Kenmore Review 795.78022: Kenmore picked a winner with this bottom freezer (2023)

The bargain price and bland looks might make a boring first impression, but there's a lot more to this fridge than meets the eye. Inside you'll find a host of useful features that make it easy to free up space for your groceries, as well as some of the most stable cooling performance we've found in this price range. I wish it had a drawer-style freezer instead of the cumbersome and annoying hinged door, but nonetheless, this fridge is a solid value buy worth considering.

A resemblance to LG

The Kenmore 78022 has an MSRP of $1,500 but typically sells for nearly $1,100 on the Sears show floor. This price puts it right on the lower end of the freezer price range (about $1100-$1800 for most major brand models), so it's not surprising that the design doesn't stand out.

Aside from the lack of stainless steel or any other sort of premium finish, what's really missing here is a drawer-style freezer. Instead, you get a hinged door that opens from the side - an easy standard when the freezer is up, but an awkward inconvenience when it's down. You'll almost certainly have to crouch or bend down to get things in and out.

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If you want to upgrade such a base unit to one with a drawer, you have to be prepared to shell out an extra $300 or so, and that's pretty typical across all major manufacturers. GE's most affordable freezers, includingthe $1,200 GE Artistry Series refrigerator, they all have swinging doors: you'll need to shell out at least $1,450 for a drawer-freezer fridge. That number is $1,400 for Whirlpool, $1,500 for Maytag, and $1,700 for LG.

Speaking of LG, you should know that Kenmore doesn't actually make their own refrigerators. Instead, it buys equipment from other manufacturers, markets it under the Kenmore name, and then sells it to Sears. In the case of the Kenmore 795.78022, you're actually looking at an existing LG fridge with a couple of Kenmore logos on it. You can tell by the prefix "795" in the model number - that's the Kenmore code for LG.

You can also see this by comparing the 78022 to another recent LG freezer, e.gel $1.800 LDC24370STthat I checked a few weeks ago. Sure enough, the interiors are virtually identical, and that bodes well for Kenmore here, as I've been a big fan of this LG model's consistent performance and user-friendly build.

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(Video) How to Change Filters on Kenmore Elite Refrigerator

It's the little things

I've received plenty of praise for the useful features inside the LG LDC24370ST, and you'll find the same thoughtful touches in the Kenmore 78022. There's the same "pantry drawer" under the containers for vegetables, the same shatterproof shelves that spill on the body fridge, the same sliding dividers on the interior shelves, and the same shelf next to the butter container that folds down to make room for to create tall things like wine bottles. Simply put, there's a lot to like about this interior, and more than I'd expect from a freezer that's as budget-friendly as it gets.

None of these details are the kind of standout features you'd show off to friends and family over dinner. There's no door-to-door here, no touchscreen controls, and no smart features to speak of. The 78022 is just a basic fridge that gets a lot of little things right, and that's a pretty good starting point for a unit that you'll likely use multiple times a day.

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Kenmore Review 795.78022: Kenmore Picked a Winner With This Bottom Freezer Fridge

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The only real difference between the 78022's chassis and the LDC24370ST's chassis is that the Kenmore fridge is slightly smaller at 14.8 cubic feet in the fridge compartment than the LG's 16.3 cubic feet. It's mainly a difference in width, as both fridges are 29 inches deep, not counting the doors. At 30 inches wide, the 78022 is three inches slimmer than the LG model.

As I found with the LG model, the standard shelving configuration doesn't offer shelves in the body of the fridge with enough vertical space for a carton of milk. Luckily, the shelves slide in and out quite easily, with enough extra shelves to give you a satisfying level of storage flexibility. There's also ample storage space on the interior shelves, although storing milk by the door where temperatures tend to be a bit warmer isn't usually the best idea. And while we're on the subject...

