The GE GNE27JYMFS is a mid-range 36" wide standard-depth French door refrigerator. Its cooling system consists of a single evaporator with a fixed-speed compressor. It has an ice maker in the freezer and a filtered water dispenser inside the refrigerator compartment, flush-mounted to the wall. It features adjustable split shelving in the fridge, with a fold-away "Quick Space" shelf and height-adjustable door bins. There are two pull-out drawers in the freezer with dividers for organization and separation of items.
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Our Verdict
The GE GNE27JYMFS is a decent choice for everyday use. It offers excellent temperature uniformity, so you can place items anywhere in the fridge or freezer since there are no overly warm or cold spots. There's impressive capacity in the refrigerator, with split shelving and a fold-away shelf providing multiple ways to accommodate large or tall items like bottles. It's merely adequate for produce preservation: the fridge compartment gets dry, and although the produce drawer retains some moisture, it's not enough to keep lettuce wilt-free after about a week. Freezer capacity is only decent as well, with the ice tray taking up a lot of space.
Impressive refrigerator capacity.
Remarkable temperature uniformity in the freezer.
Great temperature uniformity in the fridge.
Produce bins seal well, retaining some moisture.
Low freezer capacity versus similar fridges.
Ice tray takes up a lot of space in the freezer.
Low humidity in the refrigerator will dry out produce outside of the crisper drawers.
The GE GNE27JYMFS offers fair produce preservation performance. The refrigerator's single evaporator leads to low humidity in the fridge compartment. While the crisper drawers retain some moisture, it isn't enough to prevent lettuce from wilting, celery from losing its crunch, and carrots from drying out in about a week.
Produce bins seal well, retaining some moisture.
Low humidity in the refrigerator will dry out produce outside of the crisper drawers.
The GE GNE27JYMFS delivers great refrigerator capacity. There are very few obstructions in this large refrigerator cabinet: only a small water filter housing. The water dispenser is nearly flush with the fridge wall, saving space. There are multiple split shelves, including a fold-away shelf, giving you flexibility to store tall items wherever it's convenient. Since there's no ice dispenser, ice tray, or chute in the door, there are plenty of identical deep, height-adjustable door bins on either side.
Impressive refrigerator capacity.
Water dispenser is flush-mounted to the interior wall, saving space in the fridge.
The GE GNE27JYMFS offers decent freezer capacity. The bottom freezer drawer is wide and deep enough to store several large pizza boxes and family-sized packs of frozen chicken, burgers, or fish, along with large bags of frozen vegetables, with a divider to keep items organized and separated. However, the ice tray in the top drawer takes up a lot of space. There's not much width left for storage in this shallow drawer, and the front is quite low, but at least there's a movable divider to separate the few items you'll be able to fit here.
Bottom freezer drawer is deep enough to store a few large items.
Low freezer capacity versus similar fridges.
Ice tray takes up a lot of space in the freezer.
The GE GNE27JYMFS delivers excellent temperature uniformity overall. This fridge exhibits great temperature uniformity in the refrigerator compartment, with even temperatures between shelves. The door bins are a bit warmer but still within safe limits, so you don't need to worry about storing temperature-sensitive items like milk and butter. The freezer's temperature uniformity is superb. You can store meats, bags of frozen vegetables, or ice cream wherever you like and be assured that these items will freeze quickly and will remain well frozen, with minimal freezer burn and frost formation.
Remarkable temperature uniformity in the freezer.
Great temperature uniformity in the fridge.
Door bins aren't much warmer than the rest of the fridge.
The GE GNE27JYMFS provides impressive ice-making performance. Its in-freezer ice maker produces an amazing amount of ice, more than enough for a large family gathering and occasional drinks throughout the day. Its ice tray holds an impressively large amount of ice, enough for household celebrations with several additional guests.
Excellent ice production rate.
Ice tray has impressive capacity.
Performance Usages
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Differences Between Sizes And Variants
There are several variants of the GE GNE27JYMFS, only differing by color or surface finish.
| Model | Color or Surface Finish |
|---|---|
| GNE27JYMFS | Fingerprint Resistant Stainless |
| GNE27JGMWW | White |
| GNE27JMMES | Fingerprint Resistant Slate |
| GNE27JGMBB | Black |
We tested the Fingerprint Resistant Stainless GNE27JYMFS model; here's its label.
If you find another variant, please let us know in the comments, and we'll update our review.
Popular Refrigerator Comparisons
The GE GNE27JYMFS is a decent performer, especially for a lower mid-range single evaporator fridge with a fixed-speed compressor, despite its low freezer capacity. It's very similar to the LG LRFLC2706S (which also has a single evaporator, an ice maker in the freezer, and an internal, low-profile water dispenser), but it offers more fridge capacity than the LG and better produce preservation due to better-sealing crisper drawers. Unfortunately, the freezer is smaller than the LG's. It doesn't compare too badly against the high-end GE Profile PGE29BYTFS: it's only a bit worse in most respects, despite the Profile's advantage with dual evaporators and an inverter compressor. The Samsung RF32CG5400SR is another standard-depth 36-inch French door model, although it has an in-door ice and water dispenser, but it gives up one of the split shelves of the GE for an ice maker in the fridge, its door bins are a lot warmer than the GE's, and its fridge cabinet is even drier, making produce preservation worse.
