Verdict
A new type of Family Hub fridge freezer, the Samsung Family Hub RF65DG9H0EB1EU has a large screen on the front of apps and notes, and a new AI camera designed to scan and track items that you place in the fridge. It’s a neat idea and genuinely useful in some situations, but I found the camera tricky and cumbersome to use at times. That’s a shame, as the French Door layout, brilliant temperature control and genuinely useful beverage centre make this an otherwise excellent, if not expensive, fridge freezer.
Pros
- Flexible fridge space
- Excellent beverage centre
- Right freezer can be extra fridge space
- Top temperature control
Cons
- AI camera a little inflexible
- Expensive
-
CapacityThere’s a total of 636 litres of space, split between 386-litres of fridge space and 250-litres of freezer space. The freezer section is split into two compartments, with the right-hand-side a flex compartment than can be a fridge or freezer.
Introduction
The Samsung Family Hub RF65DG9H0EB1EU is an evolution in style and features of the company’s popular smart fridges. As with previous versions, this one has a massive Android tablet embedded in the door for apps, but there’s a new AI-powered camera that keeps track of what you’ve added and removed from the fridge.
It’s also the first Family Hub French door fridge-freezer, which I think is a great upgrade to the standard American-style. With tonnes of space, a smart beverage centre in the door and flexible freezer space, this is a brilliant fridge freezer regardless of whether you want the smart features or not.
Design and features
- Clever layout
- Integrated beverage center
- Can track (to a degree) what you put in the fridge
Before I get into the smart features, it’s worth appreciating the Samsung Family Hub RF65DG9H0EB1EU as the quality French door fridge freezer that it is. With French door models, the top section is all fridge, and the bottom is devoted to the freezer, rather than the side-by-side layout of a typical model.
That change doesn’t sound like much, but it’s my preferred layout, for two reasons. First, the fridge is one large cavity that runs across the unit’s width; secondly, your most commonly used items, which will be in the fridge, can all be reached without bending down.
With this model, there’s a total of 386-litres of fridge space, which is quite immense, and thanks to that large cavity you can fit everything in from jars of pickles to a large fresh cream cake.
Space inside is quite flexible. The top shelf is fixed, but has enough height for cans of pop and some jars.
The middle shelf can be placed in two positions. Pictured, the shelf is in the lower position, but I think it’s probably better placed in the higher position. Neatly, the section on the right has a split that slides out of the way, allowing for taller items to be stored.
At the bottom are two large drawers for fresh food, although it’s a shame that there’s no humidity slider.
With the Hitachi R-WB640VGB1, the gap between the draws was used to hold a small drawer that wasn’t much use unless you wanted to store a single cucumber or courgette. Samsung has used this space for the water filter holder, which is quite handy. Most fridge freezers with an integrated water filter require the unit to be pulled out to change this; here, you don’t have to move the fridge at all.
Door pockets are very generous. On the right, there are three large pockets, with the lower one able to take 2-litre bottles of drink. Deep and stable, the pockets are perfect for milk, ketchup and commonly used items.
On the left, there are three pockets. The top two are deep but the bottom one is shallower, just wide enough for a can of drink. That’s because of the beverage centre that’s built-in.
As with the Samsung RH69B8941S9, the beverage centre is available through a secondary door on the outside. Open this up and you can grab anything in the top two door pockets, pour fresh filtered water from the dispenser or grab the self-filling jug.
As well as giving you something you can put on a table, the jug has an integrated infuser to fill with tea or fruits to flavour your water. Samsung recommends that if you infuse the water in the jug, you should turn off the autofill option to prevent your drink from being too diluted.
At the bottom are two separate compartments, split evenly at 125-litres each. The one on the left is a freezer only. At the top it has two large ice cube containers: full-size cubes and smaller ‘ice bites’, both of which can be used with the scoop.
That leaves a slide-out shelf (big enough for standard pizzas), a draw and three good-size door pockets.
On the right is a second compartment which has two pull-out shelves, plus the same drawer and door pockets. This compartment can be a freezer, or it can be converted to an extra fridge compartment, which is handy if you have lots of fresh food in, or you’re having a party and need more space.
