The GE Profile PGE29BYTFS is a high-end 36-inch French door standard-depth refrigerator. As expected for a unit in this price range, it's relatively feature-dense, with a quartet of movable shelves, an automatic-filling pitcher and water dispenser, and a cooling system consisting of twin evaporators and an inverter-controlled compressor. There's also a temperature-controlled pull-out drawer that can be used for storing any number of items, from deli meats to wine.
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Our Verdict
The GE Profile PGE29BYTFS is good for everyday use. This is a large fridge that won't necessarily fit in all kitchens, but it does make intelligent use of its large external footprint, with a spacious interior that's well-suited for family meals. Beyond that, it's a strong performer in terms of cooling performance, with highly consistent temperatures across all of its shelving, so you can place your groceries wherever it's most practical instead of worrying if one area is warmer than the other. Unfortunately, despite the presence of a second evaporator for the fridge compartment, the latter section still runs a little dry, which can cause delicate greens to begin wilting a little faster than they would in some other fridges. Unlike fridges with a more conventional through-door water dispenser, you'll need to open the fridge to fill a glass using the AutoFill pitcher, which can be a nuisance depending on your tolerance for this sort of thing.
Generous capacity inside fridge cabinet.
Large lower freezer bins.
Impressive temperature consistency across refrigerator shelves and door bins.
Amazingly consistent temperatures in freezer section.
High-capacity ice tray cuts down on space at the top of the freezer.
Crisper drawers don't retain as much moisture as some other models.
The GE Profile PGE29BYTFS's produce preservation performance is decent overall. This is a dual-evaporator fridge, which helps maintain somewhat high humidity levels within the main fridge cabinet. However, it doesn't maintain as high a moisture level inside this area or the crisper drawers as other dual-evaporator models. As a result, you'll start seeing wilting in especially delicate greens in about a week or so.
Relatively high humidity level in fridge cabinet can help preserve produce not in crisper drawer.
Crisper drawers don't retain as much moisture as some other models.
The GE Profile PGE29BYTFS provides an impressive level of capacity in its fridge compartment. This cabinet is well-sized, with a quartet of wide, deep split shelves, allowing you to reconfigure the space to fit taller items like fresh herbs. The door bins are also big enough to accommodate items like milk jugs, though it's worth noting that the AutoFill pitcher, which slots into the left door, takes up a bit of room in that space. The pull-out drawer effectively frees up space inside the main cabinet by allowing you to fit bulky items like narrow-necked bottles inside.
Generous capacity inside fridge cabinet.
Large door bins.
Autofill pitcher does cut into available space inside door.
The GE Profile PGE29BYTFS is a decent option for frozen food storage. The freezer compartment is decently spacious: you should be able to fit bulkier boxed items in the lower bins, but the upper pull-out shelf is really only big enough for smaller, more compressible items like bags of frozen fruit or smaller meal-prep containers. If you don't plan on using the ice maker, removing the ice tray does net you a fair amount of extra space.
Large lower freezer bins.
High-capacity ice tray cuts down on space at the top of the freezer.
The GE Profile PGE29BYTFS's temperature uniformity is excellent. Temperatures across the fridge cabinet's main shelves barely differ. Even the door bins, which traditionally trend much warmer than the main cabinets in other fridges, are only a scant few degrees warmer, making them suitable spots for storing temperature-sensitive items like milk or cream. It's a similar situation in the freezer. The inverter compressor minimizes swings in temperature inside the cabinet during normal operation, and there's almost no noticeable difference in freezing capability between the top and bottom areas.
Impressive temperature consistency across refrigerator shelves and door bins.
Amazingly consistent temperatures in freezer section.
The GE Profile PGE29BYTFS is an excellent option for making ice. Its ice maker can put out a little over four pounds of ice within a 24-hour period, which, generally speaking, should be more than enough for moderately sized gatherings where you expect to be serving drinks. The ice tray can hold almost double that figure, which should be enough for bigger events like a backyard barbecue.
High-capacity ice tray.
Impressive ice-making speed.
