A second freezer pays for itself in half-price meat sales and cooked-ahead dinners, and the chest-versus-upright question decides how happily it fits your life. The four below carry the biggest owner records at the retailer across both formats.
1. Best Overall: Hisense 155L Vertical
Hisense's 155L upright rates 4.7 stars across 714 reviews. Drawers keep the mince findable, it stands in a laundry corner, and frost-free means never chiselling the walls.
At around $700 it's the garage-and-laundry default. Upright drawers cost some capacity versus an open chest, which is the format's one honest trade.
What We Like:
- Findable drawer storage
- Frost-free walls
- Laundry-corner footprint
What We Don't Like:
- Drawers cost capacity
2. Best Chest: Westinghouse 145L
The Westinghouse chest is the classic bulk-buy box, 4.7 stars across 333 reviews: a whole lamb order or a month of batch cooking swallowed at $399. Chests hold cold through blackouts longer than any upright.
Manual defrost once or twice a year and the bend-and-dig retrieval are the chest bargain everyone understands.
What We Like:
- Bulk-buy capacity
- Blackout resilience
- $399 workhorse
What We Don't Like:
- Bend-and-dig access
3. Best Budget: CHiQ 85L Upright
The CHiQ 85L does apartment overflow duty for $299, rated 4.6 by 188 owners: three drawers of pre-cooked meals and bread beside the kitchen fridge that ran out of ideas.
Small means small: a family's bulk shop outgrows it in one Costco run.
What We Like:
- $299 entry
- Three-drawer order
- Fits beside anything
What We Don't Like:
- Genuinely small
4. Best Big Family: Hisense 384L Hybrid
The 384L Hisense converts between fridge and freezer modes entirely, which makes it the Christmas machine: freezer all year, drinks fridge in December. Its 243 owners average 4.7 stars.
At around $1,000 it wants garage wall space and rewards it with the most flexible capacity here.
What We Like:
- Fridge-freezer convertible
- Christmas drinks mode
- Family-scale 384L
What We Don't Like:
- Garage-wall footprint
How to pick a freezer
Chest for bulk, upright for order. Chests fit more per dollar and per watt; uprights keep rotation honest with drawers. The question is whether you shop in quarters or in weeks.
Check the climate rating for garages. Australian garages swing hot and cold, and freezers carry climate-class ratings for exactly this. The picks above all handle typical garage ranges; verandah installs deserve a spec-sheet glance.
Full freezers run cheaper. A packed freezer holds cold with less cycling than a half-empty one; water bottles fill gaps honourably. Frost-free costs slightly more to run and saves the yearly ice-chisel afternoon.
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FAQs
How long does food keep in a blackout?
A full chest holds safe temperatures up to 48 hours unopened, an upright roughly half that, per food-safety guidance. The rule is simple: don't open the lid to check.
What can't be frozen?
Whole eggs, high-water salad vegetables and cream-based sauces come back wrong; nearly everything else, bread to bolognese, freezes happily for months.
