French Door Refrigerator With Ice Maker Review
French-door refrigerators blend functionality and form. They come with elegant double doors that open to reveal an enormous fridge on top, and a freezer drawer below. These refrigerators stand out due to their special features, including door-to-door dispensers and more expensive ice makers.
We sought out experts like Ladina Schopf, an interior designer, architect, and founder of LS Projects, for tips on picking the right one. They weighed storage capacity and layout and energy efficiency, among other aspects.
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 technology into their kitchen. This fridge has them all including a 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. This fridge is expensive, so I expected better.
This refrigerator is a good choice, despite the blip. It has a large freezer compartment which is uncommon for counter-depth French door fridges. It also has a large capacity for frozen food compared to other models.
Inside the fridge, you'll find 17 shelves and compartments. The refrigerator compartment is 18.5 cubic feet, which is standard for a fridge with a French door at this price. It comes with a decent size freezer in the left side. But it's not the most spacious one I've seen.
You can adjust the shelves in both compartments for an individual storage solution. The GE PYE22PYNFS's interior design is good-looking, too. Its LED lighting is a nice touch, and the in-door storage bins have the third shelf, which folds up beneath itself to make it possible to store items that are tall. The drawers have temperature controls that allow you to set them to Meat, Beverage, or Deli settings. The drawers are simple to open and close however I found the plastic's textured coatings a bit hard on my fingers.
The GE PGE29BYTFS Smart Refrigerator comes with the full suite of features you'd expect from a refrigerator in this price range, including Wi-Fi and app support via GE's SmartHQ software. The app is available on iOS and Android devices and allows you to manage your refrigerator from anywhere in the globe. It also comes with a lot of customization options. It also gives you notifications when a door is left open, when the fridge or freezer is in need of defrosting, and when it's time to change the filter.
It would be great to have GE PYE22PYNFS offered Precise fill which is a feature available in a handful of GE refrigerators that allows users to select how many cups they want to disperse. It does offer a countdown feature on the display of the fridge to display how much water you have left, but it's not as helpful as Precise Fill.
Bosch Counter Depth French Door Refrigerator
Created to appear like a seamless piece of your kitchen Bosch's French-door refrigerator looks seamless and is one of a kind. The fridge uses fingerprint-resistant stainless steel, which is a great feature for busy households. french style fridge freezer has a vegetable compartment that keeps fruits and vegetables fresher for longer, and two compressors for preserving food. The ice maker we tested is one of the most efficient and makes the shape of a pyramid using only water. This fridge is the perfect choice for single household or kitchenettes looking for a sleek design and top-of-the-line food preservation.
This refrigerator was rated as the best in our Refrigerators Test for several reasons. Its freezer temperatures remained constant at just above 0°F and never changed more than a fraction - this is essential to avoid freezer burn. The refrigerator section of the refrigerator also performed well. It reached the temperature it was set within an hour and remained at the temperature throughout our testing.
Bosch is known for its premium appliances, so it's no surprise that this counter depth refrigerator is also a smart appliance with the option to connect to your home Wi-Fi network and Bosch's Home Connect platform. This app allows you to monitor and manage your fridge remotely using your tablet or smartphone. The refrigerator is costly however, it offers excellent features and functions at a fair price.
While the fridge is a fantastic piece of equipment but it's important to be aware of the limitations. You may need to get creative with tall objects because the fridge has a small shelf space. Also, the shelves are not sprillproof and can be easily stained or damaged by sharp objects. It's easy to remove the trays in the fridge, but be sure to keep them clean to avoid mold growth.
If you're thinking of buying this refrigerator, make sure you look over our review of the GE Appliances French Door Refrigerator and the Bosch Bottom Freezer Refrigerator.
LG Counter Depth French Door Refrigerator
The LG LRFLC2706S is a great counter-depth refrigerator that packs a lot of storage in 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 features the standard French door design, with two rows of spill-capture shelving and a set of crisper drawers. The top shelf to the right can be folded to provide more space for tall items. You'll also find a full width drawer for deli items and an internal water dispenser.
This refrigerator is equipped with an ice maker making it easy to transfer the frozen ice as needed. The freezer also features clever design features, such as sliding drawers that allow you to organize your belongings. It also has a large container for storing frozen food, and a separate bin for ice.
Another great feature of this refrigerator is its Smart InstaView panel. You can control the temperature, lighting and other aspects of your refrigerator from your smartphone. It's a good method of monitoring and managing your refrigerator, especially if you're away from home.
The Smart InstaView feature is neat but it doesn't enhance the efficiency of the fridge. The refrigerator took longer to chill food and defrost it than the other fridges we tested. This is probably due to its bigger capacity.
Another issue with the doors of this refrigerator. They have handles that are sunken on the front that allow smaller people to open them from the bottom, however they're not easy for taller people to guide closed without slamming the doors. It would have been much better if they had front-mounted handles.
The LG Counter-Depth MAX is a excellent option for those looking to combine the advantages of a fridge with a French door with a more efficient layout. Its capacity is higher than average for a counter-depth model, and it cools evenly and has a good layout. It's also a little less than the top counter depth refrigerator that comes with an ice maker, making it a great choice.
Frigidaire Counter Depth French Door Refrigerator
This Frigidaire French door refrigerator is a good choice when you're looking for a French door refrigerator that doesn't cost a lot of budget. It's a basic design that's not as striking visually as some of the competition but it does have enough features that make it a great choice. Its main characteristic is the adjustable temperature drawer which helps keep food items such as meat and vegetables fresher for longer. It also comes with a large ice maker as well as a water dispenser.
french door refrigerator freezer is the "Chill Drawer" that sits above the two crisper bins. This drawer lets you redirect some of the refrigerator's cooling power directly into this area, so you can keep food items that need extra attention. This feature is adjustable using a slider on the outside of the drawer. You can also adjust the general cooling settings for the entire fridge. I've found that the generic settings work better than the specific ones.
In my tests, I discovered that the temperatures of the refrigerator were fairly consistent across different parts of the fridge. The temperatures in the middle, top and bottom of the refrigerator did not differ significantly from 38 degrees. This is a pretty good performance however it doesn't make it into the top ten in 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 readings of your fridge's temperature.
The Frigidaire FGHB2866PF's exterior is made of grey-bodied stainless steel that has a "smudge-proof" finish. It does an excellent job of repelling fingerprints and streaks even when compared with glossier stainless steel finishes on other appliances 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 experience in publishing and commerce, primarily digital and retail. Stephanie is enthusiastic about finding and recommending the best products for consumers, with an emphasis on home products and tech.