The Best Upright Freezers

Tyler Wells Lynch, who wrote the original version of this guide, covered appliances for more than three years at Reviewed.com, and then for nearly three more years at Wirecutter. Winnie Yang is Wirecutter’s former appliance editor.

We’ve been evaluating upright freezers since 2017. For this guide, we’ve done the following:

• We spent more than 40 hours researching upright freezers.
• We interviewed a variety of experts, including Heather Marold Thomason, a butcher and founder of Primal Supply Meats in Philadelphia; Michael Dulock, a butcher and owner of M.F. Dulock Pasture-Raised Meats in Somerville, Massachusetts; Benjamin Liebert, former vice president of cold products at Frigidaire; and some anonymous hunters in an online hunting forum.
• We pored over hundreds of customer reviews for a multitude of models, comparing all that we could with professional reviews, established wisdom, and our own research into what makes a good upright freezer.

Dedicated freezers are useful for anyone who wants extra space for long-term food storage, including large families, hunters, people who might have trouble getting to a store for an extended period—or really anyone who would like to make fewer trips to the grocery store.

Just make sure you keep it in a basement or an area of your home where the temperature tends to be stable. If you want to put a freezer in your garage, you should make sure it’s built for an environment with wide temperature swings (such freezers are usually described as “garage-ready” in the specs).

This guide covers upright freezers, which look and operate just like a regular refrigerator with shelves—only at subfreezing temperatures and with a single door. The other main type of freezer is a chest freezer. Uprights offer more space with a smaller physical footprint.

Most of the experts we spoke with agreed that uprights are more convenient for retrieving and organizing food than chest freezers, because you don’t have to dig around for items buried at the bottom of a pile. Greg F, a hunter from California with decades of experience, told us that uprights are ideal for the same reason. “I piled elk on top of ducks and dove in a chest freezer and had to move the elk meat every time I wanted duck or dove,” he said. “I had a hell of a time just finding the dove.”

Also, unlike many chest freezers, the vast majority of uprights are frost-free, meaning you’ll never have to manually defrost the inside.

On the other hand, all of that shelving means there is more unused space than you’d find in a chest-style freezer, which you can stuff with more food. This makes uprights slightly less efficient than chests because all of that idle air forces the freezer to work harder to maintain temperature—costing you an extra $10 to $20 a year to operate, compared with chests. (Uprights also tend to be a bit pricier than chest freezers.)

And uprights allow more air to move around inside the freezer, exposing food to wider temperature swings, so it may be more prone to freezer burn. But you can avoid this risk by tightly wrapping or vacuum-sealing your food. Freezer burn may or may not be a problem for you; it depends on a lot of factors: how often you open the door, how much empty space is in the freezer, where in your home you place the freezer, and what foods you are freezing.

We looked for freezers that struck the best balance of features, specs, reviews, price, and availability.

First, we focused on a few crucial features:

• A capacity between 14 and 22 cubic feet: This is the sweet spot—not too big, not too small. It’s also the most popular range of capacities, based on what manufacturers are selling. Most experts agree it’s wise to overestimate rather than underestimate your needs. Heather Marold Thomason, a butcher at Primal Supply Meats, told us there’s nothing worse than running out of space. “Freezers are like purses,” she said. “The bigger they are the more you fill them up."
  
  Remember, though: A full freezer is an efficient freezer. Less empty space means less air moving around inside, and it’s air that forces the machine to work harder while increasing the risk of freezer burn.

• A power-on indicator light: This lets you know at a glance whether the freezer is working, which is useful for preventing spoilage.
• Leveling legs or wheels: Leveling legs or wheels allow you to properly balance the machine on uneven floors.
• An interior light: This makes it easier to see inside your freezer.
• At least three adjustable storage shelves: This is the standard number of shelves in an upright freezer, though plenty of models (particularly at larger capacities) have four. All shelves should be adjustable and removable.
• Generally positive reviews: We dismissed any freezer that didn’t have at least 150 reviews from at least one major retailer, as well as those with an average customer rating of fewer than 4½ out of 5 stars. (Most top-selling freezers at Home Depot, Best Buy, Lowe’s, and the like have very positive customer reviews.)

