The Bosch 500 Series B36FD52SNS is an upper mid-range 36-inch standard-depth French door refrigerator. It has an ice maker in the fridge with a dispenser in the door that can deliver filtered water, ice, or crushed ice into a glass or a predetermined amount of water into a bottle with one button press. The refrigerator has height-adjustable split shelves and door bins for flexible storage, and two pull-out drawers with dividers in the freezer. This fridge uses a single evaporator with a single inverter compressor for cooling.
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Our Verdict
The Bosch 500 Series B36FD52SNS is a great choice for everyday use. Its produce preservation performance is excellent, keeping leafy greens and celery firm and crisp for well over a week. It offers great capacity, primarily in the fridge, with multiple height-adjustable storage options for accommodating large or tall items like wine bottles. Its temperature uniformity is impressive, especially in the freezer, assuring items remain perfectly frozen regardless of where you place them. However, the door bins are warmer than the rest of the fridge.
Excellent produce preservation performance.
Fantastic temperature uniformity in the freezer.
Door bins are warmer than the rest of the fridge.
The Bosch 500 Series B36FD52SNS delivers excellent produce preservation performance. The produce drawers seal in moisture extremely well, keeping humidity very high to prevent produce from drying out. You'll be able to keep lettuce from wilting and carrots from shriveling up for quite a long time, much longer than other fridges.
Excellent produce preservation performance.
Produce drawers seal very well, retaining moisture and preventing produce from drying out.
The Bosch 500 Series B36FD52SNS offers impressive refrigerator capacity. There are plenty of flexible, height-adjustable storage options to fit tall narrow-neck bottles, gallon milk jugs, or huge items like a whole turkey.
Great fridge capacity.
Many variable-height storage options in the fridge.
The Bosch 500 Series B36FD52SNS delivers good freezer capacity. The freezer has a simple arrangement: two pull-out drawers with fixed dividers. But you'll find adequate space for wide pizza boxes, family-sized lasagna trays, or stacks of preprepared meal containers.
Enough room for wide pizza boxes or family-sized containers of preprepared meals in the freezer.
The Bosch 500 Series B36FD52SNS delivers excellent temperature uniformity in the fridge and freezer. The refrigerator's temperature differences between shelves are quite small, so you can store milk, butter, or sour cream wherever it's convenient without these items spoiling prematurely. The door bins are warmer than the fridge, so you should only use them as a chiller for less sensitive items like soda cans or bottles of beer, wine, or condiments. Freezer temperature uniformity is outstanding, allowing you to store frozen meats or vegetables anywhere without the risk of freezer burn.
Fantastic temperature uniformity in the freezer.
Even temperatures between fridge shelves.
Door bins are warmer than the rest of the fridge.
The Bosch 500 Series B36FD52SNS's ice-making performance is decent. It produces a satisfactory amount of ice from its small ice maker in the fridge, enough for a small family meal but not much more. The ice bucket holds a little more than a day's worth of ice, which should prove sufficient for a small party. However, you'll need to store several days' ice production in bags or buy ice separately to provide enough for a large event.
Small ice maker doesn't produce enough ice for more than a couple of people.
Low capacity ice tray can't hold enough ice for a large event.
Performance Usages
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Differences Between Sizes And Variants
The Bosch 500 Series B36FD52SN is available in two color variants: stainless steel B36FD52SNS and black stainless steel B36FD52SNB. We tested the stainless steel B36FD52SNS; you can see its product label here.
If you find another variant, please let us know in the comments, and we'll update our review.
Popular Refrigerator Comparisons
The Bosch 500 Series B36FD52SNS is similar to the lower-end Bosch 100 Series B36FD10ENS but sits below the high-end dual compressor, dual evaporator Bosch 800 Series B36CT80SNS in Bosch's refrigerator lineup. It's a standard-depth fridge, so it offers more capacity than the counter-depth Bosch 800 models. It performs similarly to the Bosch 800, offering excellent temperature uniformity and amazing produce preservation performance. However, the Bosch 800 has a higher-capacity ice maker in the freezer, which is also a better location from a reliability perspective. Compared to other manufacturers, the Bosch 500 excels in produce preservation, better than the Samsung Bespoke RF30BB6200QL and much better than the GE Profile PVD28BYNFS. If you're looking for a fridge with excellent produce preservation and freezer temperature uniformity but aren't willing to go all-out for the Bosch 800, or if you'd rather have a standard-depth fridge and the extra space it offers, the Bosch 500 Series B36FD52SNS is a very strong contender.
