i have the samsung 29 cubic ft and i LOVE IT! the lights slowly get brighter when you open the doors! the only thing is they could have put in some more features on the ice/water panel. for the 2k price tag it could do some shaved ice or something!

I am renting an apartment with a freezer drawer on the bottom and I hate it. I go the freezer for ice much more than I go to the crisper for lettuce, so having the freezer in an uncomfortably low position is really unfortunate. My parents in law also have a freezer drawer and theirs makes even less sense because they don't have an automatic ice maker. This means that they have to fill up ice trays with water, caaaaaarefully bend to put them in the basket, and sloooooooowly close the drawer so that they don't all spill. Ridiculous!

So far I am the sole under-counter, compact fridge owner. U-Line Echelon for those wondering.

The apartment i currently live in has a freezer on top model, but it's the most inefficient use of space i've ever come across. I HATE it!!! However, we're moving next week and the new place has a side-by-side with dispenser, and i'm so excited it's irrational. Lots of door storage, separate bins for fruit produce, deli/cheese drawer. It'll be such an improvement, i can't wait to re-organize the fridge. Sometime it's the little things we look forward to most :)

A vintage fridge, with a tiny freezer inside.

I don't like my refridgerator at all. Boo on it. It was there when we bought our house a year ago, which is fine and dandy- but I'd love a new one. Soon- BUT! I talk sweetly to it from time to time, make it promise not to die because we already had our gas stove/oven die on us (Christmas Eve thank you- and cooking Christmas Day dinner) Crockpot anyone?

We got a side-by-side when we renovated, because our kitchen's kind of narrow so it was better to have narrower fridge doors opening into it. I love it.

Now if the survey said what kind of fridge did I WISH I had, the answer would have been completely different -- freezer on the bottom and fridge on top. I do not love my fridge BUT it came with the apartment, it works and I'm not planning on a new one anytime soon. So, I'll just have to work on tolerance :)

I love my fridge; its a 6 year old Kenmore and every shelf and compartment in it comes out easily for cleaning. When I bought it I researched side by side and freezer below fridge both. The side by side came up as having more repairs than anything else and I couldn't bring myself to plunk down the 1K for the freezer below. It's never had any problems at all. (knock wood)

I hate freezer-on-top fridges with a PASSION. Ice trays aren't an issue for me because I use little plastic ice cubes. I think freezer on top is one of the biggest design flaws in common appliances. And I am stuck with one, no matter where I go, because no apartments around here come with freezer drawer fridges.

I have a side by side fridge and I am really happy about it. The only advantage of the new freezer on bottom, fridge on top is the wider tablets that can be practical when you host a party. A few friends and family have the freezer on bottom, fridge on top. Comparing the two, I get the impression that I can put more stuff inside my side by side. But it may be a question of how we organize things.

Like @acushla, we used to have a Kenmore with sliding shelves (including the freezer). It makes cleaning it *so much* easier. Now we have a much cheaper one (moved from a house to an apartment), and I really miss those sliding shelves!

Both were freezer-on-top models, which I really like. We use our freezer a lot (I'm always making big meals so we can freeze leftovers for lunches, so there's a lot of traffic through the freezer). I also like that we can fit cookie sheets in there, which is frequently useful for freezing things like stocks in bags (I then line them upright along the side).

In the apartment I rent, I have the normal, old, freezer on top, fridge on the bottom kind. It's just "ehh", and the ice maker likes to make it's own decision on when it wants to work. For the past 6 months, there's been no ice!

We went with side-by-side in our recent renovation because we wanted counter-depth and ice/water in the door. But for storing large pots and platters, the french door style (like the one on the right above) is the way to go. I, for one, could live without the water/ice in the door thingey -- but my partner can't . . .

I have an older Amana with a bottom freezer. I'd love to upgrade to a French door fridge with bottom freezer. Love that style.

We rent and have a standard freezer-on-top combo. I'd prefer to have a freezer drawer (or 2! with an ice maker!) on the bottom but my real pet peeve is that the door opens the wrong way. I see this so much on tv - even decorating shows - and it drives me crazy. When the frig door is open it should not be between you and the rest of the kitchen! (Think about unloading grocery bags from the counter into the frig and the reverse process - taking food out and putting it on the counter.) Past apartments with the same issue have had cheaper refrigerator models where it's possible to switch the handle and hinges from one side to another. Alas, on our current model, handle placement is an option our not-very-attentive-to-detail landlord had to choose when ordering, and he got it wrong.

After scouring the internet and local stores for months to find the right size refrigerator, I ended up with this 15.9 cu ft refrigerator from Summit.

It had the small (26"x26") footprint that I wanted without being squatty. The basket doesn't fit well under the ice-maker, resulting in ice avalanches from time to time, but other than that, no complaints. It's plenty big for my 2-person household.

My mother-in-law bought us a new freezer-on-top fridge when we bought our first place, so I feel I can't denigrate it too much. I would have preferred a fridge-on-top model. One nice thing about it: transparent shelves and drawers, so veggies don't get forgotten!

