Best Top-Freezer Refrigerators of 2024
Simple top-freezers often last longer than French-door other, more complex refrigerators—and they offer a ton of space for their size
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When you’re replacing a dead refrigerator, the life span of your next fridge may be top of mind. That’s why a top-freezer model is worth considering.
These fridges are far from trendy—they account for only 14 percent of new refrigerators purchased by Consumer Reports members. But they consistently earn high predicted reliability ratings, which are based on surveys on tens of thousands of fridges purchased by CR members. Buy one of these machines, and there’s a good chance you won’t encounter a problem for years.
Best Narrow Top-Freezers
Our fridge recommendations are organized by width, and we recommend you measure the space where you plan to put your fridge before you begin shopping. The narrowest top-freezer refrigerator that we recommend is 24 inches wide, though 28 inches is a more common width.
Best 30-Inch-Wide Top-Freezers
If you have more room in your kitchen for a fridge, these refrigerators from Samsung and LG are worth a close look.
Best 33-Inch-Wide Top-Freezers
These top-freezer refrigerators from Samsung and LG are two of the widest top-freezers we recommend, at 33 inches wide.
How We Test Refrigerators
During testing, we outfit each refrigerator with thermocouples in a climate-controlled chamber and monitor it for more than 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 longest. We also factor in survey data from thousands of CR members to judge brand reliability and satisfaction. All that—and then some—informs CR’s refrigerator ratings and each model’s Overall Score.
For more information on CR’s fridge evaluations, see how we test refrigerators.
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