Whirlpool WRB322DMBB Bottom Freezer Refrigerator review – CNET

The Good This Whirlpool bottom freezer offers the best performance of any fridge we’ve ever tested, and it comes at a reasonable asking price, to boot.

The Bad The design is boring and the features are few and far between. Certain build aspects also feel flimsy.

The Bottom Line If you value performance over gimmicks, then this unassuming icebox is the fridge for you.

The Whirlpool WRB322DMBB is a good fridge. Yes, it’s plain-looking inside and out, and no, there’s nothing unique about it. It doesn’t have any flashy features. It isn’t as stylish as today’s French door models are. It won’t make your neighbors jealous.

But this is a good fridge — a really good fridge. At $1,400 (or $1,500 if you want it in stainless steel), it offers cooling performance that’s as strong as any refrigerator we’ve tested, including ones that cost thousands of dollars more. Basic build aside, it’s a solid option, solid enough to unseat last year’s LG LDC24370ST as our pick for best bottom-freezer fridge. If you’re shopping for a bottom freezer and you value performance, I’d have a hard time finding a reason to recommend anything else.

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The Clark Kent of refrigerators

You’ll find 15.6 cubic feet of storage space in the body of the fridge — a decent amount of room for groceries.

Chris Monroe/CNET

Bottom freezer fridges flip the script on the traditional top freezer build that many of us probably grew up with. Like the name suggests, bottom freezers put your frozen goods down below the fridge compartment. This makes it more comfortable to reach fresh groceries, though you will need to bend over a bit to grab a frozen pizza.

As bottom freezers go, the WRB322DMBB is a pretty basic one, with a plain-looking 22.1 cubic-foot interior. 15.6 of those cubic feet are allocated to the fridge compartment — that’s a bit better than the 14.8 cubic feet in the Kenmore Elite 78022 and the 14.9 cubic feet in GE’s Artistry Series bottom freezer, but not quite as big as the 16.4 cubic feet in the LG LDC24370ST or the equally-sized LG LDCS24223S that replaced it this year.

Both of those LG fridges sit atop the bottom freezer storage space scoreboard, but the WRB322DMBB isn’t far behind. We had no trouble finding room for all of our test groceries, and we were very nearly able to fit all six of our large-sized stress test items in, too (the party platter didn’t quite make it in). All in all, it’s a very solid result for a relatively inexpensive bottom freezer model.

Whirlpool vs. the bottom freezer competition

15.6 cubic feet	16.4 cubic feet	14.8 cubic feet	14.9 cubic feet	14.9 cubic feet
6.5 cubic feet	7.7 cubic feet	7.3 cubic feet	6.0 cubic feet	6.0 cubic feet
22.1 cubic feet	24.1 cubic feet	22.1 cubic feet	20.9 cubic feet	20.9 cubic feet
Yes (in freezer)	Yes (in freezer)	No	Optional (+$89)	Yes (in freezer)
No	No	No	No	No
Yes (+$100)	Yes (+$100)	Yes (+$200)	No	Yes (+$100)
Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
584 kWh	608 kWh	589 kWh	488 kWh	572 kWh
$70	$73	$71	$59	$69
$3.17	$3.03	$3.21	$2.82	$3.30
$1,400	$1,500	$1,800	$1,200	$1,550
$1,165	$1,300	$1,250	$1,075	$1,395

The klutzy crisper bins come out way too easily.

Tyler Lizenby/CNET

Less solid: the interior design. Specifically, I’m talking about the drawers — they’re wobbly and plasticky, and they don’t catch very well when you open them, which caused me to accidentally yank them all the way out of the fridge on several occasions. They’re my least favorite thing about this refrigerator.