The Maytag fridge freezer was first conceived in 1946. The brand, which was in at the start of the white goods boom of the 1950s, has watched the industry grow and has played its own part in that growth – gradually developing a family of fridge freezers that offer a series of variations on functions that have been designed with a view to making life easier for the owner of a Maytag product.

These days, Maytag fridge freezers offer a series of riffs on a set of common themes: combination ice and water dispensers fitted in the door; side by side fridge and freezer compartments rather than one above the other; individually temperature controlled crispers; and shelves that can be raised and lowered whilst fully loaded.

The Maytag fridge freezer is rightly seen as the king (or queen) of the genuinely oversized white goods appliances. A Maytag unit is not for the smaller sized kitchen or food storage area. These things have been designed to keep frozen and chilled food in perfect condition for a family – and an American family at that. Only with the Maytag family, size has never been used as a substitute for quality: rather, the size of the unit has given the company full space to express its genius for creating food storage units that are adaptable to the needs of the individual.

The Maytag Fridge Freezer, no matter what model you opt for, will come with at least one humidity controlled crisper whose temperature can be set manually. Most of them have two. The crisper can be kept at the optimum temperature for keeping vegetables crisp and the best humidity for keeping them dry. In the case of temperature controlled second crispers, Maytag’s white goods often allow you to keep a level zero degree setting going to prevent meat from spoiling in either direction.

Maytag’s ingenious mechanical shelf raiser, which is fitted as standard on most of the top end Maytag fridge freezer models, allows you to crank a shelf up or down to the desired level, and lock it in place, without having to unload your appliance. In addition, all the glass shelves are anti spill.

Maytag offers an auto defrost function in its fridge compartments, which means that users never really need to unload the thing at all, except when cleaning. Most models of Maytag white goods have independent temperature readouts, or lights (green for good, orange for warning, red for bad) that indicate whether the freezer or the fridge has crept out of its specified range. Some have warning alarms sounds too.

The Maytag fridge freezer has been the hallmark of large capacity chilled food storage for some time. The company continues to innovate and continues to incorporate its expected technologies as standard into most of its models.

With average freezer compartment ratings of four stars, and a normal energy rating of either A or A+, the models of fridge freezer that currently come out of one of the world’s oldest white goods suppliers, are still some of the best.