Bosch KSR 34V11GB > Reviews (1)

It doesn’t feel like it was that long ago when I went through the hassles, and the expense, of refitting out my kitchen. You know the score lads, the wife gets on at you about how ‘grubby’ the kitchen looks with the ‘out of date’ appliances all scratched, possibly the wrong colour, even though they all match. With her constantly repeating herself over and over about how she’d like a new kitchen so that she’d ‘do more cooking’ in it. So you finally give in and set about designing and buying a brand new kitchen, which she’s so happy with and promises to help you out in the cooking area, (for me anyway as I do do most of the cooking in my house). But when it comes to it all she wanted a new kitchen for was so she could invite her friends around and sit in there, chatting away about things they’ve done at work, things that someone else said to someone when they were passing the bus stop last Thursday.

But at the end of the day, the cooking of the daily food still remains firmly out of her reach, with her claiming that she does enough taking care of the kids, (fair point indeed).

Anyway, after a brand new kitchen was fitted a while ago I have to be honest that there were one or two items that we should have thought more about, especially as the items we bought were, shall we say, a little on the smaller side than we should have really bought.
So, after a lot of deliberation, we decided to sell a couple of certain items and put the money toward the purchase of other items to take there place.
One such item we decided to ‘up-size’, so to speak, was in fact the fridge/freezer, deciding to opt for a stand alone full size fridge and a freezer of the same size.
I have to add, these items were separate and not like the ‘American style’ size fridge/freezers, event thought they are more or less the same size.

And it is the fridge that we purchased that I am going to tell you about today, with the new fridge being called the Bosch KSR 34V11GB, which, as I said, is a tall, stand alone fridge.

What does it look like then..?

As you look at it you’ll notice the size, with it looking like any normal fridge/freezer, with it being 1700mm high, 600mm wide and 650mm deep.
But this one is all fridge and no freezer, as you will soon see when you open the door, exposing the 320litre capacity, 11.33 cu.ft of fresh food volume.
Inside it has seven glass shelves, with 6 of them being adjustable, within reason, with there being a few moulded bracket type features up the inside of the fridge. Plus there’s a rather nice little bottle wire rack which can easily be taken out.
On the inside of the door there are five little shelf/containers which are actually designed to hold any spills, with some of them being capable of holding up to a full pint of liquid. These shelf/containers can be set at different heights with there being little protruding bits of plastic so that the shelf/containers slot over them.

At the bottom there is a large plastic draw for such things as salad food stuff, behind this draw there are the ‘workings’, which help keep the fridge from frosting over as the moisture is taken away via this section.

There’s also a nice little draw type unit which fits onto one of the shelves, this I tend to use for thinner food stuff, such as blocks of cheese. This is a cracking idea as it frees up shelf space due to the fact that this hangs from the underside of any of the shelves.

Right at the top there is the 25 watt light, which is nicely hidden behind the cooling fan, and it is this fan the keep the entire fridge evenly cooled so that the food stays as fresh in the corners as it does in the middle.
And it has what they like to call an Anti-Bacterial protection which helps in keeping any nasty little bugs, although you do have to clean the fridge out every so often to make sure the bugs stay away.

The actual controls, well, when I say controls I really mean the few little buttons and lights which let you change a few settings and tell you that the fridge is on, are at the top of the fridge, but when you shut the door they are nicely hidden.

Other points worth mentioning…

The door of this fridge, which can be hinged on both the left or right side, closes over the control panel, hiding it away, so that all you see when the door is closed is a rather fetching white upright panel with a handle, looking quite like a cupboard door. In fact, if you slotted this into the right gap, you could get away with it looking like just a cupboard door.

And you can level the fridge on the ground with little adjustable feet on the front to make sure you get it as level as possible so it doesn’t wobble. These feet turn slightly until you get the right levels.

Plus. for those eco friendly people, this fridge has an A+ energy efficiency and claims to use only 139kWh per year.

My opinion…

I wasn’t too impressed at first with this fridge, mainly due to the fact that it’s only a fridge, so I knew I’d have to buy a freezer to go with it, meaning more money from my ever depleting wallet.
But after getting over the fact of there being no freezer compartment, and once I’d opened the fridge itself, using the strong and nice sized handle, I realised that this is indeed a rather fetching stand up ’larder’ type fridge with a cracking way of keeping all the food stuff inside chilled to perfection.

I like the fact that the shelves can be adjusted slightly giving a bit of extra room inside for those larger items, such as bottles or larger tubs, although the lovely bottle rack can take up to five bottle of fine wine, or, in my case, cheap plonk on a three for ten pound deal at the local supermarket, depending on your wages that week, in fact, it can fit a few Newcastle Browns as well.

Speaking of the shelves, they are made of glass but as it is what they call safety glass there’s no real danger of them breaking, believe me, they can take a bit of knocking, such as things drops on them and even dropping them on the floor, accidentally, and still come out fighting.
They are easy to clean, with a simple wipe over using a damp cloth and the glass shelves are as clean as if they are brand new.
This goes for the door shelf/trays/containers as well, but I do have to push cloths into the corners to get any ’gunge’ out of them, although a nice soaking in soapy water can do wonders.

The interior door shelf/containers may look a little on the flimsy side, in fact when I put a four pint bottle of milk into the bottom one I was expecting to have to mop up the mess as the weight of the bottle snapped the shelf/container from the door. But it held tight and, as I put more weight into it, I realised that the shelf/containers were very strudy indeed.

At the bottom of the fridge there is a good size container which slides in and out using little runs on the base, so there’s no danger of it falling off side runners. I tend to use this part for salad items, such as lettuce, cucumber… well, you know what salad items are don’t you?, as this tends to keep the items fresher than just having them lay on the shelves.
But you can put what ever you want into it of course.

What more can I say about this ’Larder’ type, stand up fridge? Not a lot really, apart from the fact that if it’s a tall fridge you’re after then you can’t go wrong with this one.
As for the price.
This one sells for around the £400 region which, for the amount of cubic space you get into this and the way it actually looks, is well worth thinking about, probably even buying too, as I did.
Then you have to think about getting a freezer of course, which is another story in itself.

Would I recommend this for your kitchen?
Yes I certainly would, but just remember, it’s only a fridge, not a freezer, but it really does look well sat in with the other units

© Blissman70 2012