French doors aren't just for the patio any more
Written: Jun 14 '06 (Updated Jun 24 '06)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Sleek appearance, energy efficiency
Cons: Water and ice access, smaller capacity, ice-maker busted
The Bottom Line: IF the ice-maker gets fixed and IF it stays fixed, we'll be very pleased with this purchase. Otherwise...
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| Penguinlady's Full Review: |
The kitchen in our house was originally designed by people who hated to cook. It was remodeled by people with the aesthetic vision of a catfish. It was impossible to cook in.
So last April, we ripped it out. All the way down to the studs and joists. The only thing we kept was the footprint and the windows.
One of the biggest problems - one of the, not the - was that the island came too close to the fridge. Our big side-by side had a wide fridge door, and it came perilously close to crashing into the end of the island when we opened it. So we moved the fridge space to another wall. And then we bought a counter-depth fridge, a Maytag MFC2061HES.
FEATURES
• Our new fridge is a French-door style. That means that the two doors are of equal width, rather than of the usual unequal size.
• It has a bottom freezer.
• It is counter-deep.
• It has a capacity of 19.6 cubic feet, divided into 14.15 cubic feet for the fridge and 5.47 for the freezer.
• It has a filtered water dispenser inside the left door, and an ice-maker and bin in the freezer.
• The finish is stainless steel.
• The interior shelves are split in the middle, so they can be set at varying heights.
• There’s a butter-keeper in the top of the left-side door, and a removable egg bin in the bottom.
• It has a Door Alarm that sounds if a door is left open for more than five minutes.
• It comes with two veggie crispers and a Deli Drawer, a wide flat drawer that spans the width of the fridge and has a flip-top opening. The Deli Drawer contains a can rack that enables you to store six soda cans.
• The water dispenser is a spout beneath a button right inside the left-side door. The water filter fits into a rack in the upper right side of the fridge.
• It has separate temperature controls for the fridge and freezer, and a humidity control for the crispers.
• It has a Sabbath Mode, that disables the control lights but not the interior lights. This is for the benefit of Orthodox Jews who can’t turn lights on and off during Shabbat.
• The freezer has upper and lower wire baskets.
• It’s an Energy-Star appliance, consuming 480 KWH per year on average.
• It has the following dimensions:
Width = 35.6"
Height = 69.6"
Depth without doors = 24"
Depth with doors and handles = 29.6"
• The Maytag MFC2061KES lists at about $2400. But because we also bought a stove, vent hood, wall oven, and micro-convect at the same time, we got the contractor’s discount and paid about $2150.
WHAT I LIKE ABOUT IT
• It doesn’t stick out beyond the kitchen counters. Most fridges do, unless you’re popping for a Sub-Zero or Traulsen, which are built in and cost a billion dollars. That was one of the things we didn’t like about the way our old fridge fit into the old kitchen. Or into our Los Angeles kitchen, for that matter. The only part that extends beyond the counter is the door and the handle. It makes for a very streamlined look.
• Bottom freezers are much more energy-efficient than any other styles. That’s because cold air sinks. So the power of the freezer motor works with the natural laws of physics to make a much more efficient cooling machine that our old side-by-side.
• I have access to the full width of the box in both the fridge and the freezer. Yes, I’m paying for that by having a shorter fridge space, but I’ll never again have to jiggle the contents around to make room for a cookie sheet, or a lasagne pan. Wide is good
• The stainless steel is very sleek and classy looking. I didn’t think that would matter to us, but it does. I’ve never liked black appliances, and white ones just seem to scream. Our new kitchen is pretty subdued: natural cherry cabinets, sage green granite countertops, tumbled marble tile backsplash, and bottle-green tile floors. The stainless fridge and other appliances just seem to disappear into all those subdued colors.
• I really like that Deli drawer. Our old fridge had a cheese and deli-meat drawer that was handy but too deep and not wide enough. After a while, something would cry, “Mommy!” every time I opened the fridge. This drawer is much shallower and very wide, so I hope nothing gets lost and starts mutating in it.
• The handles are hefty lengths of tubular stainless that curve out and then back into the doors. A smooth, easy-to-grab, handful of stainless. No corners, no texture, nothing to catch crud. Just an aesthetically pleasing sweep of handle. We were on the verge of buying the Jenn-Air version of this fridge, which is identical, given that they’re both made by Amana for Maytag, which owns Jenn-Air, but the handles weren’t as nice, so we switched.