I have a 30" counter-depth Jenn-Air with french-door fridge on top and freezer drawer on bottom. LOVE it. We've had it 2.5 years and it is terrific. Fits a shocking amount, stuff keeps forever (especially in the crisper drawers), easy to see what you have on the shallow fridge shelves. Highly recommended!

I have a small apartment-sized freezer top. When I moved in, there was an old, old fridge (the sticker on the back dated it at 1969) with the hanging metal box freezer, which drove me insane with the ice build up. Defrosting that thing was a 48-hour job and required a hammer. When it finally died a couple of years ago, my building manager poached a newer one from another building. I'm very happy to not have to defrost anymore. Very happy. Not so thrilled with the plastic shelving, though. It's flimsy and can't take as much weight as the metal racks.

I've never had a freezer-bottom fridge, so I can't compare, but the freezer on top works fine for me. Although now I'm lusting after one of those French door models.

i have a stainless, full-size frigidaire side by side that i loathe. there's lots of storage on the insides of the doors (that i don't like using.. that's usually the warmest part of these appliances and i like my milk, beer, etc as cold as possible!) and the shelves, while easy to remove and clean are too &%$#@! narrow. the sad thing is, we're going to move soon and will be taking the fridge with us. long story, won't bore anyone with it. :)

what i want is a french door model with the freezer on the bottom. i get into the freezer maybe once or twice a day, but the produce drawers in my current model are at the bottom, and i hate all the bending over to get into them.

I have a small counter-height fridge (a Haier, I think). We had our landlord move the fridge that came with our new flat into a little pantry room and out of the rather small kitchen, convinced that the two of us really didn't need a family-sized fridge. We LOVE the mini-fridge. It's super-efficient, holds everything we need, and food rarely spoils in it because we can't really lose track of things. I wish more singles and couples would realize all they need is a small fridge.

We still have the larger fridge plugged in -- a huge power-drain -- while we search craigslist for a small chest freezer. The freezer compartment on our mini-fridge is great, but not large enough for things like chicken carcasses destined for stock...

(My dad has a new bottom-freezer French door fridge. If I lived in a larger household, I would definitely want one of those.)

We have two under counter fridges from Summit and LOVE them. It opens up our kitchen so much and helps keep me on my toes with keeping it clean and cleared out. Used to have a huge fridge and we were always over stuffing it and then food would go bad...

I just got a Liebherr fridge. It is the most amazing fridge I've ever had, not only because it looks cool, but it keeps contents at the proper temp, lasting longer. Dual compressors are the way to go.

I love the way that some people are of the notion that a solution which works for one couple ought to work for every couple. My husband and i are only two, sure, but we buy a lot if things in bulk (salad greens, yogurt, milk etc), and there is no way n under-counter model would work for us. Just not large enough. I'm glad that's a solution that some people can take advantage of. However, i'm sure it's be difficult or implausible for many.

I'm just a single, but it's totally unrealistic for me, too. The produce alone would fill one of those things too full to close the door.

I don't really like my fridge but it belongs to the appartment I'm living in (rent). I'd love to have a more eco-friendly one with a separate and bigger freezer. My current one just has a little freezer compartment inside the fridge. :-/

I have a Bosch freezer on top fridge. I have no problem with my fridge, but I'm dying to change it to a fridge on top, freezer on bottom. They are much more useful and practical. Regular freezer on top models make my back ache a lot as I'm from the tall side.

There needed to be an "other" category for this one. I live in France and my fridge is not a compact, under the counter, just a petite version of a normal fridge. We have a mini freezer stacked on top of it and amazingly they look like one unit, so we don't seem like euro-rednecks.

Love the smaller space though. But I've always been crazy about never keeping things in there for long stretches of time.

At my parents house, we always used (and they still do) a slick lookin' 1929 monitor top refrigerator - essentially an "ice-box". Not a lot of space and only a two tray ice freezing unit. (We cheated though and had a mini freezer in the basement!) After growing up that way, you learn to minimize and are happy with it. Food's fresher because you eat it faster, fewer gross tupperware surprises lingering in the back, and less space to clean.

I LOVE my freezer on the bottom fridge. Best purchase ever, especially if you are TALL.

We rent but the fridge is our own, leftover from a previous renovation (we replaced it with a built-in which we had to leave for our tennents). It's got a freezer on top which is fine but way too small, so as soon as we exchange on the house I am going to get our under-counter sized freezer out of storage to supplement it, and when we renovate this place I am planning to buy the largest upright freezer I can find!

I can't wait to have more space for stored ingredients and previously-made meals. We store a lot of our veggies in the pantry at this time of year when its cold in there. Not sure how that will work in the summer!

I have an "apartment size" LG: tall, thin, freezer on bottom. Suits me fine, and the small footprint is perfect in my little "efficiency" kitchen I expanded with renovation. I don't use ice so much, but there are funny "mini" ice-trays in their own shallow drawer you can freeze faster.

