Best Top-Freezer Refrigerators From Consumer Reports' Tests

“Top-freezers are bare-bones models,” says Larry Ciufo, CR’s test engineer for refrigerators. “The more complicated refrigerators become, the more prone they are to breaking.” Many top-freezers, for example, lack the components that seem to break most frequently: an icemaker and dispenser. Indeed, top-freezers typically have few of the features found on French-door and side-by-side refrigerators. And the controls are often hard to reach and are not intuitive, so scores of Fair and Poor, especially among narrower models, predominate on our ease-of-use test. Still, these models are undeniably friendlier to the wallet. In fact, two of our top-rated models cost $600 or less.

In the lab, we outfit each refrigerator we test 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 tens of thousands of CR members to judge brand reliability and owner satisfaction. All that data—and then some—informs CR’s refrigerator ratings and each model’s Overall Score.

CR members can read on for ratings and reviews of the six best top-freezer refrigerators in a variety of widths. Samsung and LG dominate this list, but you’ll also find models from Frigidaire and Whirlpool.

To see even more highly rated top-freezers, check out our full top-freezer refrigerator ratings of more than 30 models.