My Drawers are See Through (Neff Frost Free Fridge Freezer K9724)

Member Name: susie19

Product:	Neff Frost Free Fridge Freezer K9724
Date:	07/03/07 (1374 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: See through drawers 50 : 50 fridge freezer, cool top, cold bottom

Disadvantages: Built in means you lose some capacity .

It might be cold at the moment but, cold is the new hot, just ask any youth. 'Yeah it's cold' translates as 'I love it'. Hmmm. Keeping up with the kids also necessitates feeding them a lot. Hence the need for a large fridge freezer in our kitchen. A Neff appliance was the only option for us when replacing our old one, since the kitchen company we chose only work with Neff appliances. We had the choice of a few built in fridge freezers with large fridge, small freezer or a 50 /50 fridge freezer, the one we opted for since we had previously had a fridge freezer of similar size.

Slim Model
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You could say this fridge freezer is a long, pretty and slim model with a cool and nippy top half with a cold bottom; cold enough to freeze all your goodies in moments. This model also has see through drawers.

A Cool Top
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The 50/50 Fridge Freezer model is a built in appliance so it is all behind two closed doors and is therefore nicely hidden away. The fridge is on the top which is in my opinion the right way round. I only occasionally open the freezer but am always getting milk or whatever from the fridge. This saves a lot of bending. The doors can be hinged either on the left or right of the appliance. Ours hinge on the left.

When you open the the fridge door you are faced with a decent sized interior; it has 151 litres useable capacity. There are plenty of shelves and mini shelves in the door which can be repositioned to suit the way you stack your fridge contents. There are two see through salad drawers at the bottom of the fridge allowing you easy viewing of what is inside them. One of these has a clip on additional mini drawer which is really useful for small items like bulbs of garlic and red hot chillies which might disappear in the vast drawer beneath. It can be clipped inside either of the salad drawers.

There is a vario shelf which is a half depth shelf. This allows you to put tall items on the front half of the shelf below. We store opened bottles of wine here since with a protruding cork they do not easily fit into the door of the fridge.

Another useful inclusion in this fridge is the drawer for cold meats. This clips onto the bottom of a shelf and can slide along to any particular point below that shelf. This is really useful for keeping cooked meats or cheese safely away from raw fish and meat (which should be kept on the bottom shelf of the fridge above the salad drawers because this is the coldest part of the fridge). The warmest zone in the fridge is near the door at the top. This is a good place to keep your butter so that it is not rock hard solid. There is an egg rack in the door as well as two shelves with lift up covers. The bottom door shelf has a bottle grip to prevent bottles slipping or falling when the door opens and closes.

Located inside the fridge on the right hand side is a built in thermometer and light . A small light glows to show the current temperature. It should be 4°C. The appliance has a built in AgION antibacterial system.

A Cold Bottom
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The freezer has four pull out drawers which are transparent for easy viewing of the contents. They are deep and glide in and out with ease. The top three drawers are each big enough to hold for example a large loaf of bread, a roasting joint, a 1kilo pack of frozen peas with small spaces left to fill with odd ice cream lollies or half packets of fish fingers. The useable capacity of the freezer is 97 litres.

The bottom basket is not so big as the working components of the appliance are based at the bottom of the freezer which takes some space.

There is a built in thermometer built into the door of the freezer which enables you to tell whether the freezer is sufficiently cold enough. The freezer should be -18° or lower. This is a four star freezer.

In terms of defrosting, it is recommended that you do this now and again. I did mine for the first time the other day (in 2 and a half years). It didn't seem to need it except for a very hard layer of ice that had built up on the roof of the freezer making closing the top drawer slightly difficult. Don't be tempted to hack at the ice with a knife (I know someone who punctured the element doing this). Defrosting the iceberg took quite some time (the hairdryer was very useful in speeding up the process though) and the water dripped neatly into the drawers so didn't flood the kitchen. There is a superfreeze button located on the thermometer panel inside the fridge which you can press to accelerate the cold climate after defrosting.

Techy Stuff
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The fridge freezer has an energy efficency rating B. The slightly updated K9724 model which has now superceded this has an A rating. It is a standard size, is CFC and HFC free and costs around £16.49 per year to run. It stands at 177cm tall, 56cm width.

Summary
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Initially I was very happy with the size of the fridge but quite concerned about the size of the freezer. My previous freezer was a similar size in height but was not a built in appliance. You do lose capacity because of this. I love the see through drawers which are also very easy to wash out in the sink. With the shelves in the fridge, you may have to fiddle around and experiment with positioning as sometimes you can't find an appropriate place for various goods. When you have finally got it right, you feel content with yourself and you know exactly where things will fit.

It's the only Neff appliance in the kitchen that doesn't beep at me, it hums away quite quietly too. I have had no problems with the appliance at all and would happily recommend it. It retails for around £850.

Thanks for reading.

Summary: See through drawers help you peep at the contents.

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