French Door Refrigerator With Ice Maker Review

French-door refrigerators blend design and function. They have stylish double doors that show a large fridge on top and a freezer drawer below. These refrigerators stand out due to their distinctive features, like through-the-door dispensers as well as higher-end Ice makers.

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

GE Profile Counter Depth French Door Refrigerator

Like its name implies, the GE Profile series is targeted at consumers who want to incorporate cutting-edge technologies into their kitchens. This fridge is loaded with these, from an inside-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. This refrigerator is costly, so I expected better.

Aside from that blip, this fridge is a great option. It has a large freezer compartment, which is quite uncommon in counter-depth French door fridges, and it can hold a decent amount of frozen food when in comparison to similar models.

Inside the fridge, you'll find 17 shelves and compartments. The refrigerator compartment has 18.5 cubic feet of space, which is roughly on what you would expect from a french door refrigerator with two freezer drawers door fridge that costs this much. It comes with a decent size icemaker in the left door. But it's not the biggest one I've seen.

You can adjust the shelving in both compartments to create a custom storage setup for the items you need to store. The GE PYE22PYNFS's design for the interior is attractive, too. The LED lighting is a nice touch and the inside storage bins have a third shelf that folds up beneath itself to make it possible to store tall items. The drawers come with temperature controls that let you set them to Meat, Beverage, or Deli settings. They're easy to open and close, although I found their plastic textured coatings to be a bit rough on the fingers.

The GE PGE29BYTFS Smart Refrigerator comes with all the features you'd expect from a refrigerator in this price range. This includes Wi-Fi, app support and GE's SmartHQ Software. The app, available for iOS and Android devices, lets you control your fridge from anywhere in world, and offers numerous options for customization. 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 would be nice if the GE PYE22PYNFS had Precise Fill, an option available in a few other GE fridges that allow you to set the number of cups of water you'd like to dispense simultaneously. It also has a countdown feature on the fridge display to display how much water you have left, but it's not as useful as Precise Fill.

Bosch Counter Depth French Door Refrigerator

The Bosch french door fridge only no freezer-door Refrigerator is a stunning piece of equipment. It's designed to appear like it's a seamless component in your kitchen. The fridge uses fingerprint-resistant stainless steel, which is a great feature for busy households. It also boasts a veggie compartment to keep vegetables and fruits fresher longer and dual compressors for the best preservation of food. The ice maker we tested was one of the most efficient, and it produces pyramid shaped ice using minimal water. This fridge is the perfect option for a single family or kitchenettes looking for a sleek design and top of the line food preservation.

This fridge was rated as the best french style fridge freezer in our Refrigerators Test due to a variety of reasons. The freezer temperatures remained steady at just above 0 degrees Fahrenheit, never moving more than a fraction of a degree--this is key to avoiding freezing burn. The fridge section of the fridge also performed well, achieving the temperature that was set for the initial setting within an hour and keeping that temperature steady over the course of our tests.

Bosch is known for its top-of-the-line appliances which is why it's no 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. The app lets you monitor and control your fridge from your smartphone or tablet. The refrigerator is costly, but offers great features and capabilities at a reasonable price.

While the fridge is a fantastic piece of equipment however, it is important to understand the limitations. It has a limited shelf space, which means you may require some creativity when storing tall objects. Also, the shelves are not impervious to sprills and could be stained or damaged by sharp objects. The trays are easily removed from the refrigerator. However, they must be cleaned regularly to prevent the growth of mold.

If you're considering this refrigerator, make sure to check out our reviews 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 require a lot 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 fridge has a standard french door fridge India-door layout with gallon-sized door bins at each door and two rows of shelves that capture spills, and a set of more spacious drawers. The top right shelf can be folded down to give tall items more space. 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 ice when needed. The freezer has thoughtful design elements, too, like sliding drawers that help better organize the position of your items. It also comes with a large bin that holds plenty of frozen food items and a separate container for storing ice.

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

The Smart InstaView feature is neat, but it doesn't necessarily enhance the efficiency of the fridge. The refrigerator took longer to defrost food and chill it than other models we tested. This is likely due to the greater capacity.

The doors are another problem with this fridge. They have sunken handles on the front that allow smaller people to pull them open from the bottom, however they're not easy for taller people to guide shut without slamming them. It would have been much better to have front-mounted handles.

The LG Counter-Depth MAX is a excellent option for those looking to combine the advantages of a French-door refrigerator's aesthetics with a more efficient layout. It has a capacity that is higher than average for counter-depth models and is able to cool evenly. It's also a little cheaper than the top counter-depth refrigerators that have an ice maker, which helps make it a popular choice.

Frigidaire Counter Depth French Door Refrigerator

If you're looking for an French door fridge that doesn't cost you a fortune and isn't expensive, this Frigidaire is a solid option. It has a simple design that's not as striking visually like some of the competitors however it comes with enough features that make it a great pick. Its most significant feature, the adjustable temperature drawer, helps to keep food items like vegetables and meat fresher for longer. It also has a large water dispenser, as well as an excellent ice machine that works fast.

The "Chill Drawer", which is situated over the two crisper bins, is a nice feature. This drawer lets you redirect the majority of the fridge's cooling power to this area so that you can keep food items that require special attention. This feature can be adjusted using a slider 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 are more effective than the specific ones.

In my experiments, I noticed that the temperatures in the refrigerator were fairly consistent across various parts of the fridge. Temperatures in the top and bottom of the fridge did not vary significantly from 38 degrees, and even the middle of the fridge was within one degree of 36. This is a good performance, but doesn't quite make it to the top of 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 combine 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 gray-bodied stainless with a "smudge resistant" finish. It does an excellent job of removing streaks and fingerprints, even compared to glossier stainless steel finishes on other appliances I've tested.

Stephanie Cronk is the executive editor of Reviewed's Commerce/Product Reviews team and oversees the site's buyer's guides as well as review of test products. She has more than 15 years of publishing and commerce experience, mostly in digital and retail. Stephanie is passionate about finding the best products and recommending them to consumers. She is particularly interested in home goods and technology.