Best Bottom-Freezer Refrigerators of 2021
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Bottom-freezers aren’t the most popular refrigerator configuration—that honor goes to French-door models—but there are still some compelling reasons to consider such a model.
For one thing, they have their priorities straight, keeping fresh food at eye level and frozen stuff down below, where it occupies less valuable real estate.
“They’re also often more affordable than French-door refrigerators and can cost less to run,” says Larry Ciufo, Consumer Reports’ test engineer for refrigerators.
Our most recent survey found that bottom-freezers tend to offer better reliability than French-door models, too. For example, LG French-doors receive a Good rating for predicted reliability, while LG bottom-freezers receive an Excellent rating. (Find out who makes the most reliable appliances.)
To test each refrigerator that enters our labs, we outfit it with thermocouples in a climate-controlled chamber and monitor it for a month, collecting more than 5.4 million temperature readings that identify warm and cold spots, to determine which models will keep your food fresh longer. We also factor in survey data from thousands of CR members to judge brand reliability and satisfaction. All that data—and then some—informs CR’s refrigerator ratings charts and each model’s Overall Score.
Below, CR members will find ratings and reviews of the eight best bottom-freezer refrigerators from our tests. Our list includes models from Amana, Bosch, GE, Haier, KitchenAid, and LG in 30-inch and 33-inch widths, plus a few options that are even narrower. To see more top-rated bottom-freezers, go to our complete bottom-freezer refrigerator ratings.