Performance Usages
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Differences Between Sizes And Variants
This fridge is only available in a single colorway: Stainless Steel. For those interested, here's our test unit's product label.
Let us know in the comments below if you come across another variant of this fridge so that we can update our review.
Popular Refrigerator Comparisons
The GE Profile PGE29BYTFS is a high-end French door fridge and a strong performer in many respects. Compared to the similarly designed GE Profile PVD28BYNFS, the PGE29BYTFS offers vastly more uniform fridge cabinet temperatures, and its in-freezer placement of its ice maker frees up space and introduces fewer likely failure points. It does face stiff competition from the likes of the Bosch 500 Series B36FD52SNS, which delivers superior produce preservation performance, an area where the GE falters. That said, the GE's separate temperature-controlled drawer can help de-clutter your fridge cabinet, and its ice-making capability is nothing to sneeze at.
The Café CGE29DP2TS1 is a better fridge than the closely related GE Profile PGE29BYTFS. The Café has an excellent produce drawer seal, so its produce preservation performance is much better than the GE. It also has an extra tray in the freezer for wide, flat items like pizza boxes, and its separate pull-out drawer can function as a soft freezer. The GE offers a larger ice tray and a faster ice maker while also being much less expensive, so you have to evaluate whether these extra niceties are worth it for your needs.
The Hisense HRM260N6TSE is a better fridge than the similar GE Profile PGE29BYTFS. The Hisense's produce preservation is notably better, even though both fridges have dual evaporators and decent produce drawer seals. The Hisense also has a larger freezer since there's no ice tray taking up space there. The Hisense's separate temperature-controlled drawer is more fully featured than the GE's corresponding drawer because you can configure the Hisense's drawer as a soft freezer. However, the GE produces and stores far more ice than the Hisense, and its refrigerator door bins are better cooled. As well, the GE uses a compact water dispenser pitcher inside the fridge instead of a bulky ice and water dispenser in the door, so it has more fridge capacity.
The GE Profile PGE29BYTFS is a slightly better-performing fridge than the Maytag MRFF4236RZ overall. The GE has a larger fridge compartment with a separate temperature-controlled drawer, making it easier to organize big grocery runs, and its freezer has more room to boot. The GE also features an inverter-controlled compressor, which does a slightly better job of maintaining uniform temperatures in its fridge cabinet. If you regularly host large numbers of people, both units have ejector-style ice makers. However, the GE can output more ice in a 24-hour period, and its ice tray has a greater overall capacity. With all that being said, the Maytag's simpler design, which includes a cooling system with a fixed-speed compressor and single evaporator, introduces fewer obvious failure points, all the while delivering comparable produce preservation performance.
Test Results
The GE Profile PGE29BYTFS has an impressively spacious refrigeration cabinet. The four glass shelves are movable, allowing you to easily reconfigure the interior space to fit your needs, so you can use one side for taller items and the other for short and wide dishes. As a standard-depth fridge, the shelves can accommodate bigger containers, and the crisper drawers have enough room to easily accommodate bigger fruits like navel oranges or grapefruits.
While the PGE29BYTFS does offer more overall space than the similar GE Profile PVD28BYNFS, largely due to the absence of an in-fridge ice maker, it's worth noting that the latter has more eye-catching features like its slide-adjustable and swiveling door bin.
The PGE29BYTFS's integrated 'AutoFill' pitcher cuts into the space along the left door's bins, which are otherwise big enough to fit things like cartons of milk or juice.
The PGE29BYTFS shares the same separate temperature-controlled drawer as the PVD28BYNFS, which has the following presets for different foodstuffs that you can select using the integrated control panel: Meat (29 °F), Beverages (33 °F), Snacks (37 °F), and Wine (42 °F). In isolation, the drawer has a capacity of 3.61 cu ft (102.2 L), more than enough for family-sized packs of deli meat, wedges of cheese, or wine or champagne bottles. There's an internal beverage tray with slots for holding cans in place, too.
