The shallow refrigerator drawer can be great though for putting kid-friendly items in a space they can reach without having them try to get things down out of their reach in the main fridge.

It's also a tad more energy efficient to put frequently used items in that drawer rather than having to sort through multiple shelves with both doors being open.

I'd rarely have "grab and go" enhancements on my list of pet peeves.

the coffeemaker makes no sense. it will either make terrible coffee or be impossible to fix when it breaks.

There's a special soda ramp under one of the shelves in our fridge. We don't drink soda. We use one side for eggs and the other for bagels...

I like the beverage rack a lot! If they sold that as a fridge insert I would buy it. My husband is a HUGE soda drinker and they take up SO MUCH ROOM in our tiny apartment fridge, so this would be a huge help

Televisions in refrigerators. I hate them.

I think the horizontal middle drawer for kids is a funny marketing gimmick. I was just listening to my brother talk about keeping my niece out of the refrigerator while the ad showing kids pulling the drawer out whenever they feel like it running through my head. I do think that this drawer would be a great ADA feature though.

I actually think the shallow drawer is a nice idea. It's easier to find things when they're side by side than when they're stacked, and I like that it pulls out, so you don't have to root around for things.

The other features seem silly, though.

I was just recently shopping for a new fridge (although mine had NO bells or whistles on it), and saw the one with dual drawers. One thing I did like on the model I was looking at (blanking on what that was now), was that you could select the temperature from a pretty wide range to accomodate different uses. I think it would have made a good place for beverages or kid snacks, but really...I just thought about how I could adjust the temp to use as a wine drawer. :)

I'm kind of into the idea of a shallow drawer (though I HATE french door refrigerators. Don't ask me why, I just do). It would be a good place to keep cans of soda, and I could see myself keeping all of my salad ingredients in there instead of having to keep the door to the entire fridge open.

It might also be good to put everything you'll need for that night's dinner in there, though that would take some planning on your part,

I'm a big soda drinker and I simply lowered the adjustable shelf as far down as it goes, which perfectly fits a fridge pack or 24-pack suitcase of canned beer in between... And I get a shelf with tons of room above it. My champagne and wine bottles don't have to lie down anymore!

I have a french door/freezer on the bottom with the shallow drawer and I have a love-hate relationship with it. We use a lot of cheese and usually have some deli meat around and it's great for that, plus small containers of black beans that I keep made up for lunch. It's a real pain to clean around and under though, and if I didn't have a family eating a ton of lunch stuff it wouldn't be a good use of space for me.

We have a beverage rack on the bottom of one of the french doors and I actually like that because I keep water chilled for the kid running out the door for an activity there and I can easily see when it's gone.

What I really miss in this is even though it's larger than the 30+ year old fridge it replaced, is that the way it's designed actually gave me less fridge space, especially what I used to keep in the door. I wound up with more usable space by removing one of the shelves and adding a bin to keep the bottles that I don't use often.

If you're in the market, be sure and buy an extended warranty because these are beastly expensive to repair.

I like how the second refrigerator shown in the post is currently featured in one of the two google ads on this page as 60% off.

Ditto televisions in refrigerators.

Water/ice dispensers in the door bug me (blah blah blah filtration, I think the water always tastes bad, and they take up SO MUCH freezer space!), but my husband loooooves them. The house we moved into has a fridge with an internal icemaker and I'm liking it a lot more than I thought I would. I make a lot of ice-milkshakes and smoothies now, and my husband now makes and drinks a big pitcher of iced water every night - I feel guilty that I never noticed he was so into cold water.

When we someday replace our current one, I'm excited about the french door idea, though I've never actually used one. I thought it would make things more accessible, but these comments give me pause.

I like the raised beverage rack.

I envy the french door refrigerator, Wish I had money to blow on one.

I love our side by side. French door/roll out freezer makes no sense to me. Everything will get piled on top of each other in the freezer.

When we bought our current model we searched for a month. Eventually we started bringing an empty frozen pizza box and a few other odd items to rule models out. Side by side fridge/freezer was the best fit.. and it's counter depth. we're very happy two years later.

I like the drawer idea because you don't have to open the big fridge section that way. Saves power, I would guess.

