Product review (5 stars): So far so good!
Must say, researching a refrigerator is a perilous endeavor, fraught with all kinds of misinformation and marketing hype, not to mention biased reviews on all the manufacturer websites that they've hand picked and pruned, so you never really know who to trust.

After much hemming and hawing and talking to some friends of friends in the business, we were told that Samsung was one of the better brands from a reliability standpoint. In addition, they happened to have some the most spacious designs and I had seen fewer horrifically bad reviews than other brands, so I decided to give them a chance.

By pure fate, my wife and I stumbled on this particular model in a store right before we pulled the trigger on an order for a slightly different model. This one, as you'll note in the photos, has no ice maker or water dispenser in the door. Furthermore, inside, it has no ice maker on the upper left shelf, taking up a ton of room and limiting your interior space. You also get back all the storage space on the left side door, whereas the other models you sacrifice this in order to have a dispenser. Since we rarely if ever used the ice/water dispenser in our old fridge door, we decided to forgo it this time around and get the extra space instead. In hindsight, this was the best decision we could have made! Not only is this model MUCH cheaper than the one with the ice maker and water dispenser, but it is also more efficient AND it has a ton more interior space, despite being slightly smaller (28.5 cu vs. 31.6). We still get the awesome 'cool select' pantry inside the fridge section, and essentially the same (but more spacious) layout as the 31.6 cu model for about 40% less money. It also looks cleaner/neater in our kitchen, with smooth, pearl white doors on both sides, you get the clean symmetry and there's less moving parts to wear out or break/replace/warranty/etc.

And yes, you still get ice, there's an ice maker in the freezer section, tucked away in the back that fills a bucket (optional, you can turn it off to get the extra freezer space) with ice. If you turn off the ice maker and remove the bucket, you have the exact same amount of storage space in the freezer as the other models, which is another huge plus.

As far as noise level, since I saw this a lot in other reviews, I have to say that this unit is supremely quiet. You can't hear it from the other side of the wall in an adjacent room, unless it is dropping ice into the bucket (not really any way to make that quiet on any brand of fridge). The compressor and fan are both very quiet, enough so that in an open kitchen-to-living room design, I don't have any issues watching TV while it's running. Heck, even when I'm eating dinner right in front of the fridge, the noise is a non-issue. Our old one was quiet, but this one is even better, so I really cannot complain at all about the noise level, it is fabulously quiet, at least for refrigerator standards.

I like the dual cooling circuits, so that you don't mix air between the freezer and the fridge sections, that is something I always wanted. I'm of the opinion that this has to be more efficient too, versus blowing freezer air into the fridge section. Additionally, the controls on this fridge are stupid easy, with one button to set the temp in the fridge, one for the freezer. No dials, no gimmicky stuff or moving parts to break. Clean, simple, crisp digital readout on the upper lip of the fridge's door frame, similar to a lot of designs I'd seen in Europe the last few years, and no wasted space inside for a control panel or any of that nonsense.

The lighting is spectacular, with ample LEDs that emit far, far less heat than the old incandescent bulbs and use much less electricity in the process. The light is bright, clean and easy on the eyes, especially if you open it up in the middle of the night for a drink or a snack once your eyes have already adjusted to the darkness. That used to annoy me insanely with our old fridge, I would go practically blind if I got up in the middle of the night to get a drink!

On the whole, this is simply a wonderful refrigerator and I would definitely buy it again. The price point compared to the larger models (which actually have LESS storage because of the ice/water dispenser setup on one side and one door) is dramatically lower, but all the same high dollar features and the extremely open layout are still there. You really get the maximum bang for your buck with this model. If you have a chance, compare it side-by-side at a brick-and-mortar store with the larger 31 cu model that has the ice maker in the fridge, and you'll see how much space you lose because of the assembly in the left side door. After doing that comparison and thinking about how much stuff we put in our fridge, this was a no-brainer decision for our family. The fact that it cost so much less, that was icing on the cake.

Maximum value for the dollar and a good quality brand, packed with a ton of amazing features, this is a definite buy. I would not hesitate to buy this again or to recommend it to friends and family.