WHAT I’M NOT CRAZY ABOUT
• The water dispenser is a little awkward. We’re used to jamming a glass against the ice dispenser lever for crushed or cube ice, and then moving it over an inch or two to the water dispenser, all outside the fridge. With our Maytag MFC2061HES, we have to open the left fridge door and reach to the front of the left wall with both hands, pressing the stiff rubberized button with one while holding the glass under the very small spout with the other. It’s now a 2-handed operation, and of course, every time you open the door, you lose some of the coolth.
• Likewise, the ice-maker and bin are in the freezer, and we only get cubes. No more crushed ice. And if we have a party - we haven’t yet, but plan to, soon - there will be a lot of opening and closing of the freezer to get to the ice.
• But maybe that’s not a problem, because the ice-maker is on the fritz. It made one batch of ice, dumped it into the bin, and then quit. Period. Pffffft. Kaput. The beauty of the gadget is that there’s nothing you have to do to make it work, once the water line is hooked up and the power is on. The downside, therefore, is that there’s nothing you can do to make it work when it doesn’t want to. We know the water is getting through, and the power is on. So we called Maytag and they will send someone out... ten days after our call.
UPDATE: The repairman came out and found a defect in the icemaker, so he replaced it on the spot. The new one made two trays of ice... and then went on the fritz. As of now, we are waiting for him to come back and fix it again. I've told Maytag that if they don't get it fixed, I want a new fridge. We'll see.
• If I don’t remember which side of the fridge an item is on, I have to open both sides to find it. A bit of a nuisance, and I can just see all the cold air pouring out every time. This is a problem with all French-door fridges, not just ours. Or maybe it’s a problem with my brain. Anyway.
• I’m paying for my sleek counter-depth look with greatly reduced capacity. Our old fridge was a 25-cubic-footer, so we’ve lost fully five cubic feet. That’s a lot of space. So maybe we’ll finally get better about keeping it cleaned out, and checking for provisions before we go shopping. A radical idea. We probably could have gotten greater capacity if we’d been willing to sacrifice some wall space to accommodate a greater width, but that wasn’t possible. So be aware that a counter-depth fridge of standard height and width will hold slightly less than 20 cubic feet.
• Some of the plastic parts in the fridge seem a little flimsy. I’m thinking specifically of the door access of the Deli drawer; it just doesn’t seem to be very sturdy, given the amount of use it’s going to get. Time will tell.
• Stainless steel shows marks like crazy. So I see a lot of smudge-wiping in our future.
• It’s not magnetic. I usually keep my collection of penguin magnets on the fridge and hang recipes on the front while I’m cooking, along with all the other detritus of a messy household - coupons, photographs, recycling pick-up schedules, business cards... With the Maytag MFC2061HES, though, I can’t do that. For some reason, even though all our new appliances are stainless steel, only the micro-convect will attract a magnet, and that’s probably the one that shouldn’t have magnets near it. I asked the salesman about that when I called him about the ice-maker, and he assured me that it’s because the very best stainless isn’t magnetic. Period. In fact, quoth he, he and his colleagues test the quality of the stainless appliances in their store by trying to attach magnets to them; the best ones won’t hold ‘em. Whatever. But where am I supposed to put my magnets? How can Penguinman compose poetry for me if the words won’t stay on the door? And what am I going to do with my Far Side raining eggbeaters cartoon???
SUMMARY AND VERDICT
The primary consideration for us when we went shopping was that we wanted a counter-depth fridge. That greatly limited our options, since this is a somewhat new style. But we also appreciate the energy-saving qualities of the bottom freezer, and the sleek look of the French doors.
Maytag has hitherto enjoyed one of the better reputations for quality in the appliance industry, but that rep has suffered of late. I haven’t bought a Maytag appliance since the Neptune washer-dryer stack in 1999. So I’m not sure what to expect. Our new fridge is elegant-looking and fits beautifully into our new kitchen, but I know I’ll miss the old through-the-door dispensing system. (It’s available in the standard-depth models.) I’m also bummed about the ice-maker not working; that could turn out to be a major schreck if it doesn’t get fixed. So for now, I’ll give it 3½ stars, rounded up to 4. Stay tuned...
Recommended:
Yes
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Penguinlady
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