I have to laugh at myself. Two years ago I bought a new fridge for the first time in 15 years. I couldn't believe how much they had improved! Everything comes out so you can wash it in the sink! So there are advances in design! (My old one--everything was wire, didn't easily remove, and was so difficult to wash). My new one is twice the size & uses less power!

I'm not usually the one to support a techy innovation, but the wi-fi on the fridge isn't the dumbest idea ever. We use Google Calendars to keep our work and home schedules, and we end up having to cross-reference it with our paper calendar, which hangs on the fridge. Having a screen to show the family calendar might be useful...

Here are reasons why I think the french door fridge makes sense:
-The doors swing out and take up less space (good for smaller or galley style kitchens)
-You can open up one side if you know which side the thing you need is (saving a bit of the cold air from spilling out)

The coffee maker isn't a good idea, better to just have separate appliances that do their own job really well rather than having one that does a bunch of things not so well.

My least favourite innovation is the big computer screen on the fridge. Maybe in 10 years it will be able to detect what's in the fridge and show you what you can make, or what's expired, but until then I don't need a fridge telling me what's on my calendar for the day, I'll just use my iPhone for that.

I have seen so many ugly refridgerator disasters over the years.People buy those huge french door things and don't realize- OOPS they're HUGE and they stick out about 6 inches further than the cabinets next to them!
Not to mention that when those drawers get to be a couple years old (or a few too many pounds of peas in them) they are difficult to open and close. I'd rather just have a plain jane fridge with a water dispenser (and filter).

@mdanger
That's why they invented the counter depth french door fridge.

My mom has one, and I'll defend it since it looks better than most plain jane fridges. The ice maker and water dispenser (with filter) is inside the unit so it doesn't clutter the front with ugly gagetry. Just a spout on the inside with a simple button.

It's also more efficient than most other fridges out there!

I like the idea of the shallow drawers - it makes it so much easier to find what you're looking for. When there's a deep drawer, I end up with a bunch of stuff piled in and anytime I'm looking for something not on top, everything is pulled out and thrown into the floor while I try to find the item I'm looking for.
I don't have a beverage rack like the one featured, but I love the small wine rack in our refrigerator. It's the perfect size, and frees up a lot of room on the shelves below for other things. I have something similar in size to the beverage rack shown in my door, though, and it's great for holding larger jars, such as peanut butter, coconut oil, and pepperocinis.

I want a natural gas refrigerator. Uses less energy and runs silent because there is no motor.

I have a Whirlpool fridge with a soda rack in the door - but not like the one pictured. Mine has an air vent directly from the freezer that quick chills your soda.

I didn't really care. All I cared about was getting a fridge that worked, since my 1 year old Samsung had stopped freezing things in the freezer but was freezing things in the fridge. Samsung gave me my money back, and the fridge I got was a floor model for the right price and immediate delivery.

Crazy. All this time I thought the shallow drawer was another freezer section. I definitely wouldn't want more fridge space where my freezer should be!

I wish they would supply the door-shelves for our fridge. We had like 5 shelves but they have all fell of due to the cheap plastic. So now we have a totally naked inside of a door with only the bottom shelve hanging on barely. The store don't even sell that model anymore, and it's like 5 years old.

The water filter INSIDE the fridge drives me crazy! Hanging with door open for the amount of time it takes to fill a glass of water can't be energy-efficient. And on some models, the spout is in a place where the door must be wide open to use it. I'll stick with my Brita.

I really like the beverage rack! If there's not soda cans in it (which I don't drink anyways), there's beer or you can put water bottles :) Orrr, condiments!

I wish counter-depth fridges were more common. Because they're not, the very few on the market are incredibly expensive, and there's very little variety. They are smaller and more energy efficient, but cost so much more. Also, the freezer compartment on mine is about 2/3 the size of the fridge, but with few retail options, what could I do? Having too large a freezer means less flexibility in the refrigerator for shelf arrangements. But I love not losing things to the back of the fridge and seeing everything at eye level.

Ummmm, for the computer screen on the fridge. I saw one on a gadget show a good couple of years ago. They would scan barcode of everything you took out of the fridge, and if it wasn't replaced, they would add it to a grocery list on the screen. Though I'm sure whomever decided to make it, it would cost an arm and a leg