Our 20-something year old GE was still working, but we wanted a bottom freezer model.  I'm tall, and finding things on the bottom shelves of the old fridge was becoming challenging as I age.  There's limited space in the "surround", so it was tough to find a bottom freezer model with the features we wanted that fit. This model is a big update from the old one, and we've enjoyed it a lot since we got it. Now I finf things without a problem.