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After a pandemic-related shortage, our picks are more widely available now. However, you may still face longer delivery windows or stock shortages in particular zip codes due to high demand.

There’s little difference in performance among freezers, and they’re all generally reliable, so just about any model you get will be fine. But if you want to be able to find things easily, get an upright freezer, not a chest model. Among upright models, we like the GE FUF17DLRWW because, with its 17.3 cubic feet of space, it offers the best balance of features at the optimal size—along with some extras that you won’t find in similarly priced models.

This garage-ready, frost-free freezer includes all of the most important features, plus a few extra perks, for less money than most comparably sized freezers. It does not have a reversible door.

*At the time of publishing, the price was $803.

Like most upright freezers, the GE Upright Freezer FUF17DLRWW has a frost-free cooling system, which means you’ll never need to defrost it yourself. In addition to a power-on indicator light, leveling legs (to balance it on uneven floors), a safety lock, and a bunch of storage baskets, this model has nice bonus features, like glass shelves, external temperature controls, and a temperature alarm (which alerts you if the door has been left open). Unlike many of its competitors, the GE can also be placed in the garage, in temperatures ranging from zero to 110 degrees Fahrenheit. This freezer does not have a reversible door, however, so if you need a model that opens from the right, you should consider our runner-up pick.

This Frigidaire is a little smaller than our top pick, with all of the critical features you’d expect. And it has a reversible door.

The Frigidaire FFFU16F2VW Upright Freezer is similar to our top pick, with a smaller capacity (15½ cubic feet). It still has all of the most important features—including a frost-free cooling system, a power-on indicator light, a temperature alarm, leveling legs, and plenty of storage shelves. The Frigidaire doesn’t have external temperature controls or glass shelving, but it does have a reversible door, which makes placement more flexible.

This garage-ready, frost-free freezer includes all of the most important features, plus a few extra perks, for less money than most comparably sized freezers. It does not have a reversible door.

*At the time of publishing, the price was $803.

This Frigidaire is a little smaller than our top pick, with all of the critical features you’d expect. And it has a reversible door.

We spent more than 40 hours researching upright freezers. Although we weren’t able to test any of them physically, we relied on the kind of research few people have the time to commit to, starting with the experts we interviewed: 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; as well as some anonymous hunters in an online hunting forum.

We did what any serious shopper would do, only to the extreme: 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.

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 appliance editor and has also written and edited guides for kitchen tools as well as for our baby and parenting gear.

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.

“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. I had a hell of a time just finding the dove.” —Greg F, a hunter from California

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, which looks more like a coffin or, well, a chest. 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, because you don’t have to go digging around for items buried at the bottom of a pile, as you would probably have to with chest freezers. 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 in the first place. 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 weren’t able to do any hands-on testing, so we devoted our time to researching, spreadsheeting, and reading about all of the top available freezers—a process that took dozens of hours over the course of several weeks. Once we were done with the research, we sifted through all of the data to find the freezers that struck the best balance of features, specs, reviews, price, and availability.

First, we eliminated any model that lacked a few crucial features:

We also cut any freezer that didn’t have at least 150 reviews from at least one major retailer, and we dismissed those with an average customer rating of fewer than 4½ out of 5 stars. This was not a huge hurdle because most top-selling freezers at Home Depot, Best Buy, Lowe’s, and the like have very positive customer reviews.

Some specs and features are not necessary but nice to have. Usually it’s just a matter of personal preference.

With freezers, everything scales with capacity—especially the price. The larger the machine, the more you pay for it. This makes for a pretty wide price range, with “mini” freezers available for as low as $150 and giant upright models going for as much as $1,000.

Coordinating all of that with other data, including warranty info, annual energy consumption, and general availability, we were able to winnow our list down to two upright freezers that best fit our criteria.

But honestly, most of these machines 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. If there’s a particular spec or feature that’s crucial to you, just be sure to check for it in the listing on the freezer maker’s website, as we found some discrepancies on retailers’ sites.

This garage-ready, frost-free freezer includes all of the most important features, plus a few extra perks, for less money than most comparably sized freezers. It does not have a reversible door.

*At the time of publishing, the price was $803.

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 spring 2020 it has an average rating of 4.7 out of 5 stars on Home Depot, across 548 reviews. If the 17.3-cubic-foot fridge isn’t quite the right size, 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.

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

We can’t say what the long-term reliability will be like since this model has been out for only about three years. But 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.

This Frigidaire is a little smaller than our top pick, with all of the critical features you’d expect. And it has a reversible door.

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 we like, however, including glass shelves, a door lock, and external controls. But unlike the GE, the Frigidaire has a reversible 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 4.7 out of 5 stars across 488 reviews on Home Depot as of spring 2020. We can’t be certain, but 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. There’s also a 20-cubic-foot model (FFFU20F2VW), though we’re less confident in its performance because of fewer reviews and a lower average rating (4.1 out of 5) on Home Depot’s website.

Freezers are set-it-and-forget-it appliances; the less you have to think about it, the better. 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. It tends to be pricier than the other models we like, but if you find it at a competitive price, it’s a fine option.

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 more than $1,000, however, it’s very expensive.

Winnie Yang is the supervising editor of Wirecutter’s appliance coverage and formerly the editor of guides to baby and parenting gear. In a previous life, she served as the managing editor of Culinary Backstreets and The Art of Eating, and she has written for Condé Nast Traveler, Feast, Jamie, Saveur, and Tasting Table, among other publications.

by Molly Simms, Jamie Wiebe, and Haley Sprankle

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