“Maytag’s Four-Door French Door Refrigerator calms the chaos by compartmentalizing, keeping your life (and fridge) in order.”
- Lots of room
- Keeps things organized
- A variety of storage and configuration options
- Pizza pocket!
- Stainless steel attracts fingerprints
- Expensive
- You can’t change the humidity controls on the crisper drawers
Have you ever lived with so many roommates that your fridge became a straight-up nightmare, stocked with containers of mysterious sludge you once called food? What, you’re still living this reality? Only now it’s kids instead of poly-sci majors responsible for your messy, messy fridge?
Face it, it can be hard to keep the appliance we turn to so frequently organized. You’ll think everything’s in order, only to blearily grope for the milk one morning and find it hidden between 27 Chinese take-out containers. Maytag’s Four-Door French Door Refrigerator attempts to calm some of the chaos by compartmentalizing.
More to explore
French door, stainless steel refrigerators with bottom freezers are a popular style, so this Maytag immediately stands out, thanks to its extra drawer. It almost makes it look like a futuristic armoire. An ice and water dispenser with control panel is located on the left door, which glows a whitish blue. The fridge’s 26-cubic-foot capacity is contained within a 35 ⅝-inch width, 36-inch depth, and 70 ⅛-inch height. Though the freezer took a little extra tug to get moving, the doors and top drawer were easy enough to open.
When you do open the doors, you’re greeted with some cool features. The two top shelves can tilt out of the way of your 22-ouncers and are made of glass, but the two below are stainless steel. Not heavy enough to be cumbersome, these two shelves have a little something extra underneath: LED lights. This ensures you can still see what’s going on below them, in the space above the crisper drawers. The door on the right has three adjustable-height bins, wide enough to hold a gallon of milk. On the left, the removable ice tray hides behind a door with a button you slide up to open.
The fourth door-mention
This four-door fridge is all about the options, especially when it comes to storage. Instead of the usual two crisper drawers, there’s a narrower third one in the middle. These are auto-controlled, so you can’t select different settings if you’re designating one for fruits and the other vegetables. That’s a bummer, but the third drawer is a nice option if you want keep your fragile raspberries from getting squashed by your apples. Right in front of these drawers is another unique little addition: Shallow bins with sliding doors, sort of like the ice cream freezers at convenience stores. Designed for easy access, your roommate will never have a good excuse for stealing your string cheese again, once you designate sides.
Down below is the separate refrigerated drawer, which does have adjustable temperatures. Depending on what you’re keeping in there, you can opt for the meat and cheese, fruit and veggies, drinks, or assorted settings. I kind of want to have a party at the Digital Trends offices, just so I can fill this drawer with cans of beer. There are removable dividers, which made it easy enough to slide in a 15-by-21-inch baking sheet.
The freezer has 7.7 cubic feet of space and an upper drawer that easily slides back and forth. The adorably named Pizza Pocket located at the front will keep boxes of frozen food protected from the gliding drawer.
Cool it
The dispenser’s interface is simple enough to use. From here, you can change the fridge’s and freezer’s temperature, dispense water or crushed or cubed ice, amp up ice production with Fast Ice, and check the status of your water filter. There’s a light to let you know when the door’s ajar, and a short alarm sounds when you’ve had the door open for more than five minutes. If you find you’ve somehow left the door open, you can use the PowerCold option to cool the fridge down more quickly.
Like a lot of stainless steel, the fridge showed every fingerprint smudge, and these weren’t easy to remove with just a cloth alone. But it’s what’s inside that counts, right? Based on our tests, the temperature fluctuations stayed within 2 degrees of the suggested 37 degrees Fahrenheit. Even after we opened the door for a couple minutes, the fridge would quickly return to temperature, even without the PowerCold option.
You’re covered with a one-year limited warranty, and the compressor gets an additional warranty of its own for 10 years total. Should you need to make an appointment, you have the option to call from 8:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. EST or schedule online.
Conclusion
Maytag’s Four-Door French Door fridge is big and beautiful. With its surfeit of space and storage options, it’s sure to curb arguments over who owns which pudding cups. The extra drawer not only makes the appliance look a little different from much of the competition, it’s a pretty brilliant solution that lets you keep you the most-eaten items in reach. It’s probably made with neat freaks in mind. The only thing that’s off-putting is the price. It’s definitely a well-made machine, but at $3,000 it doesn’t come cheaply. For slightly reduced capacity and $1,000 less, you can get a similar setup from KitchenAid.
Highs
- Lots of room
- Keeps things organized
- A variety of storage and configuration options
- Pizza pocket!
Lows
- Stainless steel attracts fingerprints
- Expensive
- You can’t change the humidity controls on the crisper drawers