We then considered specs and features that are typically just a matter of personal preference.

• Frost-free: Frost-free freezers periodically rise from 0 degrees Fahrenheit (the ideal freezer temperature) to about 32 degrees Fahrenheit, to melt any frost buildup. This means you’ll never have to manually defrost the inside, as you would likely have to with a chest freezer. The downside to frost-free is a heightened risk of freezer burn. The majority of upright freezers are frost-free, but there are some manual defrost options, which just hold a constant temperature.
  
  Manuals need to be defrosted once a quarter-inch of ice has built up. You do this by unplugging the freezer, emptying it, pulling a drain plug on the bottom, and letting the whole thing melt over the course of a few hours. How often you need to do this depends on a bunch of factors, but at the most it will need to be done once a year.

• A reversible hinge: Some freezers allow you to put the door hinge on either side, which gives you more flexibility in where you can place them. If you need your freezer to open from the right, be sure to check that the model has a reversible hinge, because the ones with a fixed hinge tend to open from the left.
• A temperature alarm: This audibly alerts you if the freezer door is left open or if the internal temperature gets too high. It’s not a super-common feature, so we didn’t require it, but it can provide some peace of mind.
• Temperature control: The FDA-recommended setting for freezers is zero degrees Fahrenheit. There aren’t many reasons why you’d want to deviate from that, but precise temperature control could be helpful in a freezer that isn’t properly calibrated.
• A door/safety lock: A lock helps ward off children or nosy guests and housemates.
• Storage bins: Some upright freezers come with storage bins, sort of like the crisper drawers you find in fridges. They can add a bit more organization to your freezer, but they’re not going to change your life.

We also looked at warranty, annual energy consumption, and general availability.

But honestly, most upright freezers should work great, so don’t stress over this purchase too much. If our picks are out of stock, or you want something with different features or in a different size, go for it. They’re all very well reviewed and reliable.

The GE FUF17DLRWW Upright Freezer is the best upright freezer because it offers the best balance of necessary features, plus a few extras, with plenty of capacity for most people. It’s a frost-free machine with a 17.3-cubic-foot interior, a temperature alarm, exterior temperature controls, storage bins, and a slightly better efficiency rating than most other models we’ve found. The owner reviews we’ve found are overwhelmingly positive.

The FUF17DLRWW has everything you should expect from an upright freezer: There’s a light to let you know that the machine is running, and there are leveling legs to balance it on uneven flooring. The GE has four adjustable glass shelves, three baskets, and four in-door shelves, providing plenty of options for storage.

This model comes with some additional perks: The GE FUF17DLRWW is one of the few freezers we’ve come across with a temperature alarm. If the door is left open or if the internal temperature gets too high, the freezer will beep a warning. This freezer also has a door lock, which can be useful for keeping out children or neighbors in a shared space. We also like that it has glass shelving (versus the wire shelving on many other models we looked at), which adds a nice aesthetic touch without any obvious price hike.

The GE also has a slightly better energy rating than comparably sized machines. With a power draw of roughly 441 kWh per year, on average this thing will cost about $53 per year to operate (according to the estimate on the EnergyGuide label). That’s pretty typical, and slightly more efficient than many other freezers of the same size.

We’ve found consistently glowing owner reviews for the FUF17DLRWW. As of summer 2023 it has an average rating of 4.7 out of 5 stars on Home Depot, across about 6,500 reviews.

If this model’s 17.3-cubic-foot size isn’t quite right, GE makes versions that are 14.1 cubic feet (the FUF14DLRWW) and 21.3 cubic feet (the FUF21DLRWW), both of which have received mostly positive reviews. So far, the small percentage of reviewers who write that the FUF17DLRWW failed on them say that it didn’t work from the start. Freezers are all pretty simple machines and operate more or less the same, though quality-control issues do happen from time to time. But if a freezer works well when it’s new, we think it’s likely to keep working for a decade or longer.

