In this video, we take a hands-on look at three different refrigerator compressors with their tops cut off: a standard Embraco reciprocating compressor, an LG linear compressor, and a Whirlpool linear compressor. We fire up the reciprocating unit so you can see the rotor spinning inside, then break down the pros and cons of each design.

The reciprocating compressor is the tried-and-true workhorse — not the most energy-efficient option, but reliable and still used in the majority of residential refrigerators today. The linear compressors from LG and Whirlpool offer better efficiency and quieter operation, but both earned a reputation for reliability issues. We dig into what actually caused those failures (hint: it mostly comes down to heat tolerance), clear up some of the exaggerated failure-rate claims floating around online, and explain why Whirlpool’s oil-less design and plastic discharge tubing created headaches for technicians in the field.

If you’re wondering which type of compressor you’d actually want in your fridge, we cover that too — including when the old-school reciprocating design might still be the smarter choice.

Video Transcript:

(00:05)
All right. So the other day we got a request to show a compressor running. I kind of was scratching my head at first and then I realized we have compressors with the tops that have been chopped off. So it was one of those things where I was like, okay, let me see if these run. And I have three different compressors out here. This is your standard NBCO reciprocating compressor. Here is the, as of the past few years, notorious LG linear compressor. Also kind of notorious in the field for techs is the Whirlpool linear compressor. And the difference between these is, this is kind of good old fashioned been around for a long, long time and it has a rotor on it and it spins around. And as to where these, instead of going in a round motion, the linear simply goes back and forth. Now, these two compressors here might have been able to guess it or it’s kind of funny, but it’s not.

(01:05)
They don’t run. But this one here does. So I’m going to fire up the reciprocating real quick just to show you what it looks like on the inside. And then I’m going to talk about some of the pros and cons real quick. So I’ll kind of bring up the camera and give you a zoom in, plug it in and show you it running.

(01:26)
And there we go. This running, you can see the runner going around, help test it up, didn’t get shot. That’s good. And then we have our suction line right here. You can almost hear the difference. Well, you can hear the difference. The compressor when it stops drawing and air through that. And then here’s our discharge. This is where it would be pumping out the refrigerant into condenser.

(01:56)
All right. Couple pros and cons of these compressors. Con of this, there aren’t really too many cons to the reciprocating compressor. It’s not the most efficient thing in the world, and I guess that’s one of them. But at the end of the day, they produced it for a really long time. And yeah, that’s only real downfall is that it uses a little bit more energy than your linear compressors do. But it is kind of old faithful at this point, still in production today, still used in the majority of residential refrigerators that are out there. When we come to the pros and cons of our linear, well, you have LG, you got the Whirlpool, and both are notorious for having issues. Now, there’s some misconceptions out there. A lot of people go online and if you start, especially when it, unfortunately for LG, when you look up the LG compressor, the internet kind of takes you down the rabbit hole.

(02:51)
It’s like, “Oh, it’s got this crazy failure rate.” There’s a particular few years where yet probably had an abnormally high failure rate, but the truth is in current date production, it really doesn’t have a higher failure rate than most of its major competitors, in some cases even lower. I was covering the internet and I was kind of going through trying to get a definitive answer and I came to results at like 2% failure rate to one website said 25. And I’m telling you right now, it is not 25% failure rate. There’s no way that this compressor had a 25, maybe in a very short particular run, but even then I would highly, highly doubt this actually had a 25% failure rate. Realistically, it’s probably closer to the 2% fail rate, but the shortage of technicians and everything that led to the mass chaos and getting this compressor working, modern day versions of it, yeah, they seem to have it smoothed out.

(03:47)
Whirlpools, kind of the same ballpark. They stopped production on this shortly after. They just ran into a bunch of problems with the compressor. This was one of its downfalls, in my opinion, this was an oils compressor. So the refrigerant itself was supposed to pump through, lubricate the compressor, and it didn’t work out so well. At least I will give them credit for saying, “Hey, enough, back out of it. ” Our techs, none of them really like it when they come across one of these, see if we can see it, if it still exists yet. It even has a plastic tube on the inside. I’ll try to bring it up, show the camera. So yeah, when you’re in the field sweating this line, if you get it too hot, you actually would melt the tube and your brand new compressor on the discharge line is caput.

(04:32)
If you blow that line, it just pumps inside of itself and it’s what we call an inefficient compressor. So the main killer, especially of the LG compressor, I know there’s a lot of people also wondering why did it fail so much? Why was it so notorious for this? For a couple years there, there’s maybe issues in manufacturing and stuff like that, but really the downfall of this for a specific period of time was the fact that it could not tolerate heat, unfortunately. So if anything started to go wrong with this compressor and it started getting hotter than it was supposed to, it lost seals and valves or its discharge valve over here in a discharge line, that was game or that was a death sentence for the compressor. Heat will kill any compressor. This compressor is going to tolerate heat a little bit better, where this one does not tolerate heat.

(05:24)
And what happens is, let’s say for instance, you have mechanical friction in the inside, debris was left over for the manufacturing process, or it was placed in a garage in Arizona and it was 115 freaking degrees outside. That oil gets hot on the inside. And we all know that when oil changes temperatures, it has a different viscosity. Well, you lose the lubricating properties for this and some cases it would even pump the oil out of the actual compressor following the refrigerant, which is normal, but it would dump too much of it out. You lose the ability to lubricate, you have friction, now you have even more heat. And it was just kind of a catastrophic runaway effect. So yeah, at the end of the day, my professional opinion, what was the number one killer or the number one reason these were getting taken out, it was definitely its inability to tolerate heat, unfortunately.

(06:16)
So bad reputation, but ultimately very, very energy efficient. I will fully admit I have this refrigerator in my kitchen or the alergy came with the house, but so far it’s a great looking refrigerator. It runs perfectly fine. I’ve had zero issues with mine. Anytime it makes a noise, I am kind of like looking at it like, “Hey, is it going out on me? ” But LG also does a pretty good job of backing that up. So I know it’s frustrating for a lot of people and periods getting techs out and stuff like that. But yeah, going back to its notoriety of being so prone to failure, yeah, the reason for it was heat, unfortunately. The other pros and cons of these compressors, unfortunately, I got two dead compressors over here with this one, you saw this one running. It normally would have a shell on it and it wouldn’t be that loud in your house, but this is a little bit louder than a linear would be.

(07:14)
In some cases, when the linears, especially if they’re variable speed, we can up and reduce the voltage of the compressor. When they’re not running at full steam, they’re very, very quiet. Some techs even put their hands on them to feel the vibration and make sure that the compressor’s actually running, stuff like that. So yeah, a little bit louder, much, much quieter, which especially all the rage nowadays, open concepts in the homes, definitely something like this, you’re going to hear the fridge less. At the end of the day, if I were to choose one of these, which one would I take? Well, nope, not that one right there. One, they killed the production on it, at least as far as I remember, they did. So it would come down to the LG or the classic and embraco over here. If I was going for quiet and efficiency, absolutely, I’m going something with a linear on the inside of it.

(08:03)
If I was going to throw it in the garage and didn’t care about it, then I’m going with this over here. So there is a time and a place for it. So less efficient, it’s going to be a little bit louder, quieter, but has a bad reputation unfortunately.