French Door Refrigerator With Ice Maker Review
Melding form with functionality, French-door refrigerators have stylish double doors that open to a spacious fridge up top and freezer drawer below. Special features like through-the-door dispensers, ice machines with higher-end features and adjustable flex drawers make them stand out from the rest.
We asked Ladina Schopf - an interior designer, architect and founder of LS Projects - for her advice on how to choose the right one. They looked at the capacity of storage, layout, and energy efficiency, among other aspects.
GE Profile Counter Depth French Door Refrigerator
As its name suggests, GE’s Profile series is aimed at people who want to integrate cutting-edge features in their kitchen. This fridge is loaded with these, from an inside-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. This fridge is expensive and I expected more.
Other than that however, this refrigerator is a fantastic choice. It boasts a spacious freezer compartment, which is quite uncommon in counter-depth French door refrigerators. Furthermore, it can hold a decent amount of frozen food in comparison to similar models.
The fridge comes with 17 shelves and compartments. The refrigerator compartment has 18.5 cubic feet of space, which is about the same as a French door fridge costing this much. It comes with a decent size freezer in the left side. But it's not the biggest one I've seen.
You can adjust the shelves in both compartments to create a customized storage arrangement for whatever you have to keep. The interior design of the GE PYE22PYNFS is attractive. The LED lighting adds a nice accent. The storage bins in the door have a third shelf which can be folded down to store tall items. The drawers have temperature controls that allow you to set them to Meat, Beverage or Deli settings. The drawers are easy 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 is equipped with a complete set of features you'd expect from a refrigerator at this price, including Wi-Fi and app support via 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 a ton of customization options. It also sends you notifications when the door is unlocked as well as when the fridge or freezer needs to be defrosted, and when the filter requires a change.
It would be nice if GE PYE22PYNFS came with Precise Fill it's an option in a handful of other GE refrigerators that allows you to preset how many cups of water you'd like to disperse at a time. The fridge displays a countdown timer to reveal how much water remains, but it's not as helpful as Precise Fill.
Bosch Counter Depth French Door Refrigerator
Designed to look as a seamless element 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 that keeps vegetables and fruits fresher longer and dual compressors for the best food preservation. The ice maker we tested was one of the most efficient, and it produces the shape of a pyramid using only water. This fridge is ideal for a small household or a kitchenette with an attractive design and top of the line food preservation.
This fridge was rated as the most efficient in our Refrigerators Test for a variety of reasons. The freezer temperature remained steady at just above 0°F and never changed by more than a fraction, this is crucial to prevent freezer burn. The fridge section of the fridge also did well. It reached the initial temperature set within a matter of hours, and remained at the temperature throughout our tests.
Bosch is known for its high-end 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 Home Connect. The app lets you monitor and control your fridge from your tablet or smartphone. The fridge is expensive, but it comes with top-quality features and functions for the price.
While the fridge is a fantastic piece of equipment but it's important to be aware of the limitations. It has a narrow space for shelves, so you may require some creativity when storing tall items. The shelves are not impervious to spills and could easily be stained or damaged by sharp items. The trays can be easily removed from the fridge. However, they must be cleaned frequently to stop the growth of mold.
If you are considering this refrigerator, make sure you 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 is an excellent counter-depth refrigerator that packs a lot of storage in an extremely compact frame. It has a sleek, fingerprint-resistant stainless-steel finish and features thick handles that make them comfortable to grip. The fridge features a standard French door design, and two rows of shelving with spill-capture and a set crisper drawers. The upper right shelf can be folded down to give tall items more space. There's also french door fridge freezer -width storage drawer for food items and an internal water dispenser.
One of the great aspects of this refrigerator is that the ice maker is inside the freezer, which makes it easy to move frozen ice to the fridge to use as needed. The freezer also features thoughtful design features, like sliding drawers that can help you sort your things. It also comes with a large bin that can accommodate plenty of frozen food items and a separate ice storage bin.
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 an easy way to monitor your fridge and manage it, especially when you're away from home.
The Smart InstaView feature is neat however it doesn't improve the performance of the fridge. In fact it took a bit longer to defrost and chill food in this fridge than some of the others we test. This is likely due to the bigger capacity.
The doors are a different issue with this refrigerator. The sunken handles let shorter people open them from the bottom. However, taller people still struggle to close them without slamming them. It would have been much better if they had handles mounted on the front.
The LG Counter-Depth MAX is a good option for those looking to combine the benefits of a French-door fridge's aesthetics with an efficient layout. Its capacity is above average for counter-depth models and is able to cool 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 refrigerator that doesn't cost a lot of budget. It's a basic fridge which may not be as appealing as some of its competitors, but it still has enough features to make a good option. Its most notable feature is the adjustable temperature drawer, helps to keep food items like vegetables and meat fresher for longer. It also comes with a large water and ice maker dispenser.
The "Chill Drawer", which is situated above the two crisper bins, is a excellent feature. This drawer allows you to direct a portion of the refrigerator's cooling power into the area so it can be used to store food items which need extra attention. This feature is adjustable using a slider located outside the drawer. You can also set the general cooling settings for the entire fridge. I have found that the general settings are more effective than the specific ones.
In my tests, I found that the temperatures of the refrigerator were fairly consistent across different parts of the refrigerator. The temperatures in the top and bottom of the fridge didn't vary very far from 38 degrees, and the middle of the fridge was within one degree of 36. This is a great performance however it doesn't be among the top 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. The fridge can be linked with a smart thermostat in order to obtain more precise readings of the internal temperature of your fridge.
The exterior of the Frigidaire is made from grey-bodied stainless that has a "smudge resistant" finish. It does an excellent job of preventing streaks and fingerprints from appearing, even compared to shiny 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 over 15 years of experience in commerce and publishing mostly in retail and digital. Stephanie is enthusiastic about finding and recommending the top products for consumers, with a a focus on home goods and technology.