I checked for prior posts on Frost Freezers vs Manual Defrost but most threads were many years old so thought I'd start a new one in case there's been advances in technology.
So this is the situation, my parents want to buy a Freezer. And it has to be an upright and approx 1.5m tall (approx has 150 Litres of capacity)
It will go into their extension which isn't heated in winter.
At the moment they have a fridge freezer in the kitchen and a very small 38 Litre manual freezer in the shed.
The idea is to get a larger over flow freezer so they can move the contents of the shed freezer into it and also start buying in bulk so they don't have to make so many trips to the supermarket, as well as be able to make use of special offers as they come up on frozen food and also buy items like milk in bulk and freeze it.
They also eat meat and so being able to buy meat in bulk would be nice and perhaps having a larger freezer means they could also spread the meat around a bit more so it isn't in solid lumps and needs less time to defrost.
So the basic question is what to go for? A frost free freezer or Manual Defrost Freezer?
What they're looking for is what type of freezer will keep the food at it's best, cheapest to buy and run and also reliability. They want something that will last a very long time.
I've read that meat keeps better in a manual freezer?
I'm also wondering about the taste of food that come packaged in cardboard? I do seem to remember that some food which come in cardboard end up tasting like cardboard if they are store in them along time. For example certain ice creams which are in cardboard but wrapped in plastic once opened seem to pick up the taste of the cardboard in our frost free freezer. Would this be less of an issue with a manual defrost freezer?
In reality how often do most people need to defrost a manual freezer?
Any tips or observations would be great.