The main fridge door is dominated by the large display, which is effectively a custom Android tablet. The homescreen is customisable with widgets, with the defaults showing a calendar, memos, the time, current fridge settings and water filter status. With an integrated web browser, this screen, whether you want to catch up on the news or just leave a note for your family, can more or less do it all.
Spotify is built in, and you can cast music from your phone to the fridge. That’s fine in theory, but the speaker at the front isn’t particularly loud and sounds muffled. I’d rather have a Bluetooth speaker or proper sound system.
More useful is the Alexa integration, which turns the Samsung Family Hub RF65DG9H0EB1EU into a smart speaker. If you like Alexa for timers and smart home control, having it all in a device that you have to have in your kitchen is quite useful. Note that you don’t get smart display features, such as being able to answer your Ring doorbell from the display.
SmartThings is built-in, giving you control of any smart devices you have connected to the system. Again, how useful this is depends on what devices you have, but if you have devices such as the Samsung WW11D8B95GB washing machine, you can keep track of its progresss.
Other Family Hub fridges have integrated cameras for remote viewing, but the Samsung Family Hub RF65DG9H0EB1EU has an AI-powered camera that tracks what you add and remove to the fridge via AI Vision Inside.
It has to be used quite carefully, and needs the right technique. I found that I had to move an item slowly towards the drawers at the bottom of the fridge until there was a beep, and then place the item where I wanted.
The idea is that the Samsung Family Hub RF65DG9H0EB1EU can automatically recognise an object, although I found that the suggestions were always wrong, and I had to enter items manually, with the fridge suggesting an expiry date that you can override easily.
Once the fridge had recognised an item, the Samsung Family Hub RF65DG9H0EB1EU did track me removing items well. Items that are out for over an hour are automatically removed from the list; other items are just readded when you put them back in.
For most things, the Samsung Family Hub RF65DG9H0EB1EU’s camera is a little hard to use, and it has its limitations. For example, if I scanned an item and then put it in a door pocket, the fridge freezer thought that I’d added something and then removed it. As such, the AI camera is not designed to track items that you put in the door pockets, although you can manually add items that are stored in the door pockets to the fridge contents list.
The camera is used to take a photo of the door pockets, every time a door is opened, so you can visually see what’s in side. The angle and quality of the photos does make it hard to work out what’s in each door, particularly items in the lower pockets.
The other issue is that the camera can be triggered by anything. On one occasion, I leant into the fridge to get something right at the back, and the Samsung Family Hub RF65DG9H0EB1EU took a picture of my head.
Fiddly as it is to use, AI Vision Inside can be useful, such as for fresh food that you’re not sure you’ll use by the expiry date, and for items that don’t get used often.
For example, if you make a tagine once and forget about the preserved lemons you’d bought specifically for it, the Samsung Family Hub RF65DG9H0EB1EU will keep track of them, and show you that they’re about to expire. Used with the right items, this inventory system is actually quite useful.
The Samsung Family Hub RF65DG9H0EB1EU is controllable via SmartThings, which let me view my inventory of food, as well as control the fridge and freezer’s temperature. It’s useful having a way to monitor the device, but SmartThings also adds some extra features.
First, there’s a mode to adjust the lighting so that the LEDs slowly brighten when the door is opened. It’s a nice effect and avoids being dazzled, particularly when the kitchen is dark.
There’s also an AI Energy mode, which monitors how much power the fridge freezer is using and how it’s being used, switching to energy saving mode to cut down on power consumption.
Performance
- Brilliant temperature control in the fridge
- Freezer is a little cold
- Not cheap to run
I loaded the Samsung Family Hub RF65DG9H0EB1EU up with ice packs to simulate a full load of food, and then installed the automatic door opener, which opens and closes the fridge at set intervals. Running for two weeks like this, I monitored power usage and temperatures throughout the fridge and freezer.
Starting with the fridge compartment, I found that temperature control was spot-on. Set to a target temperature of 4°C, I found that the average temperature was just 4.69°C; even the top of the fridge, which is usually the warmest, averaged 4.96°C.
Standard deviation showed that most temperatures fluctuated just +/-0.54°C from this average, which is incredible performance.
Checking the freezer compartments, I found that the average temperature in both was -20.27°C, which was 2.27°C colder than the set temperature of -18°C. That’s a little colder than I’d set, but at this level you know that food will keep well.