This unit's freezer provides a decent amount of room. The lower pull-out drawer is big enough to fit bulkier items like frozen pizza boxes or value-sized packs of frozen chicken or fish, and you can move the sliding divider to section off savory items from frozen desserts like ice cream or popsicles. Storage along the upper shelf is compromised compared to the GE Profile PVD28BYNFS due to the inclusion of an in-freezer ice-maker, with this area really only being suitable for smaller frozen goods like bags of frozen fruit and veggies. With the ice bucket removed, storage capacity increases to 4.35 cu ft (123.2 L).
The GE Profile PGE29BYTFS features a single inverter-controlled compressor and separate evaporators for the fridge and freezer cabinets.
An inverter compressor is capable of modulating its speed to match the desired load. On paper, this makes them more energy efficient and better able to maintain a consistent temperature compared to fixed-speed units found in cheaper fridges, which need to cycle on and off to maintain a desired setpoint. That said, the inverter control boards introduce a substantial layer of complexity and introduce a potential failure point.
Dual evaporators help regulate humidity levels in each section of a refrigerator, keeping humidity high in the fridge cabinet to extend the lifespan of fresh produce, and keeping moisture levels low in the freezer to minimize frost. Moreover, since cold air isn't shared across cabinets, there's no odor transference from fridge to freezer.
Just like the GE Profile PVD28BYNFS, the GE Profile PGE29BYTFS has an ejector-style ice maker. However, its placement differs compared to the former. In this application, it sits within the freezer instead of the fridge, which is traditionally a better position, as it doesn't need to be installed within an isolated compartment with a separate microclimate.
The method of operation for an ejector-style ice maker is simple: water is poured into a metal mold and frozen into ice, whereupon a heating element melts the outer layer of ice, loosening it in the mold. From there, plastic raking arms harvest the ice into the tray. While their plastic raking arm can break against the ice in the metal mold if it's been frozen too solid or if the heating element isn't operating, these systems are generally fairly simple in design and have few other obvious weak points compared to twist-tray units, which have flexible plastic molds that can crack over time from thermal shock and mechanical stress.
This fridge comes with an 'AutoFill' pitcher in lieu of a more conventional water and ice dispenser. As the name implies, this pitcher is filled automatically when it's running low. It can be used in one of two ways: you can leave it in its slot and fill a glass using the integrated spigot, or remove it from the door and use it as you would with any other conventional pitcher. This pitcher is made of BPA-free plastic and is advertised as being dishwasher safe, so cleaning it is simple.
This unit's temperature uniformity is great. Temperatures throughout the main fridge cabinet remain steady and uniform, so unpacking groceries isn't an exercise in carefully placing temperature-sensitive items in specific locations. Better yet, the door bins are only a scant few degrees warmer than the rest of the cabinet, not nearly enough to have an impact on items like milk or cream. It performs substantially better than the GE Profile PVD28BYNFS in this respect, most likely as a result of its conventional door design.
This refrigerator's freezer compartment maintains fantastic temperature uniformity. You can place foodstuffs anywhere within this cabinet, with no worry of one item being freezer-burned and the other not wholly frozen. Barring the short spike from a defrost cycle, the inverter compressor also helps to minimize swings in temperature in normal operation.
The produce preservation performance is decent overall. Humidity levels within the crisper drawer are relatively low. As a result, delicate greens like lettuce will lose their moisture relatively quickly and begin wilting within the span of a week or so. On the upside, the dual evaporator design does allow the appliance to maintain a relatively humid environment in the main cabinet, so delicate produce should fare relatively well if it doesn't fit in the produce drawer.
This higher humidity level makes this fridge perform better than the single-evaporator GE GNE27JYMFS.
The GE Profile PGE29BYTFS's ice production rate is impressive. In a pinch, you should have enough ice for a four- or five-person dinner, but anything beyond that will require filling up the ice bucket in advance.
The capacity of this unit's ice tray is significantly greater than that of the GE Profile PVD28BYNFS. When completely filled, it will hold enough ice to serve iced drinks at large family functions, backyard barbecues, or even cocktail parties.