Are French Door Fridges any Good? HAIER HTF610DM7 fridge freezer review

Are French door American style side by side fridge freezers any good? We get the chance to live with this HAIER HTF610DM7 French-door American style fridge freezer for a week. It's not exactly a review, but more a chance to share what we look for in our fridges and freezers. Plus is a double door fridge even practical for our kitchen? 

Are French Door Fridges any Good? HAIER HTF610DM7 fridge freezer review



TRANSCRIPT: (CLICK PLAY ON THE VIDEO ABOVE)

THIS IS THE TRANSCRIPT - CLICK PLAY ON THE VIDEO ABOVE!

Hello! Welcome back to the channel. Have you seen one of these? Are French door American fridge freezers worth it?

I was going to say "Hiya!" but this is actually a HAIER. This is the HAIER HTF610DM7 American-style fridge freezer. The difference with this fridge freezer is the doors. Sometimes these are called French American fridge freezers, and I think that’s because of these French doors. But what is it like to live with one of these—or two of these?

We’ve been living with this American French door fridge freezer for about a week now, and there are some upsides. But I’m going to run through all the reasons why we probably won’t be getting a French American fridge freezer. I know, it’s confusing, isn’t it?

Now you’re getting really intimate with us because this is... this is our holiday. This is how we live on holiday. Look, we’ve got some much-needed Creme Eggs, and, um, that’s one of our five a day. But it shows you how this fridge does stack up and how many shelves there are.

Let’s just go through the basics for this particular HAIER. There’s one, two, three, four shelves, and the fourth shelf is a glass shelf above the fruit and veg. I think there’s a difference—I don’t know the difference—but there is a dry zone and a humidity zone. One is good for fruits, and one is good for veg. Let me know in the comments which way around it’s supposed to be.

By the way, I love the huge light at the back. I’ve not seen that on any other fridge. Usually, it’s just plain white or there’s an aluminum brushed chrome panel, but this is like a flexi plastic back with a light behind it, which makes it really nice and bright.

Obviously, it says we’ve got the trilogic cooling system and Daylight Tower LED Multi Air Flow. Then, at the top, we’ve got these blue lights. It’s almost like a little emergency service thing here: Dynamic ABT. I’ll put on screen what that means, but I love how every American-style fridge freezer has, you know, these little trademark things. So, HAIER have got the ABT, and they’ve got the registered trademark for the tri-cooling system because, of course, we don’t want anyone stealing that, do we?

On the doors, we have three shelves: one, two, three. As you can see, one is big enough for a large bottle, and they’re really generous. So, the good thing with French American fridge freezers is that the shelves tend to be nice and big. Over on the other side, we’ve also got three shelves—one, two, three—in exactly the same layout.

Something we wanted in an American-style fridge freezer was to not have water cooling, to not have it plumbed in, to not have that mess, and to also not lose space in the door. So, this is a plus for us. We would love to not have a water dispenser or ice crusher. But maybe that’s your thing—maybe that is something you would want.

The capacity is really nice and generous. Let me show you how the doors work. This door works in the same way as every other French door or French American-style fridge freezer. It has this kind of flap that tucks back when you open the door. When you close the door again, there’s a guide track here, and then, when you close the door, the guide track kind of closes it. There’s a flap that opens up and locks into place, which means that when you close the other door, the fridge is completely sealed down the middle.

That also means that if you open the door on the left-hand side, you can actually open either door independently, even though there’s this thing here. But this one isn’t working so brilliantly because it does kind of sometimes stay out a little bit, and then you get that kind of clash, which isn’t pretty. When I close the door, it forces that flap through to seal it.

Something my nephew pointed out is that the temptation is to grab the middle of the door—to actually grab the bar to open it—which doesn’t work because it kind of locks. This is the second downside for us with this choice of American-style fridge freezer. I already want the handle. I want the handlebars so I can just grab a handle and open it. If you grab this bar, it doesn’t open, so you have to make sure your fingers are in the right place to open the door. I know that’s a little nitpicky, but I just want to be able to open the door, grab the thing, and close it again.

On the plus side, it isn’t one of those where you have to kind of reach under the door to open it, so that’s a good thing. The control panel is really good on this. It’s really simple, really clear, and you can see it. A lot of fridge freezers hide the control panel inside the fridge, but HAIER have chosen to put it on display, and it looks really nice. It’s a really nice color—really nice kind of dark glass look.

As with all fridge freezers, you can just... Oh, it’s kind of a cute sound, isn’t it? We’ve got two different zones for the freezers. I’ll put on screen what MyZone means. To change the temperature in the fridge, you just press these buttons. I don’t know if you can hear me over the bleeping—it’s quite tuneful, isn’t it? The same goes for the freezer.

Oh, right, so for MyZone, you can change it between freezer or fridge, so you could get a bit more fridge. I’m going to take... I don’t know if you can hear me... I’m going to take this all the way down to freezer with this particular HAIER.

Obviously, I don’t know how old this HAIER is, so it’s probably a good thing that I can show you what it’s like after years of use. It is a little bit clunky—maybe it’s because of what we’ve got in the doors—but because of that door in the middle, it does kind of clunk around just a little bit more than the other American-style fridge freezers we’ve seen.

With this HAIER American-style fridge freezer, I can’t help thinking that the French doors somehow reduce the capacity of the freezer. We’ve got the MyZone on this side, and, wow, it is really nice and cold, which is one of the things I might point out about the fridge upstairs—I’ll show you that in a minute. But we’ve got two generous baskets, and above, there’s an ice tray that pulls out. I suppose if you have this as a chiller zone rather than a frozen zone, that could be really useful. It’s mirrored on the other side, so it’s identical with the bar in the middle. I just wonder if it’s too small because of the French doors.

Here’s our biggest issue with the French door style: we didn’t realize this until we’d used it for a week. We feel like having French doors uses up energy. If I can’t remember which side I put the cheese on, I have to open one door, realize it’s not there, and then open the other door. All the cold air escapes from both sides every time.

This all probably means that, for us, we won’t be going for a French door American-style fridge freezer. It’s lovely, and it’s joyful to see all your stuff laid out and lit up. But just on a practical level, it’s not for us.

Let me know what you think in the comments. If this video is helping, thank you for hitting the thumbs up or the subscribe button—it really helps us to keep this channel going. Right here are all the other American-style fridge freezers we’ve been looking at—quite a lot of them now—so if you click on that or the link in the description, you’ll see a whole load of American-style fridge freezers. Can you please help my daddy get 10,000 subscribers? Just click on his face. Thanks! Bye!

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