Freezers.(Kitchen, Bath & Laundry: More Style, Less Money)(Buyers guide)

Chest freezers cost the least to buy and run, but self-defrost uprights are the winners for convenience.

If you buy box-loads of burgers at a warehouse club or like to keep a few weeks' worth of dinner fixings on hand, the 4- to 6-cubic-foot freezer compartment in most refrigerators may seem positively Lilliputian. A separate freezer might be a good investment.

WHAT'S AVAILABLE

Most freezers sold in the U.S. are from one of three companies: Electrolux Home Products, which makes models sold under the Frigidaire, GE, and Kenmore labels; W.C. Wood, which makes models sold under its own name as well as Amana, Magic Chef, Maytag, and Whirlpool; and Haier, a Chinese manufacturer, which has become a major player in the freezer business in recent years. Haier is now the leading supplier of compact-sized freezers sold under its own name and some under the Amana, Kenmore, GE, and Maytag brands.

There are two types of freezers: chests, which are essentially horizontal boxes with a door that opens upward; and uprights, which resemble a single-door refrigerator. Both types are available in self-defrost and manual-defrost versions.

In recent tests, we found models of both types that failed to keep food frozen.

Manual-defrost chests. These freezers vary most in capacity, ranging from 4 to 25 cubic feet. Aside from a hanging basket or two, chests are wide open, letting you put in even large, bulky items. Nearly all the claimed cubic-foot space is usable. The design makes chests slightly more energy efficient and cheaper to operate than uprights. Cooling coils are built into the walls, so no fan is required to circulate the cold air. Because the door opens from the top, virtually no cold air escapes when you put in or take out food. A chest's open design, however, does make it hard to organize the contents. Finding something can require bending and often moving around piles of frozen goods. If you're short, you may find it difficult to extricate an item buried at the bottom (assuming you can remember it's stashed there). A chest also takes up more floor space than an upright. A 15-cubic-foot model is about 4 feet wide by 2 1/2 feet deep; a comparable upright is just as deep but only about to 2 1/2 feet wide.