The Café CGE29DP2TS1 is a slightly better fridge than the Bosch 500 Series B36FD52SNS. The Café has dual evaporators, leading to slightly better produce preservation performance despite the Bosch's excellent produce bin seal. The fridges perform quite similarly in most other respects, and even have very similar capacities. The Bosch does have an externally accessible in-door ice and water dispenser, though.
The Bosch 500 Series B36FD52SNS is a better fridge than the Hisense HRM260N6TSE. Despite the Hisense's dual evaporators versus the Bosch's single evaporator, the Bosch still offers better produce preservation performance than the Hisense due to its excellent produce bin seal. The Bosch also has a higher capacity in the fridge, but the same capacity in the freezer. Additionally, the Bosch produces and stores more ice than the Hisense. However, the Hisense does have better temperature uniformity in the fridge than the Bosch, despite its warm door bins.
Test Results
This model offers great storage capacity in the refrigerator compartment. There are a multitude of flexible storage options to accommodate a number of wide or tall items. In the main refrigerator compartment, there are split shelves you can install in multiple height positions to fit tall items like bottles. Underneath are two deep, wide produce bins and a full-width deli drawer. Two shallow door bins wrap around the ice dispenser housing in the left door. There's a deep bin on the bottom and even a tiny door bin attached to the top of the ice dispenser, suitable for storing small yet tall items like hot sauce bottles or condiment jars. The right door houses three deep door bins; you can move two of the bins to four height positions to store very tall items like wine bottles.
The freezer storage capacity is good. Since there's no ice maker or ice tray here and a minimum of hardware, most of the interior space is available for storage. There are two pull-out drawers with fixed dividers; the bottom ones are fairly tall and deep, and both are wide and tall enough to store pizza boxes, family-sized lasagna trays, bags of frozen vegetables, and large containers of burgers, chicken, or fish pieces.
The cooling system in this refrigerator consists of a single evaporator in the freezer and a single inverter compressor. Inverter-controlled compressors operate at a variable speed, offering power savings and better temperature control over older fixed-speed designs since the compressor doesn't have to cycle between being off and full power constantly.
The Bosch 800 Series B36CT80SNS adds not only a second evaporator in the fridge, but also a second inverter compressor, which accounts for its much higher price despite its shallower counter-depth size.
The ice maker occupies a large portion of the refrigerator compartment, and the ice chute and dispenser are in the left door. This ejector-type ice maker is potentially more reliable than the twist tray-type. With this design, a nozzle pours water into a metal mold. Once the ice has formed, a heater warms the metal enough to melt the ice where it touches the mold, detaching it. Then a plastic rake rotates, pushing the ice cubes out into the tray. This system is usually more reliable than a twist tray design, which makes ice in a flexible plastic tray that a motor twists to release the ice. That plastic tray can get brittle over time due to low temperatures and can crack.
Unfortunately, this ice maker is in the fridge section. Such designs need separate ducting from the evaporator to keep the ice maker below freezing, forming a separate freezer section which may not be as cold as the freezer. This suboptimal placement can negatively impact reliability.
The in-door water dispenser can fill a glass or a bottle. Pressing the Bottle Fill button dispenses a set amount of water into a bottle; you can recalibrate this volume for your favorite bottle. You can also activate a light with another button.
The ice dispenser can deliver ice cubes or crushed ice.
This refrigerator delivers good temperature uniformity in the fridge compartment. The temperature differences between shelves are quite small. The door bins are warmer, especially the lower door bin, but the temperature difference between the refrigerator shelves and the door bins isn't as pronounced as the GE Profile PVD28BYNFS.
This fridge offers remarkable temperature uniformity in the freezer. The evaporator fan and ducting distribute cold air so evenly throughout the freezer that the temperature differences between locations are difficult to measure. The inverter compressor also keeps temperature swings very small as it cycles. The entire freezer almost always stays below its temperature setpoint.
This fridge's produce preservation performance is excellent. The crisper drawers do an excellent job of sealing in produce moisture, preventing it from leaking out into the dry fridge air. This refrigerator's single evaporator leads to low fridge humidity. But the crisper drawer's high moisture retention prevents produce from drying out, keeping lettuce from wilting, celery from going soft, or carrots from shriveling for a week or longer.
There's a slider that closes a seal covering the entire top of the crisper drawer, not just a small vent hole. You should close this seal for vegetables, sealing in moisture and preventing vegetables from drying out.
