Refrigerators: cooler ways to chill.

A water dispenser you can program by the cup or liter? It's among the latest refrigerator features you'll find this year as manufacturers tout new models with added conveniences for roughly the same price as last year's.

A Whirlpool Gold side-by-side model offers the new Fast Fill dispenser, which pours measured amounts of water--handy for mixing up pitchers of iced tea and juice without having to keep your finger on the button. Whirlpool claims that its latest dispenser is twice as fast as earlier versions. But because the old dispensers were relatively slow, the new one is no faster than those from most brands.

You'll also see a growing number of French-door refrigerators, which combine a bottom-mounted freezer with side-by-side refrigerator doors on top. An added French-door benefit: a freezer drawer that slides out completely, eliminating the need to reach inward, as you must with the typical swing-out freezer door.

New isn't necessarily improved, however. Months of measuring, filling, and chilling nearly 80 models yielded some enticing refrigerator picks and a few new features and designs that left us cold. Here are the details from our tests:

Dispensers are more flexible. Wider and taller openings for filling super-sized glasses and sports bottles are the major refinements you'll see. Whirlpool's Fast Fill dispenser takes that idea a step further with a pull-out shelf that supports measuring cups and small pots. Kenmore and KitchenAid recently introduced similar features on some of their dispensers.

French-doors fit smaller spaces. A new 33-inch-wide bottom-freezer from GE brings French-door styling to spaces narrower than the usual 36 inches. But it proved neither as energy-efficient nor as quiet as some wider French-door models. Jenn-Air, Kenmore, KitchenAid, and Maytag are among the brands that also offer 36-inch French-door models in shallower, 28-inch-deep cabinet-depth styles that mimic built-in models for less.

Some stainless models stay cleaner. Magnets don't stick to stainless steel, but fingerprints and smudges often do. Two options for those who want the stainless-steel look without the maintenance: coated stainless and a look-alike called VCM, for vinyl-coated metal. Both are priced similarly to regular stainless steel and are easier to clean, though VCM has a slightly darker, less-shiny appearance.