Standard deviation wasn’t quite as good, but with most temperatures fluctuating +/-0.96°C from the average, the result was still impressive.
Measuring power consumption, I estimated that this fridge would cost £99.45 a year to run, with a cost of 16p per litre of space. That’s not cheap, as you’d expect from an appliance with an E energy rating. To be fair, most large models have a similar energy rating. If you want cheaper costs without sacrificing space too much, then the Samsung RB53DG706AS9 may be a better choice.
Latest deals
Should you buy it?
Buy if you’ll use the smart features
If you want the Family Hub interface and large smart display, along with food tracking, then this fridge is brilliantly designed and maintains temperatures brilliantly.
Don’t buy if you want something cheaper
If you can get away without the smart features, you can get far cheaper models with similar internal features.
Final Thoughts
There’s genuinely a lot to like about the Samsung Family Hub RF65DG9H0EB1EU: the French Door design is brilliant, with a hugely flexible fridge section and the option to convert a freezer compartment into extra fridge space. I’m a huge fan of the beverage center, too, which not only gives fresh filtered water and a jug of infused water, but quick access to the shelves behind.
Family Hub is one of those love it or hate it features. Having up-to-date news, notes for the family and so on certainly has its charm, but the camera features aren’t quite there, and I found the system fiddly to use to track items that I put in and out. It’s still useful for some items, but if you won’t use this feature or the smart display, then you can the similarly-sized Samsung RH69B8941S9 in an side-by-side format with the same type of beverage centre for a lot less. If you’re after a different style of size of fridge freezer, check out our guide to the best fridge freezers.
How we test
Unlike other sites, we test every fridge freezer we review thoroughly over an extended period of time. We use industry standard tests to compare features properly. We’ll always tell you what we find. We never, ever, accept money to review a product.
Find out more about how we test in our ethics policy.
We test for at least two weeks.
We use temperature sensors to monitor the internal temperature to help us accurately compare models from different manufacturers.
FAQs
The compartment on the left is always a freezer, but the one on the right can be a freezer or additional fridge space.
It scans food that you put into the main compartment, tracking what’s inside, and it takes photos of the doorbins on the two doors.
Trusted Reviews test data
Verdict
A new type of Family Hub fridge freezer, the Samsung Family Hub RF65DG9H0EB1EU has a large screen on the front of apps and notes, and a new AI camera designed to scan and track items that you place in the fridge. It’s a neat idea and genuinely useful in some situations, but I found the camera tricky and cumbersome to use at times. That’s a shame, as the French Door layout, brilliant temperature control and genuinely useful beverage centre make this an otherwise excellent, if not expensive, fridge freezer.
Pros
- Flexible fridge space
- Excellent beverage centre
- Right freezer can be extra fridge space
- Top temperature control
Cons
- AI camera a little inflexible
- Expensive
-
CapacityThere’s a total of 636 litres of space, split between 386-litres of fridge space and 250-litres of freezer space. The freezer section is split into two compartments, with the right-hand-side a flex compartment than can be a fridge or freezer.
Introduction
The Samsung Family Hub RF65DG9H0EB1EU is an evolution in style and features of the company’s popular smart fridges. As with previous versions, this one has a massive Android tablet embedded in the door for apps, but there’s a new AI-powered camera that keeps track of what you’ve added and removed from the fridge.
It’s also the first Family Hub French door fridge-freezer, which I think is a great upgrade to the standard American-style. With tonnes of space, a smart beverage centre in the door and flexible freezer space, this is a brilliant fridge freezer regardless of whether you want the smart features or not.
Design and features
- Clever layout
- Integrated beverage center
- Can track (to a degree) what you put in the fridge
Before I get into the smart features, it’s worth appreciating the Samsung Family Hub RF65DG9H0EB1EU as the quality French door fridge freezer that it is. With French door models, the top section is all fridge, and the bottom is devoted to the freezer, rather than the side-by-side layout of a typical model.
That change doesn’t sound like much, but it’s my preferred layout, for two reasons. First, the fridge is one large cavity that runs across the unit’s width; secondly, your most commonly used items, which will be in the fridge, can all be reached without bending down.
With this model, there’s a total of 386-litres of fridge space, which is quite immense, and thanks to that large cavity you can fit everything in from jars of pickles to a large fresh cream cake.
