We have a Frigidaire, an upright that Elery bought 5 years ago. It's worked fine through 2 moves, and is very energy efficient. I can recommend one with a clear conscience. My old chest freezer is a Frigidaire too, but it's about 20 years old and still running fine. It's also been moved, it was Dad's before it was mine.

Annie

I have a Frigidaire, which is my second one. It's 4 yrs old and I have not had one issue with it. We had a power outage last summer that lasted almost 30 hrs and it kept my food solidly frozen. It was still at 20 degrees when the power came back on. It has a warning buzzer that lets me know if the power goes off for more than 15 minutes.

A freezer is a very simple machine. it will have only three moving parts plus a thermostat.

The compressor is hermetically sealed and permanently lubricated.
There is a circulating fan inside, some may not, and there is a cooling fan outside. The fans are simple motors needing no maintenance.

In general, they all kind of last a longtime. I would base my decision on preference of style, interior layout, door(s) arrangement, etc.

dcarch

This post was edited by dcarch on Sat, Mar 15, 14 at 9:17

I replaced my 40 yr old 22' Kelvinator upright with an 18' Whirlpool when we moved. The Kelvinator was working flawlessly still, but moving it would have meant taking off the door and two doors to the house to get it back out of the basement where it had lived its long life and I left it - spotlessly clean and fully functioning - for the new owners.

No real complaints about the Whirlpool, but in choosing a smaller more energy efficient model I've cut myself a little short on freezing space, it's really full and I've had to change my storage habits a little.

I can wrap foods as well as anyone, did you know if not meticulously wrapped in a frost free freezer your foods will lose quality more quickly?
My understanding is that frost free uses approx. 35% more electricity to operate too....

I bought manual defrost for longer term storage. With an assortment of coolers in the hallway to my mudroom for the frozen foods, a small space heater in front of the open door, I can have the freezer defrosted, wiped dry, refilled and running in about 40 minutes. I've defrosted it twice in the 16 months I've had it, not a huge chore to me. In a cooler basement and not as conveniently located (door was not being opened, closed as often), defrosting was only required once a year with old faithful Kelvinator ;)

You can store a lot of foods in the freezer. It can preserve foods.

I had the same choice about a year ago and after much research, I decided that a Whirlpool is better than a Frigidaire, and so I bought a Whirlpool. I read enough discouraging reviews for Frigidaire not to buy one. I also have a Whirlpool refrigerator - for almost 5 years, and I've had no problems with it.

I got lucky with my upright freezer because we found one at Best Buy that had been returned by a customer because of superficial scratches on the sides, which had happened in transit, and so I got a 30% discount. It was a slightly larger and better model than I was going to buy, but ended up costing less.

Make sure you have enough shelves. Mine has two lower bins and five shelves. It's easier to organize with more shelves.

Lars

We bought an upright Frigidaire manual defrost freezer a few years ago and it worked flawlessly. The only problem was that since we open it numerous times a day because we have no freezer in our "all-fridge", the thing needed to be defrosted a lot. Finally got sick of that last year and bought a new Frigidaire frost-free upright freezer.. No complaints, it works well

Peter!! I'm so darned happy to see you here!!!

Annie