French Door Refrigerator With Ice Maker Review
French-door refrigerators are a perfect blend of design and function. They feature stylish double doors that reveal an enormous fridge on top and a freezer drawer beneath. These refrigerators stand out due to their distinctive features, such as door-to-door dispensers and more expensive ice makers.
We asked Ladina Schopf - interior designer, architect, and founder of LS Projects - for her suggestions on how to pick the best one. french door fridge freezers looked at the storage capacity, layout, and energy efficiency among other features.
GE Profile Counter Depth French Door Refrigerator
Like its name implies, the GE Profile series is aimed at consumers who want to integrate cutting-edge features in their kitchen. This refrigerator is packed with them, from an in-the-door Keurig K-cup coffee maker to a smart water dispenser. But these flourishes don't mask mediocre performance, especially in the refrigerator's freezer and an ineffective temperature-controlled drawer. The refrigerator is expensive, so I expected better.
This refrigerator is a good option, despite the slight blip. It boasts a spacious freezer compartment, which is quite uncommon in counter-depth French door refrigerators. Additionally, it holds a fair amount of frozen food compared to similar models.
Inside the fridge, there are 17 shelves and compartments. The fridge compartment offers 18.5 cubic feet of space, which is roughly on par for a French door fridge costing this much. It has a decent-sized icemaker in the left door. However it's not the most spacious one I've seen.
You can alter the shelves in both compartments to make a custom storage solution. The GE PYE22PYNFS's interior design is good-looking, too. Its LED lighting is a nice addition and the inside storage bins come with a third shelf that folds up beneath itself so that you can store large items. The drawers come with temperature controls that allow you to set them to Meat, Beverage or Deli settings. The drawers are simple to open and shut however I found the plastic's textured coatings to be a bit rough on my fingers.
The GE PGE29BYTFS Smart Refrigerator includes the full suite of features you'd expect from a fridge in this price range, including Wi-Fi and app support through GE's SmartHQ software. The app is compatible with iOS and Android devices and lets you control your refrigerator from any place across the globe. It also has numerous options for customizing. It also gives you notifications when a door is left open, when your fridge or freezer needs defrosting and when it's time to change the filter.
It is nice if the GE PYE22PYNFS came with Precise Fill which is an option that is available in a handful of other GE fridges that allows you to set the number of cups of water you'd like to disperse simultaneously. The fridge displays a countdown timer to show you how much water remains, but it's not as useful as Precise Fill.
Bosch Counter Depth French Door Refrigerator
Designed to look as a seamless element of your kitchen Bosch's French-door refrigerator looks seamless and is a standout. The fridge uses fingerprint-resistant stainless steel, which is a great feature for busy households. It also has a vegetable compartment that keeps fruits and vegetables fresher longer and dual compressors for the best preservation of food. The ice maker is one of the most efficient we've ever tested, and it produces a pyramid-shaped form of ice with a low use of water. This fridge is perfect for a single household or a kitchenette with a built-in appearance and top-of-the highest quality food preservation.
The fridge was rated the best refrigerator in our Refrigerators test for a few reasons. Its freezer temperatures held firm at just above 0 degrees Fahrenheit, never moving more than a fraction an inch. This is essential in preventing freezer burn. The fridge section of the fridge also did well. It reached the temperature it was set within an hour and remained at that temperature throughout our testing.
Bosch is known for its high-end appliances. Therefore, it's not a surprise that Bosch's counter depth fridge Bosch counter depth refrigerator can be connected to your home Wi Fi and Bosch's platform Home Connect. The app allows you to monitor and control your refrigerator remotely from your smartphone or tablet. The fridge is expensive however, it offers excellent features and functionality at a fair price.
While the fridge is an amazing appliance but it's important to be aware of the limitations. You might need to be creative with tall items because the fridge has a small shelf space. Additionally, the shelves are not completely sprillproof, and can easily be damaged or stained by sharp objects. It's simple to remove the trays in the fridge However, be sure to clean them regularly to prevent mold growth.
If you're thinking of buying this refrigerator, you should also look over our review of the French Door GE Appliances Refrigerator and the Bosch Bottom Freezer Refrigerator.
LG Counter Depth French Door Refrigerator
The LG LRFLC2706S counter-depth refrigerator is a great option for those who need plenty of space in the space of a compact frame. It has a sleek, fingerprint-resistant stainless-steel finish and features thick handles that make them comfortable to grip. Inside, the refrigerator has an ordinary French-door design with gallon-sized door bins at each door and two rows of spill-capture shelves and a set of sleeker drawers. The top right shelf can be folded down to give tall items more room. You'll also find a full width deli drawer and an internal water dispenser.
This refrigerator has a freezer with an ice maker making it easy to move the frozen ice as needed. The freezer has thoughtful design elements, as well, such as sliding drawers to help you better organize the placement of your items. It has a large bin to store frozen food items, and a separate container for ice.
Smart InstaView panel is another awesome feature of the refrigerator. It allows you to control the temperature of your fridge as well as lighting using your smartphone. It's a simple way to monitor your refrigerator and control it, especially when you're away from home.
However, while the Smart InstaView is a neat feature, it doesn't necessarily add to the overall performance of the refrigerator. The fridge took a bit longer to chill food and defrost it than the other fridges we test. This is probably due to its larger capacity.
Another issue with this refrigerator is its doors. The sunken handles allow shorter people to open them from the bottom. However, taller people still have a hard time closing them without slamming. It would have been more effective to have front-mounted handles.
The LG Counter-Depth MAX fridge is an excellent option for those who want to combine the aesthetics of a French-door refrigerator with more efficient design. Its capacity is superior for a counter-depth model, and it cools evenly and has a great layout. It's also a bit less than the best counter-depth refrigerator with an ice maker, which helps make it a popular choice.
Frigidaire Counter Depth French Door Refrigerator
If you're looking for a French door refrigerator that won't cost you a fortune this Frigidaire is a solid option. It's a basic design that isn't as striking visually like some of the competitors however it comes with enough features to make it a good choice. Its most notable feature is the temperature adjustable drawer, helps to keep food like vegetables and meat fresher longer. It also has a large water dispenser, as well as an excellent Ice machine that is fast.
Another feature that is worth mentioning is the "Chill Drawer" that sits over the two crisper bins. This drawer allows you to redirect the majority of the refrigerator's cooling power into the area so that you can store foods which need extra attention. You can adjust the feature using a slider that's located right outside of the drawer. You can also alter the general cooling settings for the entire fridge. I've found that the generic settings are more effective than the specific ones.
In my tests, the temperatures of the refrigerator stayed fairly consistent across different areas of the fridge. The temperatures in the top, bottom and middle of the fridge didn't differ significantly from 38 degrees. This is a great performance, but it doesn't quite 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 measurements of the internal temperature of your fridge.
The exterior of the Frigidaire is made of grey-bodied stainless with a "smudge resistant" finish. It blocks streaks and fingerprints better than other stainless steel finishes I've seen.
Stephanie Cronk, executive editor of Reviewed's Commerce/Product Reviews Team, oversees the site's buyer's guides as well as product test reviews. She has more than 15 years of publishing and commerce experience, mostly in retail and digital. Stephanie is passionate about finding and recommending the best products for consumers, with particular focus on home items and technology.