French Door Refrigerator With Ice Maker Review
Melding form with function, French-door refrigerators offer stylish double doors that open to a spacious fridge up the top and a freezer drawer below. Special features such as through-the-door dispensers, ice machines with higher-end features and adjustable flex drawers make them stand out from the crowd.
We asked experts like Ladina Schopf, interior designer, architect, and founder of LS Projects, for tips on how to select the best one. They weighed the capacity of storage and layout, energy efficiency, and other features.
GE Profile Counter Depth French Door Refrigerator
Like its name implies, the GE Profile series is aimed at those who wish to incorporate cutting-edge technologies into their kitchens. This fridge has them all from the Keurig K cup coffee maker on the door, to a clever dispenser of water. But these flourishes don't mask mediocre performance, especially in the refrigerator's freezer and an ineffective temperature-controlled drawer. Since this refrigerator costs a premium, I expect higher quality.
Apart from that minor flaw, this fridge is a great choice. It has a huge freezer compartment which is uncommon for counter-depth French-door fridges. It also has a large capacity for frozen food items compared to other models.
Inside the fridge, there are 17 shelves and compartments. The fridge compartment offers 18.5 cubic feet of space, which is about par for the size of a French door fridge costing this much. It also has a decent sized ice maker in the left door, but it's not the largest I've seen.
You can alter the shelving in each compartment to create a customized storage arrangement for what you want to store. The interior design of the GE PYE22PYNFS also looks attractive. The LED lighting adds a nice accent. The storage bins in the door include a third shelf that can be folded down to store tall objects. The drawers come with temperature controls that let you set them to Meat, Beverage, or Deli settings. They're easy to open and close, although I found their plastic textured coatings a bit difficult on the fingers.
The GE PGE29BYTFS Smart Refrigerator includes all the features you would expect from a refrigerator in this price range. It has Wi-Fi as well as app support, and GE's SmartHQ Software. The app is available on iOS and Android devices and lets you control your refrigerator from anywhere across the globe. It also comes with numerous options for customizing. It will also send you notifications when the door is unlocked and when the freezer or fridge must be defrosted and when the filter requires a change.
It is nice if the GE PYE22PYNFS came with Precise Fill it's an option in other GE refrigerators that allows you to choose how many cups of water you'd like to disperse at a time. The fridge displays a countdown timer to show you how much water remains but it's not as helpful as Precise Fill.
Bosch Counter Depth French Door Refrigerator
It is designed to look like a seamless piece of your kitchen Bosch's French door refrigerator is one of a kind. The fridge uses fingerprint-resistant stainless steel, which is a great feature for busy households. It also comes with a veggie compartment to keep vegetables and fruits fresher longer and has dual compressors for the best food preservation. The Ice maker we tested is one of the most efficient and produces the shape of a pyramid using only water. This fridge is perfect for a single family or kitchenette that needs an attractive design and top of the best food preservation.
This fridge was rated as the most efficient in our Refrigerators Test due to a variety of reasons. The temperature of the freezer remained constant at just above 0°F and never fluctuated by more than a fraction, this is crucial to prevent freezer burn. The refrigerator section of the fridge also did well. It reached the temperature it was set within an hour and maintained the temperature throughout our testing.
Bosch is known for its high-end appliances. It's therefore no surprise that the Bosch counter depth refrigerator can be connected to your home Wi Fi and Bosch's platform Home Connect. The app lets you monitor and control your refrigerator remotely from your tablet or smartphone. The fridge is expensive, but offers great features and capabilities at a reasonable price.
While the fridge is an incredible piece of equipment but it's important to be aware of the limitations. It has a narrow shelf space, which means you'll have to think creatively when it comes to storing large items. Additionally the shelves aren't completely sprillproof, and can easily be stained or damaged by sharp objects. The trays can be easily removed from the fridge. However, they must be cleaned frequently to stop the growth of mold.
If you're thinking about buying this refrigerator, make sure to review our opinions on the French Door GE Appliances Refrigerator and the Bosch Bottom Freezer Refrigerator.
LG Counter Depth French Door Refrigerator
The LG LRFLC2706S is a top counter-depth refrigerator that packs plenty of storage into an extremely compact frame. It has a sleek, fingerprint-resistant stainless-steel finish and features thick handles that make them comfortable to grip. Inside, the fridge features an ordinary French-door design with gallon-sized bins for the doors on each door as well as two rows of shelves for spill-capture and a set of sleeker drawers. The top shelf to the right can be folded down to make space for tall items. You'll also find a full-width drawer for deli items and an internal water dispenser.
One of the nice features of this refrigerator is that the ice maker is inside the freezer, which makes it easy to move frozen ice to the fridge for use when required. The freezer has thoughtful design elements, too, like sliding drawers to help you better organize the position of your items. It comes with a large bin to store frozen food items, and a separate container for ice.
Another awesome feature of this refrigerator is its Smart InstaView panel. You can control the temperature, lighting and other aspects of your fridge using your smartphone. It's a great way to monitor and manage your refrigerator, especially when you're away from home.
Although the Smart InstaView is a neat feature, it doesn't necessarily enhance the overall performance of the refrigerator. In fact it took a bit longer to defrost and chill food in this refrigerator than some of the others we tried. This could be due to its bigger capacity.
Another issue with this refrigerator is its doors. french door fridge freezer have handles that are sunken on the front that allow shorter people to easily pull them open from the bottom, but they're not easy for taller people to steer closed without slamming the doors. It would have been more effective to have front-mounted handles.
The LG Counter-Depth MAX is a good option for those looking to combine the benefits of a French-door fridge's aesthetics with a more efficient layout. Its capacity is superior for a counter-depth model, and it cools evenly and has a good layout. It's also less expensive than the best counter-depth refrigerator with an ice maker, which can make it a popular choice.
Frigidaire Counter Depth French Door Refrigerator
If you're looking for a French door refrigerator that won't cost a fortune and isn't expensive, this Frigidaire is a solid option. It has a simple design that's not as striking visually as other models, but it has enough features to make it a good pick. Its most notable characteristic is the adjustable temperature drawer, which helps keep foods like veggies and meat fresher for longer. It also comes with a huge water dispenser as well as a good Ice machine that is fast.
Another nice feature is the "Chill Drawer" that sits over the two crisper bins. The drawer lets you use some of the fridge's cooling power to this area, so it can be used to store food items which need extra attention. You can adjust this feature by using an adjustable slider that is located just in the middle of the drawer. You can also use this to set a general cooling setting for the entire fridge, though I've found that adjusting the general settings tends to be more effective than specific ones.
During my experiments, I noticed that the temperatures in the refrigerator were fairly consistent in different parts of the refrigerator. The temperatures in the top, bottom and middle of the refrigerator did not differ significantly from 38 degrees. This is a pretty good performance however it doesn't be among the top in our ratings.
This fridge has a few other neat features, including a temperature-monitoring display that alerts you to fluctuations and provides a forecast for the day ahead. This fridge can be paired with a smart thermostat to get more accurate readings on the internal temperature of your fridge.
The exterior of the Frigidaire is made from grey-bodied stainless with a "smudge resistant" finish. It is capable of repelling fingerprints and streaks, even compared to glossier stainless steel finishes on other appliances I've tried.
Stephanie Cronk, executive editor of Reviewed's Commerce/Product Reviews Team, oversees the site's buyer's guides and product test reviews. She has more than 15 years of experience in commerce and publishing including retail and digital. Stephanie is committed to finding and recommending the most effective products for consumers, with a focus on home goods and technology.