I had an early 80's GE Side by Side in Harvest Gold - it came with this house when I bought it in 1997. I had to repair the water valve for the icemaker; after that it worked pretty good, and I did like the little barrel shaped cubes. But the fridge was a real energy guzzler - it was rated by GE at 1700 KWh/month, about three times current energy star models. So I replace it with a $2000 Kitchenaid Superba side by side, which gives those crescent shaped frozen water things. It's ok, and I don't really mind the crescent shape all that much, but I do miss the barrels.
At the same time I also replaced a top freezer GE unit in the enclosed patio, which was rated at 1500 KWh/month, almost as bad as the old side by side. After replacing those two, my electricity bill was cut in half - which is important in this region as the more you use, the higher price you pay per KWh - up to .30/KWh... Even with a koi pond pump running 7x24 and a 15 cu ft chest freezer, the electric bill is about 60% what it was with the two old GE fridges. The replacement for the patio was a curved door KA top freezer, with was also an Energy Star appliance back in 2000.
In future if I ever replace the KA top freezer unit in the enclosed patio kitchen (it has terminal warping of the stainless steel doors - the foam insulation much have shrunk and it sucked in the door panels and the sides), I'll probably move the KA side by side from the main kitchen to the patio and then get a nice french door bottom freezer number for the main kitchen - providing it has some way of keeping food odors out of the ice.
I also like the newest generation of french door fridges that have LED lighting. Very energy efficient and smart. I *think* Samsung also has a separate cooling system for the ice maker, or at least some way of keeping food odors from the ice and so forth, but I'm not sure. It does have a very nice lighting system and bin arrangement.
But I'm not there yet.