I too have a small, counter-depth fridge with the fridge on top and freezer on bottom (GE 11.6 cuft http://www.homeeverything.com/web/sitefiles/product-16445/GBC12IAX.html). My kitchen is fairly compact (110 sq ft) and I really hate having too much space in a fridge. It encourages me to keep more food than I need. The smaller fridge keeps me shopping for less, more often so the food is fresher and tastier. It is great!

Subzero, which we like, but we miss our Liebherr

I bought a new Maytag french door fridge and it SUCKS! The gasket on the door does not stick well and one door always pops open when the other shuts. they clearly knew this was an issue because they installed a little beeping mechanism to tell you when the door is open. It's like an 'eff you' beep. Rather than fix the real problem they put a beeping band-aid on it.
Also the drawer cover broke and we are just out of warranty.

My 18 month old is already trained to tell us if the door is open when our back is to the fridge and she can see it from her chair. ("mommy fridge. mommy fridge. mommy fridge.... ) Shame on Maytag....

We purchased a Kenmore French door, freezer on bottom, last year that I adore, it's right up there with my KitchenAid stand mixer, food processer in terms of kitchen love!

The doors make it much easier to see everything in the fridge, the shelves slide and move with ease, cleaning is extremely easy, baking sheets fit in lengthwise and widthwise. (As a fridge buying tip, since I love baking, I literally took a half sheet pan into stores to see how they'd fit in fridges and freezers, I think I found one side-by-side freezer that would fit one, and that definitely eliminated side-by-sides from our purchase decision.) The door shelves are spacious and at adjustable heights as well.

I am not as crazy about the freezer as I thought I'd be though, the bottom is angled a bit taking some space, and the drawer design means you pretty much throw stuff in there and have to dig around for it. I do like the pull-out top drawer, and that's great for baking sheets as well. But I'm glad to have an outside freezer for extra space.

Ours has a door alarm as well and it only irritates us when loading, unloading groceries, or gathering ingredients where you know full well the doors are open because you need them to be!

Liebherr is wonderful. I have the skinny 24 inch wide model, freezer on the bottom. Last one was a Kitchen Aid which I had problems with temperatures varying and freezing food in the fridge side. I threw out a lot of eggs!

I have an old side by side - it is fine but I am inching my way to a remodel and a counter width model would be ideal. I am considering the Nutid from Ikea - any praise or complaints would be helpful. Thank you.

We just bought a house with an older (80s?) fridge with the freezer on the bottom. It's a good fridge, it's just a big waste of energy. During last month's Cash for Clunkers program, we bought a high efficiency stainless steel Whirlpool that also has the freezer on the bottom. I like that setup, it seems the most efficient and natural. Currently fridges are rated 1, 2 or 3 for energy efficiency, and the one we bought is a 3. It's being delivered in a month and I can't wait! Because of Cash for Clunkers and the associated sales (25% off, plus another 5% if you got the store card) we made out like bandits.

Fisher Paykel, flat front, water in door. Was a cheaper substitute for the Liebherr, which I loved but could not bring myself to pay $4000 for. I love my F-P -- looks beautiful, good price, love the the freezer with its wonderful drawers--freezer is very space efficient, and nothing ever gets lost in those drawers. Highly recommended.

My house came with a big 1980s Jenn-Air, which used a lot of power and was kind of leaky and rusting. A city program gave me $50 for recycling it (free pickup!), and I replaced it with a tall, skinny LG with a bottom freezer. I love the LG -- it's not rated as a high-efficiency model, but since it's a lot smaller and cheaper to run than what I had, it does save plenty of power and money.

...I hate my rental fridge-on-top-freezer-beneath arrangement so much that I'm actually daydreaming about the ones I'll fit in the house we're buying. I shall have a bog-standard fridge (I guess this is what you call compact, I'm in the UK and we appear to keep less in our fridges than you folks) and a chest freezer, and I swear I'm going to end up dancing for joy.

In my opinion, most people in Manhattan don't need such a large fridge. I have been very happy for ten years with a smaller fridge that contains a freezer unit as well.

Görenje 50's style and it's the best......... it keeps everything so well cooled and looks awesome as well in my mid century kitchen.

Frech door fridge on top, freezer on bottom - love it, too!

Boring Frigidaire top-freezer, @19 cubic feet. It was the only one that would fit our oddly-sized fridge enclosure. Keeps temperature well, and I love the wide door shelves, as we use a lot of milk. I also like the solid-surface shelves, since DH and the kid spill things fairly frequently. The produce drawers are awful, though-- I only get to shop once a week, and the produce bins will accommodate, at most, two bell peppers, a pack of mushrooms, and maybe a bag of lettuce (forget about storing a cabbage or a HEAD of lettuce). I wish the shelves adjusted to more positions, too... and that they didn't actually slide OUT of the fridge when pulled upon by an inquisitive toddler.