Colorful, swappable doors with Bosch's new Vario fridges
Bosch's new Vario refrigerators come with swappable door panels that let you change the color of your fridge whenever you feel like it.
- 10 years product testing experience with the CNET Home team
Europe gets all of the fun fridges.
The latest that has me inexplicably jealous: the new Bosch Vario refrigerator. With Vario, you can pick from a variety of brightly colored doors to add a little extra pep to your kitchen. Get bored with with the way it looks, and you can swap in a different colored panel within seconds, no tools necessary. The asking price: €1,399 -- about $1,665, £1,285, or AU$2,105 if you convert roughly.
Extra door panels sell for €170 a piece (about $200/£155/AU$255), swap out by way of a concealed attachment system consisting of brackets and magnets, and come in a multitude of different shades. Here's the full list:
- Lime green
- Champagne
- Orange
- Espresso brown
- Cherry red
- Coffee brown
- Black mat
- Sunflower
- Raspberry
- Plum
- Mint green
- Aqua
- Pearl night blue
- Light rose (coming spring 2018)
- Pearl white (coming spring 2018)
- Light blue (coming spring 2018)
- Pearl gold (coming spring 2018)
- Stone grey (coming spring 2018)
- Petrol (coming spring 2018)
Bosch calls these many-colored fridges "the epitome of style, flexibility, and individuality," and points out that many of the colors were chosen to reflect recent trends.
"Green, for example, is particularly popular at the moment," the Vario press release reads. "The Pantone Color Institute has even named its colour "Greenery" as Colour of the Year 2017."
That's a well-saturated sales pitch for sure, but there might be something to the idea of relatively inexpensive, style-conscious fridges. According to one recent TraQline study, nearly a quarter or millennial spending in the US goes toward major appliances, second only to consumer electronics. Style and trend-centric midrange options might be an especially good fit for that generation of shoppers.
To that end, Bosch tells us that it might end up bringing the Vario fridges to the US if they do well in Europe after they launch this fall. For now, though, they're only available across the pond.
And no, I don't know what the difference between "espresso brown" and "coffee brown" is, either.