I bought a new fridge nearly a year ago. At the time, there were some "shortages" not so much because of supply chains, but because a lot of people had reverted to home cooking and had been upgrading kitchens with stimulus money. So deals weren't great, but you should keep an eye out for Black Friday promos.
I did refer to Consumer Reports, but it's somewhat hard to use their information. The models they review are invariably old by press time, so you just can't find them in stores. You can make educated guesses based on their ratings.
I leaned heavily on The Wirecutter's guide to buying a fridge, but the guide has changed this year. Although they don't do hands-on testing like CR, at least they referred to current year models. Now they've stopped recommending models (which can change annually), but recommend brands instead. Honestly this makes less sense to me than before.
I would strongly discourage buying a Samsung; they make nice fridges with piss-poor reputations for reliability. Strangely enough, Wirecutter recommends LG this year, but they were also infamous for bad compressors and even worse customer service. There are at least a couple threads in these forums warning against buying a Samsung fridge. You have been warned.
As for bottom freezer models, they just aren't highly popular in the U.S. so are a bit hard to shop for. A French door fridge is roughly the same thing (bottom freezer, but side-by-side doors up top) and are most popular with consumers these days.
In the end, I bought a Whirlpool that was recommended by The Wirecutter. No water line is connected up. I'm a bit disappointed by the fit and finish, but I did get the deal I wanted and hope that it'll last a long time.
