Admiral Appliances

For Admiral American Fridge Freezer Water Filters Click Here

Admiral is an American appliance brand currently manufactured by Maytag. The brand is sold at The Home Depot.

Admiral started as a Chicago based maker of consumer electronics (radios and phonographs) in the 1930s, supplied the US military with electronic equipment during World War II and was one of the major TV manufacturers in the early era of that medium, enabling it to branch out into major appliances such as refrigerators by the 1950s. During World War II, Admiral was the weekly sponsor of the CBS Radio Network Sunday news program, "World News Today", and Admiral used the promotional slogan "America's Smart Set".

The various divisions were sold to other companies by the mid-1970s due in part to competition from imported consumer electronic goods from Japan.

The Milwaukee Admirals hockey team derives its name from Admiral appliances. In 1971 when the team was sold by its original owner to a group of investors, one of the investors, Edwin J. Merar, owned an appliance store. The team was renamed the "Admirals" after the Admiral refrigerators sold in his store.

In May 1986 in a move toward becoming a full-line producer, Maytag purchased the Magic Chef group of companies in a $737 million stock swap. Magic Chef's Admiral brand gave Maytag a presence in the refrigerator and freezer sector. Besides Admiral refrigerators, Magic Chef also produced other home appliances under the names Toastmaster, Magic Chef, and Norge. The merger gave Maytag the fourth-largest share of the U.S. appliance market. It also brought vending machine manufacturer Dixie-Narco Inc., with its number one position in soft-drink vending equipment.

The Magic Chef purchase also helped protect Maytag from the threat of takeover. As the industry consolidated and other companies began to sell higher-priced appliances Krumm responded by moving into the medium-priced market. Magic Chef was Maytag's first step into that market.

The merger of Maytag and Magic Chef doubled Maytag's size and necessitated a restructuring. Maytag Company's name was changed to Maytag Corporation and three major appliance groups were formed: the Maytag appliance division, Magic Chef, and the Admiral appliance division (the Admiral division was consolidated into the other groups in 1988). Hardwick Stoves and Jenn-Air were included in the Maytag division. The president of Magic Chef remained as head of that division, which included Toastmaster--sold in 1987--Dixie-Narco, and Magic Chef air conditioning operations. The Admiral division included Norge and Warwick product lines, part of the old Magic Chef. Each division was given a great deal of autonomy. Other mergers within the industry during 1986 resulted in four companies (Whirlpool, General Electric, White Consolidated Industries, and Maytag) controlling 80 percent of the industry in the United States.

Retail Prices

Admiral refrigerators have, normally, in the UK been competitively priced relative to the market, often costing not that much more than similar products from the Far East, noteably from LG and Samsung.

There have been little or no other Admiral branded products available in the UK.

Spares Pricing, Reliability And Fixability

Spares are not cheap but, relative to the cost of the appliances cannot be considered unreasonable in most cases either. They do tend to be slightly more expensive than the Korean manufacturers and can suffer from delays, but then so do the Koreans generally.

One thing that Admiral do seem to have over the Koreans is generally better reliability on the whole with most appliances that we see to repair being a decade or more old.

Most refrigeration repairers will repair Admiral and Maytag refrigeration without many problems.

To find an appliance engineer to repair an Admiral appliance just click here

Sadly though in recent times the Admiral name, which was a budget line for Maytag, has been bought by Whirlpool when they purchased Maytag in 2006 and all the new products for the UK appear to be re-badged Whirlpool ones. Due to that we can no longer recommend the products any more than we can Whirlpool or any of the other clones.