French Door Refrigerator With Ice Maker Review
Combining form and function, French-door refrigerators offer stylish double doors that open to an expansive fridge on top and freezer drawer below. These refrigerators stand out due to their distinctive features, such as door-to-door dispensers and more expensive ice makers.
We asked experts like Ladina Schopf, an interior designer and architect, as well as the founder of LS Projects, for tips on picking the right one. They considered storage capacity 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 consumers who want to incorporate cutting-edge technologies into their kitchens. This fridge is loaded with them all from a Keurig K cup coffee maker on 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. The refrigerator is expensive and I was expecting better.
This refrigerator is a good option, despite the slight blip. It comes with a huge freezer compartment, which is uncommon in counter-depth French door refrigerators. Furthermore, it holds a good amount of frozen food when as compared to similar models.
Inside the fridge, you'll find 17 shelves and compartments. The fridge compartment is 18.5 cubic feet, which is the standard for a fridge with a French door at this price. It has a decent sized freezer in the left side. However, it's not the largest one I've seen.
You can alter the shelves in both compartments to create customized storage arrangement for whatever you have to keep. The GE PYE22PYNFS's design for the interior is good-looking, too. Its LED lighting is a nice feature and the storage bins feature an additional shelf that folds down to allow you to store items that are tall. The drawers are equipped with temperature controls, so you can set them to Meat, Beverage or Deli settings. french door refrigerator freezer are simple to open and shut however I found the plastic's textured coatings a bit hard on my fingers.
The GE PGE29BYTFS Smart Refrigerator includes all the features you'd expect from a refrigerator in this price range. It has Wi-Fi as well as app support and GE's SmartHQ Software. The app, which is available for iOS and Android devices, lets you control your refrigerator from anywhere in the world, and has many options for customizing. It will also send you notifications when the door is unlocked and when the freezer or fridge needs to be defrosted, and when the filter requires a change.
It would be great if GE PYE22PYNFS had Precise Fill, an option found in a few GE refrigerators that allows users to choose the amount of cups they wish to pour out. The fridge shows a countdown to display how much water remains but it'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 look like it's a seamless part in your kitchen. The fridge uses fingerprint-resistant stainless steel, which is a great feature for busy households. It also features a veggie compartment which keeps vegetables and fruits fresher for longer and two compressors to preserve food items. The Ice maker is among the top we've tested and produces a pyramid-shaped ice that is low in use of water. This refrigerator is ideal for a single family or a kitchenette that wants an attractive design and top of the line food preservation.
This refrigerator was the highest-rated refrigerator in our Refrigerators Test for a few reasons. The temperature of the freezer remained constant at just above 0°F and never fluctuated more than a tiny fraction - this is crucial to avoid freezing burn. The fridge section of the refrigerator also did well. It reached the initial temperature set within an hour, and maintained that temperature throughout our testing.
Bosch is a household name for its top-quality appliances. Therefore, it's no surprise that Bosch counter depth refrigerator is one of them. Bosch counter depth fridge can be connected to your home Wi Fi and Bosch's platform Home Connect. This app lets you monitor and control your fridge remotely from your tablet or smartphone. The refrigerator is pricey however, it offers excellent features and functionality at a reasonable cost.
While the fridge is a fantastic appliance, it's important to know the limitations. You may need to get creative with tall objects because the fridge is limited in shelf space. The shelves aren't spillproof and can easily be stained or damaged by sharp objects. The trays can be easily removed from the fridge. However, they must be cleaned regularly to prevent the growth of mold.
If you're thinking about buying this refrigerator, be sure to also review our opinions on the French Door GE Appliances Refrigerator as well as the Bosch Bottom Freezer Refrigerator.
LG Counter Depth French Door Refrigerator
The LG LRFLC2706S is an excellent counter-depth refrigerator that packs a lot of storage into the frame's compact size. It has a sleek, fingerprint-resistant stainless-steel finish and features thick handles that make them comfortable to grip. The fridge is built with a standard French door layout, with two rows of shelves that can be used to capture spills and a set of crisper drawers. The upper right shelf can be folded down to give tall items more headroom. There's also a full-width storage drawer for products from the deli and an inside water dispenser.
One of the great things about this refrigerator is that its ice maker is in the freezer, which makes it easy to transfer ice into the fridge to use as needed. The freezer has thoughtful design elements, as well, such as sliding drawers that can help you to organize the place of your items. It also has a large bin that can accommodate plenty of frozen food items and an additional storage bin for ice.
Another cool feature of this refrigerator is its Smart InstaView panel. It allows you to control the fridge's temperature and lighting from your smartphone. It's a great way to monitor and manage your refrigerator, especially when you're away from home.
The Smart InstaView feature is neat however it doesn't improve the efficiency of the fridge. The refrigerator took longer to defrost food and chill it than some others we test. This is probably due to its bigger capacity.
The other issue we have with the door of this refrigerator. The handles with a sunken design let shorter people open them from the bottom. However taller people will have a hard time closing them without slamming them. It would have been much better if they had front-mounted handles.
The LG Counter-Depth MAX fridge is a great choice for those looking to blend the look and feel of a French-door refrigerator with a more efficient design. Its capacity is above average for counter-depth models and also cools evenly. It's also a little cheaper than the best counter-depth refrigerators that have an ice maker, which helps make it a popular choice.
Frigidaire Counter Depth French Door Refrigerator
This Frigidaire French door refrigerator is a good option when you're looking for a French door fridge that doesn't break the budget. It's a basic design that's not as striking in appearance as some of the competition however it comes with enough features to make it a solid option. Its most notable feature is the adjustable temperature drawer helps to keep food items such as vegetables and meat fresher for longer. It also comes with a large ice maker and a water dispenser.
The "Chill Drawer", which is located above the two crisper bins, is a excellent feature. The drawer allows you to divert part of the fridge's cooling power directly to this area, which means you can store foods that require extra attention. You can adjust this feature using a slider that's located right in the middle of the drawer. You can also set the general cooling settings for the entire fridge. I've found that the general settings are more effective than the specific ones.
In my experiments, I noticed that the temperatures of the refrigerator were fairly consistent in different areas of the fridge. Temperatures in the top and bottom of the fridge didn't stray much from 38 degrees, and the middle of the fridge was within one degree of 36. This is a pretty good performance, but it doesn't quite 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. You can also connect this fridge to a smart thermometer to get more precise readings of your fridge's internal temperature.
The exterior of the Frigidaire is made from gray-bodied stainless with a "smudge resistant" finish. It wards off streaks and fingerprints better than other stainless steel finishes I've tried.
Stephanie Cronk is the executive editor of Reviewed's Commerce/Product Reviews team and oversees the site's buyer's guides and test-product reviews. She has more than 15 years of publishing and commerce experience, mostly in retail and digital. Stephanie is adamant about finding the top products and recommending them to consumers. She is particularly interested in home goods and technology.