Yahoo Finance Best fridge freezers: integrated, free standing and American styles reviewed
Big, bold, and with enough space to store your panic buying during a pandemic, American-style fridge freezers are becoming increasingly popular with large families with large kitchens.
Broadly categorised as being double the width of regular fridge freezers– around 85cm – and usually featuring two long, cupboard-sized doors, they also tend to boast plenty of additional features and gadgetry.
As well as the latest tech for keeping foods at the optimum temperature for prolonged freshness, common features these days for American-style fridge freezers include ice makers, chilled water dispensers, advanced air circulation for frost-free freezing, and even handy touchscreens for watching recipe videos.
Nevertheless, as well as having significant footprint requirements, they often command premium asking prices, and can also require hefty amounts of power consumption owing to their sheer size.
It's also worth considering that built-in water dispensers and ice makers will often need to be plumbed into the mains water supply, potentially restricting where you can position them in your kitchen.
If you’re OK with all that and fancy the idea of keeping up to 30 bags of shopping stored, along with having a genuine eye-catching focal point for your kitchen, then we’ve got the lowdown on the current best buys around below.
Samsung RS8000 Family Hub American Style Fridge Freezer
For pure bleeding-edge tech, nothing currently matches Samsung’s elegant, yet gadget-packed American-style fridge-freezer. It’s key feature is its Family Hub smart touchscreen display on the left-hand door. This allows you to read recipes from the fridge door and it can handily offer up meal suggestions based on the ingredients that are set to expire soonest.
The RS8000 also allows you to control other connected kitchen gadgets, leave notes and reminders for family members and play videos and your fav tunes from music services. On top of all this, it also features cameras built into the inside of the fridge, allowing you to view what’s being chilled inside on your mobile while you’re out shopping.
Outside of all that flash, it’s also a pretty solid fridge freezer. Quiet in use, it also has a huge 299 litres of usable space. While unquestionably pricey, it’s an appliance that redefines the humble fridge’s place in the kitchen.
Buy now £2499.00, Samsung
Fridgemaster American Fridge Freezer MS83430DFF
The majority of the appliances in this list have asking prices well above the £1k mark, however decent American-style fridge freezers do exist at lower price points. There’s no better example than this effort from Fridgemaster which manages to hit most of the feature points of its more expensive competitors, yet still manages to retail for just under £500.
It’s also pretty impressive in use - despite its bargain price point, it boasts frost protection so you won’t ever never need to defrost it, as well as having an effective fast freeze mode. Its exterior finish and trimmings are noticeably less luxe and its internal layout isn’t great - it could certainly do with a couple of extra shelves - but it nevertheless more than holds its own with far more expensive rivals.
Buy now £499.00, AO
LG GSXV91BSAE Wifi Connected American Fridge Freezer
While their fellow South Korean rivals Samsung may lead the way with cutting-edge smart fridge freezers, LG have plenty of futuristic tricks of their own for their appliances.
The key feature for the GSXV91BSAE is its ingenious Instaview door. When not in use the mirrored panel on the right hand side looks like part of the sleek stainless steel finish. However, knock on it twice and the door becomes transparent, allowing you to view the contents without having to actually open it. A further energy saving feature comes with an additional small access door on the front, allowing you to grab items without opening the whole fridge up.
Whisper quiet in use, it boasts a fast-freeze button, open-door alarms, plus a rare but welcome child lock. Its 289 litres of storage space is up there with some of the biggest, however its built in cold water and ice dispensers utilises an internal reservoir rather than using a mains water connection. This could be a benefit if you’re not able to plumb your fridge freezer, but could also be a drag if you don’t fancy having to manually top up the tank.
Buy now £1999.00, AO
HISENSE PureFlat RQ758N4SWI1 Fridge Freezer
Chinese brand Hisense are perhaps best known in the UK for their keenly-priced, yet well-specced flat screen TVs, but they’re also beginning to earn a good rep for their home appliances. This American-style fridge freezer opts for the four-door approach, and is arguably the most versatile of any of the appliances on our list.
This is largely thanks to its multi-temperature compartment, which can be set as a freezer or a fridge on a whim, making it perfect for anyone who has different storage needs at different times. There’s no ice dispenser, and there’s no plumb option for the water cooler making it a manual fill each time you run out, but on the plus side the water tank cleverly takes up very little internal space. If you’ve ever struggled for more freezer space for the turkey at Christmas, but have also needed more room in the fridge for the family picnic in the summer, this could be the one for you.
Buy now £1099.99, Currys
HAIER HB26FSSAAA Fridge Freezer
This monster American-style fridge freezer from Chinese brand Haier opts for a two door-drawer configuration at the bottom for its freezing. Alongside an energy-efficient holiday mode, the HB26FSSAAA also features Haier’s handy MyZone feature, which enables you to adjust the temperature of individual compartments.
At 101cm wide, 191cm tall, and 77cm deep, it’s the largest appliance we’ve picked and you’ll need a pretty big kitchen to accommodate it, but it’s also surprisingly efficient, boasting an impressive A++ energy rating. With room for a mammoth 27 bags of shopping, if this doesn’t satisfy your food storage needs then it’s probably worth having a chat with your local butcher about industrial options.
Buy now £1999.99, Currys
Fisher & Paykel RF605QDUVX1 Freestanding 70/30 American Fridge Freezer
Arguably the most stylish appliance on the list, this brushed-steel, four-door model goes big on the refrigeration, with a 70/30 split. Its key feature is the Variable Temperature Zone customisable compartments in the refrigerator, which let you flick between fridge, chill, soft freeze or freezer modes via an easy-to-use control panel.
There’s a door water dispenser with its own built-in filter, and there’s also a dedicated ice maker, however this is accessed from an internal freezer bin. With 337 litres of refrigerator capacity and 159 litres of freezer capacity, it offers ample space, however it’s not the fastest for freezing food when compared to most of the options here.
Buy now £2839.00, John Lewis
Verdict
Samsung’s RS8000 might be the most expensive but it does an awful lot for the price. You really do get what you pay for as this model taking refrigerating to the next hi-tech level.
