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Consumer Reports Rates "Hottest" Freezers

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Aug 14, 2009 5:44 pm US/Eastern

Consumer Reports Rates "Hottest" Freezers

LINK:  Consumer Reports: Freezer Report

(KDKA) If you buy in bulk to save money, you may have thought about buying a second freezer; and you're not alone. With freezer sales heating up, Consumer Reports put 21 freezers to the test to find out which ones were great deals – and which ones aren't worth the money.

The appliances come in two types: uprights and chests.

To see how much energy they use, testers turn the room temperature up to 90-degrees. They then set the freezers to 0-degrees, the optimum temperature for storing frozen food, and fill each freezer to capacity.

The $750 Haier freezer had some problems; it couldn't quite make it to zero degrees in Consumer Reports' energy tests; but that wasn't it's only issue.

"We tested two of them and found they used much more energy than any of the other freezers we tested," Consumer Reports' Celia Kuperszmid Leherman explains

Consumer Reports recommends that consumers avoid the Haier Model HUF-138EA.

Another test showed many of the manual-defrost upright freezers don't cool all that evenly.

"We found temperatures up to 19-degrees higher on the door shelves than in the rest of the freezer," Kuperszmid Leherman adds.

The self-defrosting uprights, however, aced Consumer Reports' temperature tests.

  • Consumer Reports Best Buy: Whirlpool Model EV161NZR[Q] (About $600)
  • Another Good Choice? Kenmore Chest Freezer, Model 1692[2] (About $280)

Consumer Reports says chest freezers have advantages.  While you will have to manually defrost most of them, chest freezers cost less, use less energy, and stay colder longer in a power outage.

 Visit Consumer Reports For The Full Article

(© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)

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