Why You Should Be Working With This French Door Refrigerator With Ice Maker
French Door Refrigerator With Ice Maker Review
Melding form with function, French-door refrigerators come with elegant double doors that open to an expansive fridge on the top and a freezer drawer beneath. These refrigerators stand out because of their distinctive features, like through-the-door dispensers as well as higher-end Ice makers.
We asked Ladina Schopf - interior designer, architect, and founder of LS Projects - for her advice on how to choose the right one. We looked at storage capacity, layout and energy efficiency among other factors.
GE Profile Counter Depth French Door Refrigerator
As its name suggests, the GE Profile series is aimed at consumers who want to incorporate cutting-edge technology into their kitchen. This fridge is loaded with features, from an in-the-door Keurig K-cup coffee maker to a clever 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 and I was expecting better.
Apart from that minor flaw the fridge is a great choice. It has a large freezer compartment, which is quite uncommon in counter-depth French door refrigerators. Furthermore, it holds a fair amount of frozen foods as compared to similar models.
The fridge is equipped with 17 shelves and compartments. The fridge compartment offers 18.5 cubic feet of space, which is about what you would expect from an French door refrigerator that costs this much. It has a decent sized freezer in the left side. But it's not the most spacious one I've seen.
You can alter the shelves in both compartments to create a custom storage setup for the items you need to keep. The GE PYE22PYNFS's interior design is stylish, too. The LED lighting is a nice addition and the storage bins come with an additional shelf that folds down so that you can store large items. The drawers have temperature controls that let you set them to Meat, Beverage or Deli settings. They're easy to open and close, however I found their textured plastic coatings to be a bit rough on the fingers.
The GE PGE29BYTFS Smart Refrigerator has all the features you'd expect from a refrigerator within this price range. It has Wi-Fi as well as app support and GE's SmartHQ Software. The app, available for iOS and Android devices, lets you control your refrigerator from anywhere in the world, and has a ton of customization options. It will also send notifications when the door is unlocked as well as when the freezer or fridge must be defrosted and when the filter has to be changed.
It would be great if GE PYE22PYNFS offered Precise fill, an option that is available in a few GE refrigerators that allows users to select the number of cups they would like to pour out. It does have an indicator on the display of the fridge to display how much water have remaining, but that's not as useful as Precise fill.
Bosch Counter Depth French Door Refrigerator
The Bosch French-door Refrigerator is a striking piece. It's designed to look like it's a seamless component of your kitchen. 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 for longer and has dual compressors to ensure the best preservation of food. The Ice maker we tested is one of the most efficient, and it produces pyramid shaped ice using minimal water. This refrigerator is the ideal option for households with a single member or kitchenettes who want a sleek design and top-of-the-line food preservation.
This fridge was the top-rated refrigerator in our Refrigerators test, for a few reasons. The temperature of the freezer remained stable at just above 0 degrees Fahrenheit, never moving more than a fraction of an inch. This is essential to preventing freezer burn. The fridge section of the fridge also did well. It reached the temperature it was set within an hour, and maintained that temperature throughout our testing.
Bosch is a household name for its high-end appliances. It's therefore no surprise that Bosch's counter depth fridge Bosch counter depth fridge can be connected to your home Wi Fi and Bosch's Home Connect. This app lets you monitor and control your fridge remotely from your smartphone or tablet. The refrigerator is expensive, but it offers great features and capabilities for the price.
While the fridge is a fantastic appliance but it's important to be aware of the limitations. You may need to get inventive with tall items since the fridge has a small shelf space. Additionally the shelves aren't impervious to sprills and could be damaged or stained by sharp objects. The trays can be easily removed from the fridge. However, they should be cleaned regularly to prevent the growth of mold.
If you are considering this refrigerator, be sure to 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 counter-depth fridge is a great option for those who require a lot of space in an extremely compact frame. It has a sleek, fingerprint-resistant stainless-steel finish and features thick handles that make them comfortable to grip. Inside, french door refrigerator freezer features the standard French-door layout, with gallon-sized bins for the doors on each door, two rows of shelves for spill-capture, and a set of sleeker drawers. The top shelf to the right can be folded to provide more space for taller 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 move the frozen ice as needed. The freezer also has thoughtful design features, such as sliding drawers that allow you to sort your things. It has a large bin for storing frozen food and a separate one for ice.
Smart InstaView panel is another cool feature of the refrigerator. It lets you manage the refrigerator's temperature and lighting from your smartphone. It's a good method of monitoring and managing your refrigerator, especially when you're away from home.
The Smart InstaView feature is neat, but it doesn't necessarily enhance the performance of the fridge. In fact, it took longer to defrost and chill food in this fridge than some of the others we test. This could be due to the larger capacity.
Another issue with this refrigerator is its doors. They have sunken handles at the front, which allows smaller people to open them from the bottom, but they're still difficult for taller people to guide shut without slamming them. It would have been better if they had a front-mounted handles.
The LG Counter-Depth MAX fridge is an excellent option for those looking to combine the aesthetics of a French-door refrigerator with a more efficient design. Its capacity is above average for counter-depth models and is able to cool evenly. It's also a bit cheaper than the best counter depth refrigerator with an ice maker, making it an attractive option.
Frigidaire Counter Depth French Door Refrigerator
If you're looking for a French door refrigerator that won't break the bank and isn't expensive, this Frigidaire is a great choice. It's a basic fridge that might not be as eye-catching as its rivals, but it still has enough features to make it a good choice. Its most significant feature, the adjustable temperature drawer, helps to keep food like vegetables and meat fresher for longer. It also has a large water dispenser and a decent Ice machine that is fast.
The "Chill Drawer", which is located above the two crisper bins, is another excellent feature. This drawer lets you redirect some of the fridge's cooling power into this area, so that you can store foods that require special attention. You can alter this 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 work better than the specific ones.
In my tests, the temperature of the refrigerator stayed fairly consistent across different areas of the fridge. The temperatures in the middle, top and bottom of the refrigerator didn't vary significantly from 38 degrees. This is a great 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. This fridge can be connected with a smart thermostat to obtain more precise readings of the internal temperature of your fridge.
The exterior of the Frigidaire is made of grey-bodied stainless that has a "smudge resistant" finish. It repels fingerprints and streaks better than other stainless steel finishes I've tested.
Stephanie Cronk is the executive editor of Reviewed's Commerce/Product Reviews team and oversees the site's buyer's guides and product reviews for test products. She has more than 15 years of publishing and commerce experience, primarily in digital and retail. Stephanie is adamant about finding the best products and recommending them to customers. She concentrates on home and technology.