For more recommendations, take a look at the best French door refrigerators, the best refrigerator brands, and our picks for the best refrigerators overall.
Test Results
The GE GNE27JYMFS delivers great refrigerator storage capacity. Most of the interior compartment is usable for storage since there's no ice maker here, and the water dispenser is tucked away on the left side. There's only the small housing of the water filter on the right rear of the fridge ceiling, which could block some very tall items like bottles. Otherwise, there are plenty of height-adjustment options with the split shelves, which you can move to multiple positions. One of these shelves is a Quick Space shelf: you can fold away the front half of the shelf, sliding it under the back half of the shelf to give extra clearance for tall items underneath. There are two crisper drawers, and at the bottom is a full-width, fairly deep deli drawer with a manual temperature adjustment vent.
The doors hold six standard-size door bins, four of which are height-adjustable, and also a pair of short door bins at the bottom of the doors.
This refrigerator offers decent freezer storage capacity. The freezer has movable dividers in both drawers to keep items organized and separated, and the bottom drawer is wide and deep enough to store items like pizza boxes, family-sized lasagna trays, or value packs of frozen chicken, fish, or vegetables.
Unfortunately, the ice tray takes up quite a bit of space in the top drawer: without it, the freezer has a capacity of 5.1 cu ft, so the ice tray uses 31% of the total available freezer space. The tray takes up width in the shallow upper drawer, and combined with the short drawer front, there's not a lot of room for storing items here.
The cooling system in this fridge consists of a single fixed-speed compressor with a single evaporator. A fixed-speed compressor is an older, simpler design. It's a little less efficient and may consume a little more power than an inverter-controlled compressor, but it doesn't rely on a complex inverter controller board that could potentially fail, resulting in a costly repair.
The GE GNE27JYMFS's ice maker is at the top left of the freezer compartment and drops ice into a tray on the left of the freezer upper drawer. This is a better location from an ice production perspective because the ice maker sits in a very cold environment, the freezer, so it can make ice more quickly and reliably versus an ice maker in the fridge. Fridge-mounted ice makers require extra dampers, ducting, and insulation, yet operate at a higher temperature. The only drawback of an ice maker in the freezer is that you usually can't have an externally accessible ice dispenser with this design, so you'll have to open the freezer door and use a scoop to get ice.
This is an ejector-type ice maker, which uses a metal mold to cast ice, a small heater to detach the ice from the mold, and a plastic rake to eject the ice into the tray. It's a more reliable design than a twist-type ice maker, which casts the ice in a plastic tray and uses a motor to twist the tray and detach the ice. The plastic in the latter design can get brittle in freezing conditions with age and with repeated thermal cycles and expansion as the water freezes into ice.
This fridge has a simple filtered water dispenser inside the compartment. It's an unobtrusive, space-saving spigot which you activate using a push button. This design avoids the complications of an in-door, externally accessible water and ice dispenser, which takes up space, adds cost and complexity, and negatively affects door insulation.
The GE GNE27JYMFS offers great temperature uniformity in the refrigerator section. The door bins are only a little warmer than the rest of the fridge, with the middle door bin the warmest, but they all remain below the safe food threshold temperature of 44 °F (-6.7 °C). You can safely place sensitive items like milk or butter in the door bins. The fridge shelves are colder, with the middle shelves just slightly warmer, and the upper shelf is the coldest. Most of the cold air enters through the top of the fridge and a little through the bottom, distributing the cold air well and keeping shelf temperatures fairly uniform. Temperature swings are a little more pronounced for this fixed-speed compressor fridge than for an inverter compressor refrigerator, but this is still an impressive performance.
The freezer's temperature uniformity is outstanding. Though temperatures swing around somewhat owing to the full-on-full-off operation of the fixed-speed compressor, the freezer stays close to or under the ideal setpoint of 0 °F (-18 °C). There's very little variation throughout the freezer, and although the freezer is colder towards the top near the evaporator, the difference isn't enough to affect frozen foods in any way. You can be confident that items like meat, ice cream, or frozen entrées will freeze quickly, remain well frozen, and won't suffer from freezer burn all that much, regardless of where you place them.
This refrigerator's produce preservation performance is only okay. The single evaporator leads to low humidity in the fridge compartment, and while the produce drawer seal is good enough to retain some humidity in the crisper drawer, the moisture level is still not high enough to prevent produce from drying out fairly quickly. Lettuce will wilt, carrots will dry out, and celery will lose its snap in less than a week.
