the road with a 8 year old Norcold in the coach.

Who has more bad reviews, Norcold or Samsung. If you do the switch you will be a happy camper.....Bruce

The 197 is a good choice because the compressor in it is a DC motor so no need to change to a PSW inverter. It's not that most residential fridge's have to have a PSW, it's the greater efficiency of a AC motor on PSW when you are conserving amps so some change their inverters.

We are on year 2 with our 197 and no problems using our OEM inverter. I have read those reviews as well but we have been pleased with ours.

I am concerned about the large numbers of online reviews indicating issues with them. :h
We ditched the Not-So-Cold last year, one of the best moves that we have made. I did change out the inverter to the Magnum 2812 with a new control panel. The Samsung 197 will run on the Xantrex 458 inverter without any problems. I will be adding an auto gen-set start in a few months because we run on the inverter all the time.
JR

We've had our RF197 for nearly 3 years and love it. It's the single best improvement we've made to our MH.

A common problem with online discussion groups such as this is that a small number of unhappy people can become very vocal about an issue and can distort the reality of a situation. Furthermore, for some reason residential refrigerators also have become a "Ford vs Chevy" sort of debate in which some people have decided that it is "wrong" to be installing residential fridges in RVs and have been very vocal about expressing this opinion.