Flaws but not dealbreakers

• It does not have a reversible door. The FUF17DLRWW opens only from the left, so make sure it works in the space you want to put it in.

Like our top pick, the frost-free Frigidaire FFFU16F2VW Upright Freezer has all of the most important features, though in a slightly smaller package (15½ cubic feet). The Frigidaire is missing some of the nice perks found in the GE upright freezer, however, including glass shelves, a door lock, and external controls. But unlike the GE, the Frigidaire has a reversible door hinge, and it comes in a brushed stainless steel finish as well as the usual white.

Otherwise, they’re very similar freezers. The Frigidaire is also marginally more efficient in its energy usage than other models of comparable size, and it gets similarly glowing reviews among owners. It’s a frost-free machine with a floor-projected power-on indicator light, a temperature alarm, adjustable feet (which allow you to level it on an uneven floor), and an interior light, so you can see what’s inside.

This model also has four removable wire shelves (which is one more than a lot of comparably sized freezers have) and five in-door shelves, as well as a convenient storage basket.

The Frigidaire is well liked by owners, with an average rating of 4.8 out of 5 stars across about 15,500 reviews on Home Depot as of summer 2023. We assume the reliability is about the same as with other brands’ freezers—if the Frigidaire works when it’s new, it should last at least a decade.

If you’re looking for a smaller upright freezer, the 13-cubic-foot version (FFFU13F2VW) could be a good option, and it has earned many glowing reviews.

Freezers are set-it-and-forget-it appliances. To keep your freezer in tip-top shape, you should keep it well stocked and free of frost buildup. A full freezer limits air circulation, making the machine more efficient overall and also preventing buildup of duct-blocking frost.

The great thing about frost-free systems, which most upright models have, is that you’ll never need to defrost the machine yourself. But you can keep yours nice and efficient by keeping it full. A well-stocked, low-frost freezer will live longer and keep your food frozen longer in the event of a power outage. You’ll also want to properly seal or wrap anything you put in there, to ward off freezer burn and air exposure and maximize shelf life. Vacuum-sealing is ideal, but a tight parchment wrap or Ziploc bag is also good.

A lot of the freezers we looked at were pretty much identical, with slight differences in features and scaled up or down for whatever capacity you’re looking for. Here are some other options that we think are decent if you can’t find our picks or are looking for something slightly different.

The GE FUF17SMRWW is nearly identical to our main pick except that it has wire shelves instead of glass ones, and opaque plastic door shelves instead of clear ones. Like the FUF17DLRWW, it comes in 21.3-cubic-foot and 14.1-cubic-foot versions.

The Maytag MZF34X18FW has many of the same features as our runner-up pick, including a reversible door. And it comes with Maytag’s 10-year warranty on compressor parts, in addition to the one-year warranty that most of the freezer makers offer. Unlike the Frigidaire FFFU16F2VW, the Maytag doesn’t have a power-on indicator or a door-ajar or temperature alarm, and its bottom compartment has a shallow storage gate that may not hold items as conveniently as the baskets in our picks. It also uses slightly more energy than either of our picks, but it’s still a fine option if the GE and the Frigidaire models are sold out. Maytag also makes a 15.7-cubic-foot upright freezer (MZF34X16DW) and a 20-cubic-foot version (MZF34X20DW) with similar features.

The 16-cubic-foot Whirlpool WZF57R16FW comes with all the features we think are most important, and it has an optional ice maker (sold separately). It has only three shelves, however, which is one less than most other models of similar size.

We were also impressed by the Gladiator GAFZ30FDGB—a heavy-duty, 17.8-cubic-foot freezer with caster wheels and a step-lever to open the door. At nearly $2,000, however, it’s expensive.