I guess “freezer on bottom” is my choice, but I voted “other” because it is far more important to me for the stuff in the freezer to sit in a closed drawer instead of a wire basket. That is just so much more energy efficient, since the majority of energy use of a fridge is cooling the air in the freezer back down. Keep the air sitting in the drawer and you don’t have to do that work.
Freezer on the bottom. I’ve always had freezer on top in my place, but I’ve got a friend with freezer on the bottom. It’s soooo much better.
French doors on top freezer drawer on bottom. Best fridge door configuration I’ve ever had. Freezer is deep, the fridge has loads of space and easy access. No water dispenser those are bad bad bad.
I have lived with all types. Side by side is an abomination. I couldn’t tell you why but freezer on the bottom works best for me along with the French doors.
As an aside, I hate the thing where you get water from the outside of the door. Mine doesn’t have that.
Freezer on the bottom.
I can’t tell you how many times something has fallen into my arms or clunked me on the melon because there was so much stuff crammed into a top freezer.
We don’t have one but I do like a fridge with French doors.
None of the above.
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First, another vote that side-by-sides SUCK. They’re too narrow to access anything without moving stuff around and shuffling stuff from shelf to shelf. Anything big like a pizza box won’t fit. My parents bought one when they remodeled the house they’re currently in ~12 years ago, and I’ve despised it since the day they bought it.
I’ve used the ones that have the French doors on the top (fridge) and the drawer on the bottom (freezer), as well as the freezer drawer on the bottom and a regular fridge door on the top – our church has one of both in the fellowship hall. I don’t really like these either. I don’t like crouching down to access the stuff in the freezer. One has the ice dispenser on the bottom of the freezer space, and the rest of the freezer space is essentially a big wire basket that slides out. So, the most-often accessed item in the freezer – the ice – is about 4 inches above floor level. Fuck that. I’m not getting any younger and my knees already hurt. Someone upthread mentioned playing “freezer Tetris.” That’s not far off, and it’s a royal PITA doing so in the freezer drawer because everything is essentially stacked on top of each other, so you have to dig to find what you want. I hate chest freezers for the same reason. I also don’t like the built-in water or ice dispensers. They take up a lot of space in the door and I wouldn’t use it enough to justify getting one. I’ve used a couple at houses of friends and family where the water from the dispenser has a subtle plastic taste, even after it’s been used for several months. I don’t know how common that is but that would be a deal-killer in itself so I will actively avoid purchasing one that has the in-door ice and water dispenser. I do like having a built-in ice maker, though. But it has to be the old-fashioned kind that dump ice into a little bucket in the corner of the freezer.
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What I have not seen mentioned yet is my preference: A full-size fridge-only unit. They’re huge, allow for storage of big things if needed (like cases of soda or beer, or a full-size pizza box, or a sheet pan if you’re marinating a fish fillet), and often have more drawers than a fridge-freezer combo which is really nice for keeping veggies and fruit separated from meat. We’re currently renting a small house, but when we get around to actually buying a place I will be advocating strongly for a fridge-only in the kitchen. Like ZipperJJ we rarely use the freezer. In a perfect world I would have a fridge-only unit in the kitchen and a freezer in the pantry / laundry room / utility room / garage. There are some fridge-only units that have a small (like 1 cubic foot) freezer in them, I would want one of those for ice.
If I can’t get a fridge-only, I’m going for the traditional freezer-on-top, no in-door ice or water, but with a small ice maker in the freezer. KISS and all that.
I have 2 refrigerators. One a tenant didn’t want, she had her own. It’s a freezer on top. Despise it, and it will never die. I have to drag a dining room chair into the kitchen if I need to look thru it 'cause shit falls out.
The other is freezer on the bottom. I adore it.
And joining the hatred for side by side.
Freezer on the bottom. Not sure about the french doors on the top. My parents have one with french doors on the top, but the doors have to be closed in a certain order, and I always do it wrong.
I have a side-by-side and a normal sized pizza box fits fine in it. I also have a separate stand-alone freezer in the basement for extra freezer storage and if I need more space.
I don’t mind the side-by-side. I grew up with freezer-on-top fridge. I actually like the ice dispenser on the side-by-side. We use that a lot. I know other fridges can also have ice dispensers inside the freezer, or I can use an ice tray like I’ve done in the past, but the side-by-side doesn’t bother me. They’re all kind of interchangeable to me. I don’t have an issue with any type. I’m just not going to pay a premium to have the freezer on the bottom. I’ve had no issue with freezer-on-top or side-by-side in getting stuff off the bottom or the crisper. I don’t bend over, I just squat. I understand that may be difficult for some people, but so far middle age hasn’t caught up to my knees, I guess.
Are you really paying a premium for freezer on the bottom? I didn’t notice that when I bought my unit a few years ago. I just went to the Home Depot webpage and while it’s not easy to do an exact comparison, the prices look the same to me.
I only ever had freezer on top, except for the freezer on bottom my parents had when I was really little.
However, I have a problem with stuff on my top shelf in my fridge freezing. Given that cold air sinks, you’d think this would be less of a problem with freezer on the bottom.
I monkey with the temperature setting, but I can’t seem to find one that does not either freeze stuff in the top of the fridge a little, or keep the freezer a wee bit too warm. And yes, I do have only one control for temp, but I don’t think having separate controls for up and down would help (without much better insulation for the space between), due to the “cold sinking” fact.
It just seems to me that it makes more sense to but the colder unit on the bottom, because, physics.
Never had a side by side either, but have experience with them, and agree that an ice maker is not worth trying to crowd everything onto small shelves.
Our French door, freezer on the bottom model has a mechanism so that you can open or close either door first. It’s really pretty clever.
We bought a fridge like that for our old condo. The previous fridge suddenly went kaput, and we needed to get something that was in-stock so it could be delivered the next day (we borrowed a gigantic cooler from a co-worker of mine who lived nearby in the meantime). The estimate to fix a ten-year-old fridge was a minimum of $500 - 600, which made no sense.
We found a floor model with a barely visible scratch on the door, and a middle drawer like you describe, except it could be either a fridge or a freezer drawer depending on how you set the temperature. It was awesome, especially for $1100 off. I miss it (it stayed with the condo when we sold it), and part of me looks forward to when the old, but still perfectly serviceable basic fridge at our house dies so we can get a nicer one.
Our freezer on the bottom unit has a slot for two frozen pizzas. Don’t know how we did without it.
I’m a bottom. No, wait.
When we went shopping at Lowe’s for a fridge a few years ago, the bottom-freezer fridges were the most expensive (but we may have been looking at the French door version of these). Top-freezer was the cheapest, side-by-side next, then bottom-freezer.
My experience was french doors were more expensive than a conventional two-door (or one door + drawer) bottom freezer. It’s been about a year since I looked though.
Looks like that’s still the case. these two refrigerators are from the same maker with similar capacity and features. One is a conventional bottom freeze, the other is a french door. The french door fridge is $400 more.
Was it significantly more expensive or just a couple hundred dollars more? For something that I’ll have for more than ten years, I’ll gladly pay a bit more for what I perceive to be convenience.
Freezer on bottom, please. Side by side should have died in the 1970s. Freezer on bottom makes sense because you’re likely using it far less than the fridge