For those of you who've said "get over it and get a cheaper fridge", that's certainly still on the table, but the space in our kitchen that was designed to "insert fridge here" was clearly sized for one of these 48" wide models. Anything else looks funny.

Curiously, the 48" wide Sub-Zero has roughly 30 cu. in. of interior volume. Our current chimp-engineered fridge has also about 30 cu. in. of interior volume, but that comes from depth, not width or height. Right now, the lack of usable freezer space is a very real problem for us, so improving on that is important. Also, our fridge tends to be packed solid all the time, so digging things out of the back is quite annoying. (Or worse, things get packed in and forgotten, then rediscovered months later. Gross.) The idea of having less depth seems like a very real usability improvement, even if it's also clearly a recipe for energy inefficiency.

Anyway, once you decide you've bought into the Sub-Zero form-factor, you look at all the fridges available, and at least our conclusion was that the Sub-Zero was the proper answer. You don't exactly save money by getting a Dacor or a Viking. As Jeff has noted, they're all catering to the same high end.

What's sad is that for almost everything else in the kitchen, there's something of a linear relationship between quality/features and cost. For ovens or dishwashers, for example, you can march up GE's price-list and the features get a little bit better with each step and the cost goes up a little bit as well. The $1000 dishwasher still bears a striking resemblance to the $300 model, except that it's radically quieter, has a stainless steel interior, has a built-in detergent dispenser, has crazy-adjustable racks, etc, etc. You don't feel like you're getting reamed on the cost. Fridges seem to be the exception to this rule. Very sad.

(Amusement: I found a Houston-local vendor on eBay selling used Sub-Zero gear, with meticulous photos of where they were dinged and so forth, and then you get down to the caveat that these fridges have no serial number on them and would likely not be serviced by Sub-Zero techs. Really? Sounds like they're stolen or something. Pass.)