Bosch KFF96PIEP Review: Unbeatable fridge-freezer flexibility

Introduction

If you look at the core specs of any fridge freezer, you get a sense of how big it is and how much food you can store inside, but making a choice is about more than this.

A quality fridge freezer doesn’t just provide cooling space; it also provides flexible storage that keeps your food in the best condition, making it easy to store and find what you’re looking for. In that regard, the Bosch KFF96PIEP is hands-down the most flexible fridge freezer that I’ve tested.

Beautifully designed, this French Door model features a brilliant interior, complete with adjustable shelves, clever drawers, and the innovative FlexBar. And, it’s a smart model, too.

Design and features

• Highly flexible fridge space
• Cleverly-designed freezer
• Water dispenser

A bold and serious-looking fridge freezer, the Bosch KFF96PIEP has a stainless steel exterior with chunky handles that stick out. That does mean that this model is better suited to larger kitchens where there’s room for its full depth. If that sounds like your home, then you won’t be disappointed with this model.

It’s a French Door fridge freezer, which means that the entire top of the unit is fridge, running from edge to edge. I love this kind of design, as the full-width cavity provides plenty of room to fit in wider items, and you don’t have to bend down to get to everyday items.

Here, there’s 402 litres of space to play with, which is simply huge. No matter how much fresh food you’ve got, the Bosch KFF96PIEP has the space to store it.

Organisation is brilliant. Most fridge freezers have full-width shelves, but Bosch has one fixed shelf and then four half-width shelves that can go in multiple positions. That gives a huge amount of flexibility in how you position the shelves and store your items, whether you want lots of jars or want to make space for taller items, such as bottles.

There’s also the FlexBar, a hanging rail for three bundled accessories: a box, ideal for treats; a small floating shelf; and a bottle rack. These items can be removed or slid around to suit where you want them, and are unique to Bosch.

There are three drawers. A single full-width one provides easy storage space for items you want to grab quickly, but below are the VitaFresh Pro drawers.

Each one has separate temperature and humidity controls for different types of items: -2°C for meat/fish, 0°C for fruit, 0°C for vegetables, 1°C for beverages and 4°C for snacks. There’s also a custom setting via the HomeConnect app.

Again, this is a level of flexibility that other fridge freezers don’t offer, and I’ve not seen the same kind of flexibility anywhere else.

Both doors have three large door pockets, with the middle pocket able to go in one of two positions. Each pocket is large enough to hold big items, such as four-pint milk containers.

There’s one special pocket that has a flip-up cover. The level of flexibility is incredible, and the Bosch KFF96PIEP is, by far, the most versatile fridge freezer that I’ve reviewed.

As a plumbed-in device, the Bosch KFF96PIEP has a water dispenser, which is hidden on the inside wall of the fridge. That does mean that using it requires opening the left-hand door, but the advantage is that the exterior isn’t compromised by a water dispenser.

Underneath is the freezer section. Most French Door models have two compartments, but the Bosch KFF96PIEP has a large pull-out drawer that runs side to side. This makes it more akin to a chest freezer, and the wide drawer can hold very large items.

Space is very flexible. The main drawer has a sliding divider, so you can choose how to split up the space.

Above this is a smaller drawer, which has more space in it, and a tub that holds ice cubes, created automatically when the fridge freezer is plumbed in. Bosch even provides an ice scoop.

Then, at the top is another slide-out drawer. The freezer section is comprised of brilliantly divided space, and I think I prefer this to standard freezer drawers.

Temperature control is via the control panel at the top, with separate controls for the fridge and freezer. They’re easy to use, but it might be quicker to set up the smart app.

With Wi-Fi built in, the Bosch KFF96PIEP works with the HomeConnect app, which is compatible with devices across the company’s range of products, including Neff and Siemens.

From the app, I could remotely set the temperature of all compartments, and I also received warnings for problems, such as when a door had been left open.

Peformance

• Excellent temperature control
• Good running costs for the size

To test how well the Bosch KFF96PIEP can keep food, I loaded it up with ice blocks to replicate real food and used temperature sensors to log temperatures every 15 minutes over a period of a few weeks.

Overall, the fridge section had an average temperature of 3.14°C, which is 0.86°C colder than the target temperature of 4°C. Impressively, the maximum temperature that I recorded was 4.9°C, showing that temperatures don’t spike too high.

Standard deviation shows that most temperatures fluctuated by +/-0.43°C from the average. Anything under 1°C in this test is good, and the lower the better, as it shows that temperatures remain stable.

Some fridge freezers can have big differences across the cavity, but the Bosch KFF96PIEP did very well: 3.21°C average on the top shelf, 2.53°C on the middle shelf and 3.68°C on the bottom shelf.

I also wanted to see how well the VitaFresh Pro drawers did, so I set one to -2°C. I found that this averaged -1.45°C with barely any temperature fluctuation (+/-0.25°C).

I set the other drawer to 0°C, and found that this averaged just above that at a chilly 1.4°C. Again temperatures were very stable, mostly fluctuating by +/-0.2°C.

Moving to the freezer section, I added temperature sensors to the top, middle and bottom parts of the drawer. Readings were very similar across the range, and the average temperature was -19°C, which is 1°C colder than the target of -18°C.

Standard deviation shows that temperatures mostly fluctuated by +/-0.79°C; again, that’s a great result as it’s below 1°C.

Like most large fridge freezers, bar the Samsung RM70F67RDR, the Bosch KFF96PIEP has an E energy rating. Using a power meter, I estimated that this fridge freezer would cost around £66.56 a year to run (assuming a unit cost of 24.5p per kWh). That works out to a reasonable 12p per litre of space.

Should you buy it?

FAQs