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Blimey! American-style fridge-freezers are pricey!
Our cheap fridge-in-a-cupboard has always been crap, so now is the time to replace it.
Any brands worth considering? Any Black Friday deals around? Budget is around £1k. Quick Google suggests a couple of Samsung options at that price, but what else should we be looking at?
We just went with a massive traditional fridge freezer. 80% fridge and 20% freezer. Bosch i think. The freezer is massive and you could store a few bodies in the fridge. Its also 80cm deep.
We had a Daewoo one, it was fine. I miss the ice maker 🙁
We bought a Bosch series 6 for that budget two years back - but we looked at LG & Samsung units as well.
We've got one of the Samsung ones that there are about 400 variations of (black, plastic internal bits rather than metal, plumbed in ice maker)
It's great. Frost free works really well, ice maker is ace, loads of room.
Downsides are it can be a bit noisy in an open plan kitchen/diner/desk in the corner, not many pull out drawers, and it's very deep. We had to design a bit of our new kitchen around being able to fit it!
Previously had rubbish under counter fridge and freezer, it's a whole new world.
I took a lot of convincing due to aesthetics and size, but I think it was worth it.
We've got a big Samsung thing with ice maker etc. Great when it's working, but the ice maker always starts to frost up and then it blocks itself up and stops making ice. I now have a mini crowbar sat on top of the fridge so I can jab it in and clear it out everytime. Tried various defrosts and resets but it's always clogged up again in a few weeks.
We got the fridge 2nd hand though so out of warranty and just got to live with it. The rest of it is great and loads of space.
We had 2 Samsungs in 2 different houses and loved them. The ice, water and sheer space are just excellent.
Like pocpoc, our second one had a nasty tendency to freeze up over the cooling element - basically condensation from the ice maker froze on the element and would gradually get to a point of blocking it all up. The fix was simple enough if a bit fiddly - removing the back panel and chipping off the ice - but it was just annoying.
I think Samsungs generally are the most affordable American-style ones now, so well worth looking. Just check your dimensions, especially the depth, to ensure it fits your kitchen
We had a big American branded one clad in stainless steel back in the mid 90s to the mid 2010s. if I remember correctly it cost about £2,000 back then. Yikes! Ah well, that was before children.
Its ice maker was excellent. The cabinet was very deep so had loads of storage. Rise and fall shelf was surprisingly useful. Not very efficient though. And eventually the compressor died.
We replaced it with a Panasonic American-style 2-door one. Same width (~100cm) but European shallow compared with the American one. Way more efficient. Ice maker, but not as fast or reliable as the American one.
If I were buying again I’d consider ones that had the features I wanted and put branding in second place. I think our Panasonic was a bit over £1,000 but I expect its ilk will be close to that or below that now.
I'd also look at second hand, as because of the size of them they're pretty 'site specific', and when people move house the don't necessarily fit in the new kitchen. This happened to us, and the fella that bought it from us got a bargain...