Hotpoint RFA52

Whilst this fridge was not one that I had chosen as it was given to us by my husbands parents when they re modelled their kitchen and decided to change their fridges, I was please to receive it and I am very pleased with it's performance and would recommend it. One problem of inheriting this fridge freezer was my in laws had lost the instruction manual so it has been a bit tricky to find out some of the details of the fridge freezer. I have had to rate the specific criteria for the manual to load the review I have put fair as I am uncertain on how to rate it as I have never seen it.

The RFA52 by Hotpoint is 174cm, high by 54cm width with a depth of 56.5cm. I think this makes it a great size fridge freezer for a small kitchen like ours where space is a premium. I do have to stand on tip toes to reach the back of the top shelf of the fridge though as at 5 foot 3 I am a bit small how ever as the shelves are made from safety glass I can see what is there and nothing seems to get lost at the back of the fridge in our house. The version we have is white however you can by the fridge in silver and black colors too.

The size of the freezer which is in the lower part of the fridge freezer has a net capacity of 85 litres whilst the fridge has 150 litres. Now if you are like me this means very little in reality what this gives you is a freezer with 4 drawers, In the handle of 2 of the drawers are blue ice trays, which means ice cube trays don't have to be stored inside the freezer drawer the idea being that this will save valuable space. However these ice cube holders I personally find to be very ineffective and find it hard to remove the ice cubes from them so I just keep them in the draws empty and use ice cube bags which defeats the object of them really. The drawers I find to be great for storage and they top three hold quite a lot this for example one drawer can hold two family sizes pizzas, a box of frozen fish and two bags of frozen vegetable. The lowest drawer is smaller as this is needed to accommodate part of the workings of the fridge freezer but it still provides enough space for a tube of ice cream and frozen vegetables and potatoes. The freezer claims to be a fast freeze to maximize freshens of food going in. Now I haven't time tested this against out old freezer in the garage but after my monthly stock up things are definitely frozen by the next day when I look. The seal on the freezer given it has been in use for over a year in the two household still is standing up well and there is no leakage from the freezer at all. Even when we had a power cut in the snow last year the freezer maintained the coldness and temperature over night without any problems the manufacturer claim it can last for 17 hours without power and I can confirm it did last 12 with no problems.

The fridge is also a great size; it contains 3 shelves made from some safety glass these can be adjusted bar the bottom shelf that is designed to slot into place over the salad drawers. I find this adjustability useful as it allows me to move the shelves around depending on what is being stored in the fridge for example at Christmas I could raise them to accommodate the turkey without any problems. There are 2 salad crisper drawers in the bottom. These rest on the base of the fridge and there is an indentation below I think this is to allow a through put of air circulation around the fridge. These indentations in our 6 months experience of the fridge never ice up or collect water or condensation in them which pleases me as it is less mess to clean up. The drawers themselves glide in and out very smoothly and each draw is a good size and one draw is able to hold a 5 kg bag of potatoes and other vegetables without any difficulty. The door panel also contains 3 sections to it, the bottom one has plenty of space for holding milk and easily holds a 2 liter plastic container of milk a 1 liter juice carton and a bottle of wine. The next section above this we use for cheese and it can hold up to four large blocks without any difficulty. The top section has a hinged lid to it and again has a good amount of capacity to store things such as butter, and eggs if you use the egg holder provided with it. I never use the egg holder as I prefer to store my eggs out with the fridge.

The hinge for the door is on the right hand side, which is the side we needed it on however if you need to switch it to the left side for how your kitchen is configured the door is a reversible though how easy this is too do I don't know. The handles to the doors are integrated into the door which makes for a nice sleek look. The doors themselves seem to close quite smoothly and I find that if my young son has gone into the fridge for some reason it does seem to close easily even for him to push it with the weight on the food in the door.

The fridge freezer is rated A for efficiency and to adjust the temperature you use the turn dial in the top part of the fridge that goes from 1-5 we have this set at 3 generally, this is sufficient I find to keep everything nice and cool without any nasty ice build up in the back of the fridge or freezer or in the food or drinks. The dial turns smoothly but isn't easily knocked when putting items in the freezer.

The fridge is easy to keep clean with various kitchen sprays and hot water and I find a fortnightly clean unless we have split something is sufficient to keep things nice and clean and fresh smelling in the fridge element.

Noise wise I would say overall this is a quite fridge freezer there is a back ground hum to it but nothing that is intrusive or problematic. However if you have placed a lot of food in the fridge or freezer say at a monthly stock up point then it does make a louder whirling type of noise for about 30 minutes. However as this is an infrequent noise it isn't for me a problem really.

This isn't a frost free freezer but I do find by the inclusion of drawers that it doesn't seem to build up ice in the same way as our previous shelf only model did and the drawers also seem to protect the food from freezer burn which I like.

Overall
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This is a great fridge freezer for our small family as it provides lots of storage is energy efficient and it is easy to keep clean. It is slightly noisy at times and if you have an open plan kitchen living room this may not be the one for you. The ice cube trays in the drawer whilst sounding a good idea just don't work in practice. The price of the fridge freezer varies hugely from £210 from Boots Appliances up to around £320 at Argos so I would recommend shopping around for a good deal.