Danby Wine Cooler Review
As a wine lover, you naturally want to be able to store and display as many of your prized wines as possible in your condo without taking up too much space. After all, everything is shrinking nowadays. There is no room (literally and figuratively) for a space-hogging appliance.
Enter the Danby DWC276BLS 27-Bottle Silhouette Wine Cellar, which is slim, tall, and sleek. It does a good job of chilling your wine and of looking good doing it. In this article, we go into detail about its features, hits, and misses.
Review Summary:
Any product in the same price range as the DWC276BLS is naturally bound to face sky-high expectations and critical tests of quality. Its manufacturer Danby has been around for a while, “designing kitchen and home appliances that offer big product features for small spaces for decades.” So far, so good.
Key Features:
o 27-bottle capacity
o Tempered and tinted glass door
o Reversible door swing
o Blue interior light
o Highly adjustable temperature
o Adjustable height
o Magnetic door lock
o Safety lock and key system
Pros:
• The unit is extremely compact.
• It has a tempered glass door that is heavily tinted to block out the light.
• The interior is well-lit with blue LED.
• It chills and protects wine well.
• The temperature is adjustable in one-degree increments.
Cons:
• The compressor’s noise can be annoying and lead to vibration.
• It is a single-zone cooler.
• It is a bit expensive.
Verdict
What we love most about the DWC276BLS is its design and cooling capacity.
This wine cooler is expensive, but you get to see where your money went the moment you have it set up and running under your counter.
Check Price On AmazonWho Is This Product For?
Obviously, this Danby wine fridge is for the wine lover who is particular about the temperature of the wine they are serving without compromising style and practicality in terms of space. The only other requirement is cash–lots of it.
Key Features and Benefits of the Product
Slim body
The Danby 27-bottle wine fridge measures merely 12 inches wide. You can squeeze it into just about any corner of your kitchen or living areas.
27-bottle capacity
The Danby wine cellar can fit a maximum of 27 bottles 25oz (750 mL each) on its partially sliding shelves. You will have to arrange the bottles a certain way, though, to ensure that all 27 fit inside.
The bottles will have to be laid out alternately on the first six shelves. That means you should have four bottles per rack on the upper six shelves, which leaves three on the bottom shelf.
However, that capacity drops to 26 bottles when you use the humidor. You place it on the bottom shelf, where it occupies space equivalent to one bottle.
Humidor
Speaking of humidors, this wine cooler comes with one that you can easily use when the humidity gets too low. You simply fill it with water up to the ¾ mark, then place it on the bottom shelf. Check and refill as needed.
Tempered and tinted glass door
The glass door of the Danby 27-bottle wine fridge looks stylish, but at the same time sturdy. It is made of thick tempered glass that is tinted nicely to protect your bottles from harmful UV light.
Reversible door swing
You have to take door swing into consideration when planning where to place appliances such as wine coolers. Regardless of whether the door opens to the left or the right, it restricts your options of places to install it in. Danby made the door swing of the DWC276BLS reversible to address that problem.
Blue interior light
The pitch black interiors of the Danby wine cellar are illuminated by dim blue LED. We like its part-sci-fi look, but they are not intended for fashion so much as function.
Highly adjustable temperature
Wines are notoriously sensitive to temperature, so your wine cooler should allow for easy and specific temperature adjustments. Danby takes care of both of those issues.
It is easy because it is all digitally controlled. It is specific because you can make adjustments by as little as one degree.
Magnetic door gasket
The seals surrounding the door are tight fitting and magnetic, so they may be more effective at keeping the cold in and helping maintain uniform temperatures and stable humidity levels.
Safety lock and key system
One thing wine cooler manufacturers always warn about is that empty wine coolers are very attractive to children. Danby put a safety lock and key system on this model to help prevent such accidents. Also, this feature protects your precious collection against thieves.
Things to Know
First things first!
We know that the true test of character in today’s day and age is one’s will to assemble and install products without reading the manual. Don’t do that. Grab the manual, attach your receipt to the manual’s inside back cover, and fill out some model information-related questions on it before checking the parts out.
Warranty
This product comes with a two-year manufacturer’s warranty.
Installation
Be prepared with these tools when you eventually receive your wine cooler in the mail: a level, Philips screwdriver, flashlight, measuring tape, drill-and-hole saw set, carpenter’s square, safety glasses, and gloves. That sounds like a lot, but the manual is more than helpful with its instructions.
Food
We know wine coolers are sometimes used for chilling sodas and other drinks, but please don’t think that you can do the same thing with perishable food like meats and dairy.
Repair and parts
Entrust the Danby wine fridge’s repair, diagnosis, adjustments, and part replacements (if any) to authorized service centers and dealers only.
Power
Your DWC276BLS comes with a grounding pin. You can easily get that out of the way by using an adapter with only two prongs but don’t. That pin (or the third prong) is a safety measure. Also, by no means should you use an extension cord.
Cleaning
Do not try to clean any part of wine cooler with commercial and/or abrasive cleaners (or anything with sharp parts, for that matter). They can damage the material of the unit, thereby possibly lead to other issues, such as impaired cooling power.
The manual has specific instructions for cleaning the outside, inside, and some of the removable parts of the Danby wine cooler.
Final Verdict
Overall, we recommend the Danby 27-bottle wine cooler to anyone who wants a wine fridge as premium as their wine collection. The DWC276BLS costs more than the average wine cooler with the same capacity, but it does a great job of justifying that astronomical price tag.
It has easy-to-use and intuitive digital controls, it chills well and maintains a uniform temperature throughout, and is very durable. We believe it is really a worthy investment.
In case you get a sudden urge to finally give your vintage wines the kind of treatment they deserve, click here to find out more about this Danby DWC276BLS wine cooler, and place your order.
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