Upright Freezers

An Upright or Vertical Freezer as it is also known as has a single door which opens just like a Fridge. Inside you’ll mostly find either shelves with clear compartments or shelves with pull-out drawers like Westinghouse Freezers, or with the addition of a twist ice dispenser like in some Hisense Freezers.

Some purely have top to bottom clear compartment storage to separate pre-cooked freezer meals from Vacuum Sealed uncooked meats or bags of frozen fruit and veg like in ChiQ freezers. Depending on what you’re storing and how much of it, Upright Freezers can be really handy for grouping certain food types for an organised space.

With their helpful layout, Upright Freezers make it easy to both put away and reach for items to assist in everyday cooking, baking or defrosting. We have small Bar Freezers at just 86 litres through to larger Upright Freezers around the 380L usable capacity mark.

Besides their helpful layout for quick accessibility and freezer organisation, Upright Freezers are generally frost free, a huge plus considering upkeep and maintenance. With no frost build up, there’s no need to empty out the Freezer and drain it.

Some Upright Freezers are hybrids that can switch between freezer or fridge settings, perfect for weeks where you have more fresh food than frozen and need added fridge space. Aesthetics wise you can find stainless steel or white with functional reversible doors to set the door to open to the left or the right.

For optimal storage, many Upright Freezers have intelligent cooling systems with constant air flow as well as settings to accelerate the freezing process via electronic temperature control. This is usually accessible via a front LED display, super handy to set before heading out for some bargain ice cream.

While Upright Freezers allow for quick access to everyday frozen foods, Chest Freezers are more about longer term storage. With a Chest Freezer, you need to bend down to grab items and depending on how much is in there this is not always easy. As a trade off, Chest Freezers a great job of snap freezing and deep freezing fresh foods efficiently.

Upright Freezers can assist in freezer organisation however in a Chest Freezer you’ll need to do most of the heavy lifting stacking and sorting, with the inclusion of freezer baskets in some models assisting. Unlike their counterpart Chest Freezers require manual defrosting via drainage outlet and their temperature is controlled via a manual dial rather than electronically.

Consider what you’ll be storing, how much of it, how often you’ll be reaching for it and how much physical space you have when deciding between these two freezer types. For the largest freezer volume available, a Chest Freezer is the best bet.

Most Upright Freezers have lower usable volumes and an Energy Rating of 3 to 3.5 Stars compared to some larger capacity Chest freezers with a 4 Star Energy Rating, so they can cost more to run.

All in all it’s important to stick to the usable capacity that suits your living requirements to ensure optimal energy consumption, as there's no use going for a larger volume model if you don't need all that space. Choose the standalone freezer type with the usable litre capacity that is best for home.

Always compare freezer models of the same type and usable capacity to get a like for like understanding on the energy efficiency, then gauge what the average annual running cost will be by referring to the Australian Government’s Energy Rating site. For an estimate multiply the kilowatt hours (kWh) noted on the energy label by the cost of electricity in your area.