French Door Refrigerator With Ice Maker Review
French-door refrigerators are a perfect blend of functionality and form. They feature stylish double doors that show the large fridge on top and a freezer drawer below. Special features like door-to-door dispensers, higher-end ice machines, and customizable flex drawers make them stand out from the crowd.
Recommended Internet page asked Ladina Schopf - interior designer, architect and founder of LS Projects - for her advice on how to choose the right one. They considered the capacity of storage, layout, and energy efficiency among other aspects.
GE Profile Counter Depth French Door Refrigerator
As the name suggests, GE's Profile series is geared towards the consumer who wants to incorporate cutting-edge features in their kitchen. This fridge has them all, from a Keurig K cup coffee maker in the door to a sophisticated dispenser of water. But these flourishes don't mask mediocre performance, especially in the refrigerator's freezer and an ineffective temperature-controlled drawer. This fridge is expensive and I was expecting better.
Other than that, this fridge is a fantastic choice. It has a huge freezer compartment that is not common for counter-depth French-door refrigerators. It also holds plenty of frozen food items compared to other models.
The fridge comes with 17 shelves and compartments. The fridge compartment has 18.5 cubic feet, which is the standard for a fridge with a French door at this price. It also has a decent-sized icemaker that is tucked away in the left-hand door, although it's not the largest I've seen.
You can alter the shelves in each compartment to create a custom storage setup for the items you need to store. The interior design of the GE PYE22PYNFS is good-looking, too. Its LED lighting is a nice feature and the inside storage bins feature the third shelf, which can fold down to make it possible to store items that are tall. The drawers have temperature controls so that you can set them for Meat, Beverage, or Deli settings. They're easy to open and close, although I found their plastic textured coatings to be a bit hard on the fingers.
The GE PGE29BYTFS Smart Refrigerator comes with the all the features you'd expect from a refrigerator at this price, including Wi-Fi and app support through GE's SmartHQ software. The app, which is available for iOS and Android devices can let you control your fridge from anywhere in world, and it has a ton of customization options. It also gives you notifications when doors are left open, when the refrigerator or freezer is in need of defrosting, and when it's time to change the filter.
It would be nice if the GE PYE22PYNFS came with Precise Fill which is an option that is available in a few other GE fridges that allow you to set the number of cups of water you'd like to dispense simultaneously. Recommended Internet page does have an indicator on the fridge's display to display how much water you have remaining, but that's not as effective as Precise fill.
Bosch Counter Depth French Door Refrigerator
The Bosch French-door Refrigerator is an impressive product. It's designed to appear like it's a seamless component of your kitchen. The fridge uses fingerprint-resistant stainless steel, which is a great feature for busy households. It also has a vegetable compartment that helps keep vegetables and fruits fresher longer and has dual compressors to ensure the best preservation of food. The Ice maker is among the most efficient we've ever tested and produces a pyramid-shaped ice with a low water usage. This fridge is the perfect option for households with a single member or kitchenettes that want a built-in look and top of the line food preservation.
This refrigerator was rated as the top in our Refrigerators Test due to a variety of reasons. Its freezer temperatures held firm at a level that was just above 0 degrees Fahrenheit, and never fluctuating more than a fraction of an inch. This is essential to preventing freezing burn. The fridge section of the fridge also performed well, reaching the desired initial set temperature within an hour and keeping that temperature steady throughout the course of our tests.
Bosch is known for its top-of-the-line appliances, so it's no surprise that this counter depth refrigerator is also a smart appliance with the option of connecting to your home Wi-Fi network and Bosch's Home Connect platform. The app lets you monitor and manage your fridge remotely using your smartphone or tablet. The refrigerator is expensive, however it has excellent features and functionality for the price.
It's important to understand the limitations of your fridge. You might need to be creative with tall items because the fridge has a limited shelf space. The shelves are not resistant to spills and are easily damaged or stained by sharp objects. The trays can be easily removed from the fridge. However, they should be cleaned frequently to stop the growth of mold.
If french door fridge freezers considering this refrigerator, be sure to also review our opinions on the GE Appliances French Door Refrigerator as well as the Bosch Bottom Freezer Refrigerator.
LG Counter Depth French Door Refrigerator
The LG LRFLC2706S counter-depth fridge is a great option for those who require a lot of space in 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 a standard French-door layout with gallon-sized bins for the doors on each door, two rows of shelves that capture spills and a set of crisper drawers. The top shelf on the right can be folded to provide more space for tall items. There's also a full-width deli drawer and an internal water dispenser.
This refrigerator is equipped with an ice maker, making it easy to move the frozen ice as needed. The freezer is designed with thoughtful elements, as well, such as sliding drawers that can help you better organize the placement of your items. It also has a huge bin that can hold plenty of frozen food items and an ice storage bin.
Smart InstaView panel is another cool feature of the refrigerator. You can manage the temperature, lighting and other aspects of your fridge using your smartphone. It's a good way to monitor and manage your refrigerator, especially if you're away from home.
But while the Smart InstaView is a neat feature, it doesn't enhance the overall performance of the refrigerator. In fact, it took longer to defrost and chill foods in this refrigerator as compared to other fridges we test. This is likely due to its bigger capacity.
The other issue we have with the door of this refrigerator. They have handles that are sunken at the front, which allows shorter people to easily open them from the bottom, but they're difficult for taller people to steer closed without slamming them. It would have been better to have front-mounted handles.
The LG Counter-Depth MAX fridge is a great choice for those looking to combine the aesthetics of a French-door refrigerator with a more efficient design. Its capacity is above average for counter-depth models, and it cools evenly. It's also less expensive than the best counter-depth refrigerators that have 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 break the bank and isn't expensive, this Frigidaire is a solid option. It's a basic design that isn't as striking in appearance as some of the competition but it does have enough features that make it a great pick. Its most important feature is the temperature adjustable drawer, which helps keep foods like veggies and meat fresher for longer. It also has a large water dispenser and a decent Ice machine that is fast.
The "Chill Drawer", which sits over the two crisper bins, is another nice feature. This drawer allows you to redirect the majority of the fridge's cooling power to this area, so that you can store foods that require special attention. You can adjust the feature using an adjustable slider that is located just on the outside of the drawer. You can also use this feature to set a general cooling level for the entire fridge, though I've found that adjusting the general settings tends to have a better effect than specific ones.
In my tests, the temperatures of the refrigerator were fairly constant across the different areas of the fridge. The temperatures in the top, bottom and middle of the fridge didn't differ much from 38 degrees. This is a solid performance, but it isn't quite at the top of our rankings.
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. You can also pair this fridge with an intelligent thermometer to get more precise measurements of the internal temperature of your fridge.
The exterior of the Frigidaire is made from gray-bodied stainless with a "smudge resistant" finish. It blocks streaks and fingerprints better than other stainless steel finishes I've tried.
Stephanie Cronk is the executive editor on Reviewed's Commerce/Product Reviews team and oversees the site's buyer's guides as well as test-product reviews. She has more than 15 years of commerce and publishing experience, primarily in digital and retail. Stephanie is adamant about finding the best products and recommending them to consumers. She is particularly interested in home goods and technology.