A chilly little number! (Beko Fridges & Freezers)

Member Name: Cat2005

Product:	Beko Fridges & Freezers
Date:	10/05/05 (3481 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Frost free, Spacious

Disadvantages: Noisy

I hope I am not tempting fate by saying this but I have not had any problems with this fridge/freezer in 4 1/2 years. I originally bought it because it was one of the cheapest frost free fridge freezers on the market back in 2000, and it was big enough to hold all my frozen pizzas and cans of coke (just kidding, of course there are green things in my fridge as well … sometimes!)


**Appearance**

The unit is white, as are many kitchen appliances, which is fine by me. It is not offensive, it just sits there and looks ... well… white. I happen to have about 300 fridge magnets on mine, but that’s really quite irrelevant. The fridge and the freezer part are fairly equal in size, another reason I picked this particular unit as some combi units have tiny freezers and that isn’t any good for me. The fridge is on top, which means the freezer sits at about worktop height.

The doors can be changed to open either to the left or right. The default it to open to the right (i.e. you pull the left side of the door and it opens to your right). However our kitchen is the other way around so we decided to change this. There then followed a very interesting 45 minutes with my dad and my boyfriend, a screwdriver, the fridge on the floor and lots of swearing. So then I turned up and read the instructions and managed it in about 2 minutes. Typical males hadn’t even opened the instruction book let alone read it! Anyway, the message is that the doors are easily swapped round if you read the instructions!

The door handles are ridges in the bottom of the fridge door, and the top of the freezer door. They are easy to open.


**Freezer**

The freezer has 3 drawers and a flip down top section. In total it holds 96 litres of food. The flip down section at the top also has a sliding ice drawer within it. This is really useful for holding not only ice cube trays but also ice lollies and ice packs. This top section is a fast freeze section, so if you have anything that needs freezing that bit quicker then put it in here.

The drawers are of a good size, although the bottom one is slightly smaller, I think this is because some of the mechanism is behind this one. As the freezer is frost free, you will never need to defrost it, which is great for lazy people like me.


**Fridge**

The fridge has 3 shelves and holds 162 litres of food. It is a really good size and I have to say I have never managed to run out of room (even when the lads are over watching the footie and they fill it with beer!). The shelves can be moved around to several positions which is useful if you have lots of tall things on one shelf.

There is also a cut out in one of the shelves – this is so you can put bottles on the shelf below and they will be able to stand up straight. Very ingenious.

There are 2 massive salad drawers at the bottom of the fridge which slide out.

In the door of the fridge there are lots of different sized holders for bottles, eggs, cheese etc. There is a bottom compartment which will hold about 4-5 bit bottles (e.g. water, coke, milk). Above this there is an egg holder which will hold 8 eggs and also a smaller open compartment. Above this there are 2 more smaller open compartments, and on the top row there are 2 compartments with clear front panels that slide open. Ours usually hide the chocolate as I am short and I can’t see it is if is hidden in there!


**Economy**

The fridge/freezer is classified as Class C. This means it is not the most efficient of the bunch but it is still not bad. The categories go from A – E, with A being the most efficient. The unit will use 493 kWh/year with average use, but this can vary with positioning and fill levels.


**Noise**

The one downside to this unit is that it is quite noisy. The fan isn’t running all the time but when it starts up it can be quite annoying. We usually close our kitchen door then it doesn’t bother us. The official noise rating is 43 (dB (A) re 1 pW) – whatever the heck that means.


**Price**

I seem to remember we paid about £280 for this in 2000. A quick search of the internet shows a few places are selling it; the average price is £299, so I guess the price has just risen a bit with inflation.

**Dimensions**

The whole unit is 1870mm tall, 595mm wide and 600mm deep.


**Overall opinion**

I have been very happy with this fridge/freezer in the 4 ½ years we have had it. My only slight complaint is the noise, but this is far outweighed by the advantages of having a large capacity, frost free fridge freezer.

Thanks for reading :o)

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