Bosch B36CT80SNS French-door Refrigerator Review

Bosch is all about subtle design touches, and the B36CT80SNS showcases this perfectly. The B36CT80SNS sits flush with your countertop, has hidden hinges and feet, and a stainless steel interior. You may not notice these choices at first, but they definitely give the fridge a polished, deliberate look.

Like the Bosch B36CD50SNS, which we also recently reviewed, the B36CT80SNS lacks spill captures. While we don’t have any complaints about the functionality of the crispers, their plasticky construction doesn’t feel as high-end as the rest of the fridge.

About the Bosch B36CT80SNS refrigerator

• Dimensions: 72” x 36” IN x 27.81” (H x W x D)
• Measured capacity: 13.6-cubic-foot refrigerator compartment; 2.5-cubic-foot freezer compartment
• Finishes: Stainless steel
• Dispensers: Internal water and ice
• User manual: Bosch B36CT80SNS refrigerator manual

What we like

It has top-of-the-line temperature performance

While it may not seem like it, fridges actually have a pretty hard job. They need to maintain a steady, narrow band of temperatures—8°F to be precise. If temperatures fall below 32°F, food in the fridge can freeze; anything above 40°F isn’t being kept cold enough to prevent bacterial growth. And be aware that every time you open the door, you’re letting a bunch of warm air in.

Despite these challenges, the Bosch B36CT80SNS excels with its temperature control; its average temperature measures at 37.47°F and varies by less than 1°F in either direction.

Its freezer temperatures also tested near perfect, maintaining levels just above 0°F and never wavering by more than a fraction of a degree. Stable freezer temperatures are important, because it reduces the risk of freezer burn.

More freezer drawers help you stay organized

If you’re used to top-freezer refrigerators, you’re probably used to limited options for where or how you store your frozen goods—or at least you know how easily a freezer can get out of hand if you aren’t being fastidious.

French-door fridges, like the B36CT80SNS, keep their freezers on the bottom, typically as a pull-out drawer with sliding shelves. This design helps you organize foods better and lets you access items that would be buried without its tiered layout.

The Bosch B36CT80SNS gives users even more flexibility by including a third tier of drawers. This should give you enough separate compartments to let even the most compulsive organizers give everything its proper place.

The downside to this design is that drawers are less space efficient than shelves, because they require walls, a floor, and spacing between them and their enclosure.

Custom-temp crispers can handle more than veggies

We’re used to crispers being pretty single-use areas of the fridge: It’s where the veggies go so they don’t wilt so quickly. And on this front, the B36CD50SNS downright excels, letting off about half as much humidity as the average fridge, but still enough to prevent your fresh greens from rotting prematurely.

The kicker here, though, is the crispers also have some degree of temperature customization to them. There are five settings to choose from: 29°F (Meat/Fish), 32°F (Fruit low humidity), 32°F (Vegetables high humidity), 34°F (Beverage), and 40°F (Snack). While not a huge range of options, it does give you more options for how you can use those storage areas.

This isn’t exactly a custom-temp flex drawer, which we love in this GE fridge, but it is a neat way to add some functionality to an oft-overlooked area of the fridge.

It's enabled with Bosch Home Connect

Bosch has enabled this fridge with its trademark Home Connect platform, which allows you to remotely monitor and control your fridge from your smartphone or tablet.

You can use the app to regulate the fridge’s temperatures, adjust its lighting, or run diagnostics. One of Home Connect's more useful features is its ability to send you a notification if your fridge door isn't quite closed. If you’ve ever gone down for a midnight snack, only to see a sliver of light on your kitchen floor from an unexpectedly ajar fridge door, you already know the value of this feature.

What we don’t like

The freezer has less storage area than the average French-door fridge

If you rely on your freezer, the Bosch B36CT80SNS will not meet your needs. According to our measurements, the Bosch B36CT80SNS has about 3.35 cu. ft. of usable storage space in the freezer (we don’t count nooks and crannies you wouldn’t normally store food in, like the spaces between drawers). The average French-door refrigerator has a 4.69-cubic-foot freezer.

To help you visualize the difference, a bulk bag of ice is about a cubic foot. You’re missing freezer space equal to one and one-third of those bags if you get the B36CT80SNS instead of another random French door. So what gives?

The freezer isn’t small without reason. It’s the necessary downside to a few of the fridge’s upsides. The refrigerator compartment and ice reservoir are huge, and the freezer compartment has more drawers than is typical. All of these features require a trade-off somewhere, and in the case of the B36CT80SNS it’s having a smaller freezer.

What owners are saying

Owners of this fridge are generally positive about their experience, awarding the B36CT80SNS an average of 4.6 out of 5 stars across major retailers.

Positive reviews focus on its sleek design, its large interior, and its storage customizability options.

Negative reviews seem to mainly focus around different, specific gripes, or were cases where the user received a lemon. For example, one user complained that the design of the crispers made them magnets for crumbs and were poorly sealed. While the crispers do have large gaps in them, we also found they still functioned well, letting the perfect amount of humidity escape to prevent rotting and retaining enough to slow wilting.

Warranty

Bosch’s warranty covers this fridge for up to one year for parts and service. This is the baseline warranty offered in this product category. Some manufacturers, like Samsung or LG offer up to 10 years of coverage on select parts.

Should you buy the Bosch B36CT80SNS refrigerator?

Yes.

As a fridge, the B36CT80SNS offers rock-solid temps and an impressive ability to cool down after you’ve opened the door. Home Connect is a decent smart platform to buy into, which will notify you if the door pops open or there are other troubles.

While we prefer through-the-door dispensers, the internal options are still better than not having them at all. And it’s hard to find a French-door with as much usable storage in its refrigerator compartment. It might not have some of the extra features we expect in this price range, but it’s still an excellent fridge.

Of course, as a Bosch, part of what you’re paying for is its overall design. The fridge does look nice, and Bosch is known for taking care of its customers, which can give you some peace of mind (though we wish they’d back it up with a better warranty). While you can get a fridge with excellent performance and better features for less, if you like the aesthetic and feel of the B36CT80SNS, though, rest assured that it performs just as good as it looks.

If you’re looking for the best fridge out there, we recommend checking out the Frigidaire Gallery FG4H2272UF. It has the same near-perfect temperature performance, but also has much better features, like a through-the-door dispenser and a custom temperature flex drawer. If you want to stick with a Bosch, we like the B36CD50SNS a bit more than this one—it’s currently our #2 fridge—and it’s available for just a little extra.