Space inside is quite flexible. The top shelf is fixed, but has enough height for cans of pop and some jars.
The middle shelf can be placed in two positions. Pictured, the shelf is in the lower position, but I think it’s probably better placed in the higher position. Neatly, the section on the right has a split that slides out of the way, allowing for taller items to be stored.
At the bottom are two large drawers for fresh food, although it’s a shame that there’s no humidity slider.
With the Hitachi R-WB640VGB1, the gap between the draws was used to hold a small drawer that wasn’t much use unless you wanted to store a single cucumber or courgette. Samsung has used this space for the water filter holder, which is quite handy. Most fridge freezers with an integrated water filter require the unit to be pulled out to change this; here, you don’t have to move the fridge at all.
Door pockets are very generous. On the right, there are three large pockets, with the lower one able to take 2-litre bottles of drink. Deep and stable, the pockets are perfect for milk, ketchup and commonly used items.
On the left, there are three pockets. The top two are deep but the bottom one is shallower, just wide enough for a can of drink. That’s because of the beverage centre that’s built-in.
As with the Samsung RH69B8941S9, the beverage centre is available through a secondary door on the outside. Open this up and you can grab anything in the top two door pockets, pour fresh filtered water from the dispenser or grab the self-filling jug.
As well as giving you something you can put on a table, the jug has an integrated infuser to fill with tea or fruits to flavour your water. Samsung recommends that if you infuse the water in the jug, you should turn off the autofill option to prevent your drink from being too diluted.
At the bottom are two separate compartments, split evenly at 125-litres each. The one on the left is a freezer only. At the top it has two large ice cube containers: full-size cubes and smaller ‘ice bites’, both of which can be used with the scoop.
That leaves a slide-out shelf (big enough for standard pizzas), a draw and three good-size door pockets.
On the right is a second compartment which has two pull-out shelves, plus the same drawer and door pockets. This compartment can be a freezer, or it can be converted to an extra fridge compartment, which is handy if you have lots of fresh food in, or you’re having a party and need more space.
The main fridge door is dominated by the large display, which is effectively a custom Android tablet. The homescreen is customisable with widgets, with the defaults showing a calendar, memos, the time, current fridge settings and water filter status. With an integrated web browser, this screen, whether you want to catch up on the news or just leave a note for your family, can more or less do it all.
Spotify is built in, and you can cast music from your phone to the fridge. That’s fine in theory, but the speaker at the front isn’t particularly loud and sounds muffled. I’d rather have a Bluetooth speaker or proper sound system.
More useful is the Alexa integration, which turns the Samsung Family Hub RF65DG9H0EB1EU into a smart speaker. If you like Alexa for timers and smart home control, having it all in a device that you have to have in your kitchen is quite useful. Note that you don’t get smart display features, such as being able to answer your Ring doorbell from the display.
SmartThings is built-in, giving you control of any smart devices you have connected to the system. Again, how useful this is depends on what devices you have, but if you have devices such as the Samsung WW11D8B95GB washing machine, you can keep track of its progresss.
Other Family Hub fridges have integrated cameras for remote viewing, but the Samsung Family Hub RF65DG9H0EB1EU has an AI-powered camera that tracks what you add and remove to the fridge via AI Vision Inside.
It has to be used quite carefully, and needs the right technique. I found that I had to move an item slowly towards the drawers at the bottom of the fridge until there was a beep, and then place the item where I wanted.
The idea is that the Samsung Family Hub RF65DG9H0EB1EU can automatically recognise an object, although I found that the suggestions were always wrong, and I had to enter items manually, with the fridge suggesting an expiry date that you can override easily.
Once the fridge had recognised an item, the Samsung Family Hub RF65DG9H0EB1EU did track me removing items well. Items that are out for over an hour are automatically removed from the list; other items are just readded when you put them back in.
For most things, the Samsung Family Hub RF65DG9H0EB1EU’s camera is a little hard to use, and it has its limitations. For example, if I scanned an item and then put it in a door pocket, the fridge freezer thought that I’d added something and then removed it. As such, the AI camera is not designed to track items that you put in the door pockets, although you can manually add items that are stored in the door pockets to the fridge contents list.
