French Door Refrigerator With Ice Maker Review
French-door refrigerators blend form and function. They come with stylish double doors that show an enormous fridge on top, and a freezer drawer beneath. Special features like door-to-door dispensers, high-end ice machines and flex drawers that can be customized make them stand out from the rest.
We asked Ladina Schopf – interior designer, architect and the founder of LS Projects – for her suggestions on how to pick the right one. We looked at storage capacity, layout and energy efficiency among other factors.
GE Profile Counter Depth French Door Refrigerator
The name of the series suggests that the GE Profile series is targeted at people who want to incorporate cutting-edge technologies into their kitchens. This fridge is loaded with them all including 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. This fridge is expensive, so I expected better.
Aside from that blip however, this refrigerator is a fantastic choice. It features a large freezer compartment which is uncommon for counter-depth french door fridge plumbed door fridges. It also holds plenty of frozen food, which is a big difference from other models.
Inside the fridge, you’ll find 17 shelves and compartments. The fridge compartment has 18.5 cubic feet, which is typical 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 biggest one I’ve seen.
You can alter the shelves in both compartments to create a custom storage setup for what is a french Style fridge freezer you want to keep. The GE PYE22PYNFS’s interior design is good-looking, too. The LED lighting adds an appealing feature. The bins for storage inside come with a third shelf that can be folded down to store tall objects. The drawers come with temperature controls so you can set them for Beverage, Meat or Deli settings. The drawers are simple to open and close, but I found the textured plastic 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 refrigerator at this price that includes Wi-Fi as well as 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 in the globe. It also comes with a lot of customization options. It will also send notifications when the door is left unlocked, when the freezer or fridge needs to be defrosted, and when the filter needs to be changed.
It would be nice to have GE PYE22PYNFS offered Precise fill, an option found in a few GE refrigerators that allows users to set the number of cups they would like to pour out. It does offer an indicator on the fridge’s display to show how much water you have remaining, but that’s not as helpful as Precise fill.
Bosch Counter Depth French Door Refrigerator
The Bosch french door refrigerator with ice maker in bottom freezer-door Refrigerator is an impressive product. It’s designed to look like a seamless piece 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 periods, and dual compressors to preserve food items. The Ice maker is among the top we’ve tested, and it produces a pyramid-shaped form of ice that is low in use of water. This refrigerator is a great option for a single family or kitchenettes looking for a built-in look and top-of-the-line food preservation.
This fridge was rated the best non plumbed french door fridge in our Refrigerators Test for several reasons. The temperature of the freezer remained constant at just above 0° Fahrenheit and never fluctuated more than a tiny fraction – this is essential to avoid freezer burn. The refrigerator section of the refrigerator also did well. It reached the temperature it was set within an hour, and remained at the temperature throughout our tests.
Bosch is known for its premium appliances and appliances, so it’s not a surprise that this counter-depth refrigerator is also a smart appliance that has the option of connecting to your home Wi-Fi network and Bosch’s Home Connect platform. This app lets you monitor and control your refrigerator remotely on your smartphone or tablet. The refrigerator is costly, but offers great features and functions at a reasonable price.
It is crucial to be aware of the limitations of your fridge. It is possible to be creative with tall items because the fridge has a small shelf space. The shelves are not resistant to spills and are french door fridges better easily damaged or stained by sharp items. It is easy to take out the trays in the fridge However, be sure to keep them clean to avoid the growth of mold.
If you’re thinking of buying this refrigerator, be sure to also check out our reviews of the French Door GE Appliances Refrigerator and the Bosch Bottom Freezer Refrigerator.
LG Counter Depth Slim French Door Fridge freezer Door Refrigerator
The LG LRFLC2706S is a top 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 has an ordinary French door design, with two rows of shelving with spill-capture and a set of crisper drawers. The top shelf to the right can be folded down to make space for taller items. You’ll also find a full-width drawer for deli items and an internal water dispenser.
One of the nice features of this refrigerator is that the ice maker is inside the freezer, which makes it easy to move ice into the fridge for use when required. The freezer also comes with innovative design features like sliding drawers that can help you sort your things. It also has a large container for storing frozen food, and a separate bin for ice.
Smart InstaView panel is another awesome feature of the refrigerator. It lets you control the fridge’s temperature and lighting using your smartphone. It’s a good way to monitor and manage your refrigerator, especially if you’re away from home.
The Smart InstaView feature is neat but it doesn’t improve the performance of the fridge. In fact it took longer to defrost and chill food in this fridge than some of the others we tested. This is likely due to the greater capacity.
Another issue with the door of this refrigerator. The handles that are sunken let shorter people open them from the bottom. However taller people will have a hard time closing them without slamming. It would have been more effective if they had handles mounted on the front.
The LG Counter-Depth MAX fridge is an excellent option for those looking to combine the look and feel of a French-door refrigerator with more efficient design. Its capacity is higher than average for counter-depth models and is able to cool evenly. It’s also less expensive than the top 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 great choice for those looking for a French-door refrigerator that doesn’t cost a lot of budget. It’s a basic design that’s not as visually striking as some of the competition 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 meat and vegetables fresher for longer. It also comes with a huge 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 lets you divert some of the refrigerator’s cooling power directly to this area, so you can store foods that need extra attention. This feature is adjustable using an outside slider that is located inside the drawer. You can also use this feature to adjust the general cooling settings for the entire fridge however, I’ve found that changing the general settings tends to have a better effect than specific ones.
During my tests, the refrigerator’s temperatures stayed fairly consistent across different areas of the fridge. Temperatures at the top and bottom of the fridge didn’t vary 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 rank among the best 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. This fridge can be connected 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 gray-bodied stainless with a “smudge resistant” finish. It is capable of preventing streaks and fingerprints from appearing even when compared to the glossy stainless steel finishes on other appliances I’ve tested.
Stephanie Cronk is the executive editor on Reviewed’s Commerce/Product Reviews team and oversees the site’s buyer’s guide and product reviews for test products. She has more than 15 years of experience in publishing and commerce mostly in retail and digital. Stephanie is passionate about finding the best products and recommending them to consumers. She concentrates on home and technology.