French Door Refrigerator With Ice Maker Review

Melding form with function, French-door refrigerators offer stylish double doors that open up to a spacious fridge up top and freezer drawer below. Special features like through-the-door dispensers, high-end ice machines and flex drawers that can be customized make them stand out from the crowd.

We asked Ladina Schopf - an interior designer, architect and the founder of LS Projects - for her suggestions on how to pick the right one. They looked at the storage capacity, layout, and energy efficiency among other features.

Shop GE GYE22GYNFS French Door Refrigerator Now! Profile Counter Depth French Door Refrigerator

As the name suggests, GE's Profile series is geared towards the consumer who wants to incorporate cutting-edge technologies in their kitchen. This fridge is loaded with them all including the Keurig K cup coffee maker inside 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. Given that this fridge costs a premium, I expect better.

Apart from that minor flaw, this fridge is a great option. It has a large freezer compartment, which is quite uncommon in counter-depth French door refrigerators. Furthermore, it holds a fair amount of frozen food when compared to similar models.

The fridge comes with 17 shelves and compartments. The fridge compartment is 18.5 cubic feet, which is the standard for a French-door refrigerator at this price. It also has an adequate-sized icemaker that is tucked away in the left-hand door, although it's not the biggest I've seen.

You can alter the shelves in both compartments to create a custom storage setup for what you want to keep. The interior design of the GE PYE22PYNFS is also attractive. The LED lighting adds an appealing touch. The bins for storage inside come with a third shelf that can be folded down to store tall items. The drawers come with temperature controls that allow you to set them to Meat, Beverage, or frydge Deli settings. They're easy to open and close, but I found their textured plastic coatings to be a little hard on the fingers.

The GE Profile French Door Refrigerator - 27.6 cu. ft PGE29BYTFS Smart Refrigerator is equipped with a complete set of features you'd expect from a refrigerator at this price with Wi-Fi and app support through GE's SmartHQ software. The app, available for iOS and Android devices, lets you control your fridge from anywhere in the world, and offers a ton of customization options. It also alerts you 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 refrigerators that allows you to set the number of cups of water you'd like to disperse at a time. It does offer a countdown on the fridge display to show how much water you have left, but it's not as effective as Precise fill.

Bosch Counter Depth French Door Refrigerator

It is designed to look like a seamless part of your kitchen Bosch's French door refrigerator is an eye-catching piece. 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 for longer and dual compressors to preserve food items. The Ice maker is among the best we've ever tested and produces a pyramid-shaped Ice with low water consumption. This refrigerator is ideal for a single family or a kitchenette that wants an attractive design and top of the best food preservation.

The fridge was rated the best refrigerator in our Refrigerators test, for several reasons. Its freezer temperatures remained constant at just above 0° Fahrenheit and never fluctuated more than a fraction - this is crucial to avoid the risk of a freezer burn. The fridge section of the refrigerator also did well. It reached the temperature it was set within a matter of hours, and maintained the temperature throughout our testing.

Bosch is known for its premium appliances which is why it's no surprise that this counter-depth refrigerator is also a smart appliance, with the option of connecting to your home Wi-Fi as well as Bosch's Home Connect platform. This app lets you monitor and control your fridge remotely from your smartphone or tablet. The fridge is expensive, however it has great features and capabilities for the price.

It is crucial to be aware of the limitations of the fridge. It has a limited space for shelves, so you may need to be creative when storing tall objects. Also the shelves aren't impervious to sprills and could be damaged or stained by sharp objects. It is easy to take out the refrigerator trays however, you must keep them clean to avoid the growth of mold.

If you are considering this refrigerator, you should also read 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 a top 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. Inside, the refrigerator has an ordinary French-door design with gallon-sized bins for the doors on each door, two rows of spill-capture shelves and a set crisper drawers. The upper right shelf can be folded down to give tall items more headroom. There's also a full-width drawer to store food items and an internal water dispenser.

This refrigerator is equipped with an ice maker, making it easy to move the frozen ice whenever you need it. The freezer also features innovative design features such as sliding drawers that can help you organize your items. It also has a large bin that holds plenty of frozen food items as well as a separate ice storage bin.

Smart InstaView panel is another awesome feature of the refrigerator. You can control the temperature, lighting and more of your fridge from your smartphone. It's a nice way to monitor and manage your refrigerator, especially when you're away from home.

But while the Smart InstaView is a neat feature, it doesn't add to the overall performance of the refrigerator. The refrigerator took longer to chill food and defrost it than some others we tried. This could be due to the larger capacity.

The doors are a different issue with this refrigerator. The sunken handles allow smaller people to open them from the bottom. However taller people have a difficult time closing them without slamming. It would have been better if they came with a front-mounted handle.

The LG Counter-Depth MAX fridge is an excellent option for those looking to blend the aesthetics of a French-door refrigerator with an efficient design. Its capacity is higher than average for counter-depth models, and it cools evenly. It's also less expensive than the top counter-depth refrigerator that has an ice maker, which helps make it a desirable choice.

Frigidaire Counter Depth French Door Refrigerator

This Frigidaire French door refrigerator is a good option if you want a French-door fridge that doesn't break the budget. It's a basic refrigerator which may not be as appealing as some of its competitors however it has enough features to make a an excellent option. Its most important feature, the adjustable temperature drawer helps to keep food items like vegetables and meat fresher longer. It also comes with a huge ice maker as well as a water dispenser.

The "Chill Drawer", which is located above the two crisper bins, is another excellent feature. The drawer lets you use the majority of the refrigerator's cooling power into this area, so that you can store foods which need extra attention. You can alter this feature by using a slider that's located right on the outside of the drawer. You can also set the general cooling settings for the entire fridge. I've noticed that the generic settings work better than the specific ones.

In my tests, the temperatures of the refrigerator were fairly constant across the different areas of the fridge. Temperatures in the top and bottom of the fridge didn't vary much from 38 degrees, and even the middle of the fridge was within a degree of 36. This is a great performance however it doesn't rank among the best in our ratings.

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 connect this fridge to a smart thermometer for more precise measurements of your fridge's temperature.

The exterior of the Frigidaire is made of gray-bodied stainless with a "smudge resistant" finish. It does a great job of preventing streaks and fingerprints from appearing even when compared with glossier stainless steel finishes on other appliances I've tried.

Stephanie Cronk, executive editor of Reviewed's Commerce/Product Reviews Team, oversees the site's buyer's guides and product test reviews. She has more than 15 years of commerce and publishing experience, with a focus on retail and digital. Stephanie is adamant about finding the top products and recommending them to customers. She is particularly interested in home goods and technology.