The camera is used to take a photo of the door pockets, every time a door is opened, so you can visually see what’s in side. The angle and quality of the photos does make it hard to work out what’s in each door, particularly items in the lower pockets.
The other issue is that the camera can be triggered by anything. On one occasion, I leant into the fridge to get something right at the back, and the Samsung Family Hub RF65DG9H0EB1EU took a picture of my head.
Fiddly as it is to use, AI Vision Inside can be useful, such as for fresh food that you’re not sure you’ll use by the expiry date, and for items that don’t get used often.
For example, if you make a tagine once and forget about the preserved lemons you’d bought specifically for it, the Samsung Family Hub RF65DG9H0EB1EU will keep track of them, and show you that they’re about to expire. Used with the right items, this inventory system is actually quite useful.
The Samsung Family Hub RF65DG9H0EB1EU is controllable via SmartThings, which let me view my inventory of food, as well as control the fridge and freezer’s temperature. It’s useful having a way to monitor the device, but SmartThings also adds some extra features.
First, there’s a mode to adjust the lighting so that the LEDs slowly brighten when the door is opened. It’s a nice effect and avoids being dazzled, particularly when the kitchen is dark.
There’s also an AI Energy mode, which monitors how much power the fridge freezer is using and how it’s being used, switching to energy saving mode to cut down on power consumption.
Performance
- Brilliant temperature control in the fridge
- Freezer is a little cold
- Not cheap to run
I loaded the Samsung Family Hub RF65DG9H0EB1EU up with ice packs to simulate a full load of food, and then installed the automatic door opener, which opens and closes the fridge at set intervals. Running for two weeks like this, I monitored power usage and temperatures throughout the fridge and freezer.
Starting with the fridge compartment, I found that temperature control was spot-on. Set to a target temperature of 4°C, I found that the average temperature was just 4.69°C; even the top of the fridge, which is usually the warmest, averaged 4.96°C.
Standard deviation showed that most temperatures fluctuated just +/-0.54°C from this average, which is incredible performance.
Checking the freezer compartments, I found that the average temperature in both was -20.27°C, which was 2.27°C colder than the set temperature of -18°C. That’s a little colder than I’d set, but at this level you know that food will keep well.
Standard deviation wasn’t quite as good, but with most temperatures fluctuating +/-0.96°C from the average, the result was still impressive.
Measuring power consumption, I estimated that this fridge would cost £99.45 a year to run, with a cost of 16p per litre of space. That’s not cheap, as you’d expect from an appliance with an E energy rating. To be fair, most large models have a similar energy rating. If you want cheaper costs without sacrificing space too much, then the Samsung RB53DG706AS9 may be a better choice.
Latest deals
Should you buy it?
Buy if you’ll use the smart features
If you want the Family Hub interface and large smart display, along with food tracking, then this fridge is brilliantly designed and maintains temperatures brilliantly.
Don’t buy if you want something cheaper
If you can get away without the smart features, you can get far cheaper models with similar internal features.
Final Thoughts
There’s genuinely a lot to like about the Samsung Family Hub RF65DG9H0EB1EU: the French Door design is brilliant, with a hugely flexible fridge section and the option to convert a freezer compartment into extra fridge space. I’m a huge fan of the beverage center, too, which not only gives fresh filtered water and a jug of infused water, but quick access to the shelves behind.
Family Hub is one of those love it or hate it features. Having up-to-date news, notes for the family and so on certainly has its charm, but the camera features aren’t quite there, and I found the system fiddly to use to track items that I put in and out. It’s still useful for some items, but if you won’t use this feature or the smart display, then you can the similarly-sized Samsung RH69B8941S9 in an side-by-side format with the same type of beverage centre for a lot less. If you’re after a different style of size of fridge freezer, check out our guide to the best fridge freezers.
How we test
Unlike other sites, we test every fridge freezer we review thoroughly over an extended period of time. We use industry standard tests to compare features properly. We’ll always tell you what we find. We never, ever, accept money to review a product.
Find out more about how we test in our ethics policy.
We test for at least two weeks.
We use temperature sensors to monitor the internal temperature to help us accurately compare models from different manufacturers.
FAQs
The compartment on the left is always a freezer, but the one on the right can be a freezer or additional fridge space.
It scans food that you put into the main compartment, tracking what’s inside, and it takes photos of the doorbins on the two doors.