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A close look at cooling performance

The Kenmore 78022 performed very consistently in our air-conditioned test chamber, with near-identical results to the LG LDC24370ST, one of the best we've tested. Set at 37 degrees F, the fridge returned adjusted averages across all regions, with no notable hotspots of concern. The center of the door and the right-hand crisper slipped slightly above 40, a food-safety benchmark set by the FDA, but not enough to worry us.

Coming back to the test's minute-by-minute chart, we can see that it shares a lot in common with the LDC24370ST, particularly the messy nature of these overlapping lines, which actually indicates tight and consistent performance across all regions of the refrigerator. Both come in at an overall average of about two degrees north of the target temperature, but both keep the fridge body (the blue lines) well below 40 without getting too hot on the doors (the green lines). ).

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However, there are some subtle differences. The Kenmore fridge spends a little more time over 40, although much of that comes from the butter vat, which by design is usually the hottest spot in the fridge. And while the underside of the LG model's door also averaged above 40, it spent less time above that benchmark and ran slightly cooler than the Kenmore's.

Also, there is a slightly larger difference between the hottest and coldest points on the Kenmore chart than on LG, with an overall variation of about 7 degrees for the former and less than 6 degrees variation for the latter. It's a minimal difference, but it does indicate the kind of incremental performance improvements you'd expect between two generations of refrigerators.

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After testing at 37, we turned the coolers back on, this time at 33 degrees. Once again the Kenmore has done a good job, with performance broadly mirroring what we've seen from LG's similar model. In fact, I'd say Kenmore topped it: every region in the fridge compartment averaged closer to target than LG (except for the two pantry drawers, which were dead even at a flat 36 degrees). The entire fridge also stayed above freezing during the test, as we've seen at LG.

All in all, here are two refrigerators that are practically tied at the top of our performance rankings. One costs $1,800 and the other is available for $1,100. If a stainless steel finish, a drawer-style freezer, and a slight increase in storage space aren't worth $700 to you, then choosing between the two should be pretty easy.

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A Tetris supermarket game

The Kenmore 78022's 22.1 cubic foot capacity isn't much compared to pricier French Door models, but it's actually pretty decent among freezers. Go for the GE, Whirlpool, or LG and you'll have to shell out at least a few hundred bucks more than the asking price of $1,100 if you want an inferior freezer that outperforms it, or even one that matches it.

Of its full cubic metres, 14.8 of that is allocated to the fridge compartment, and that proved ample room for our standardized test load of groceries. The door shelves saved me a lot of work - even with two milk jugs taking up shelf space, we had plenty of room for a wide range of condiments, along with beer, soda and wine. We were also able to store an insulated can of dog food on its own shelf, kind of an extra goal when stocking each fridge.

The only real flaw with the door is a small, flimsy little shelf tucked underneath. It's practically hidden under the shelf by the main door, and I almost lost it while carrying groceries. Even if it had, it wouldn't have mattered much: almost none of our test loads would fit on it, and even if it did, it would be awkward to get in and out of with the shelf overhang above it. Kenmore/LG could have held this shelf together and I wouldn't have cared, although it would be a handy low point for kid-sized things like juice boxes.

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Once the groceries are in place, we separate out the big stuff: bulky items like a casserole dish, a pie dish, and an extra-large pizza box. I was able to put five of these six stress test items individually in the fridge. The only exception was a tall jug: like milk, it would not fit on the main shelves without rearranging them, and the shelf space was already taken. The final test involves squeezing all of the stress test items together at once, and the best I could do was three out of six: the saucepan, the cake pan, and a frying pan.

What's interesting here is that these are similar results to what I've seen with this LG freezer, which also didn't fit the carafe in the standard configuration test, and also didn't fit three of the six items in the stress test. at once. The LG fridge packs an extra 1.5 cubic feet over the Kenmore's fridge compartment, and while the Kenmore feels a little cramped, it still uses the space efficiently enough to get the job done.

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From then on, I repeated the test, but this time I allowed myself to move the shelves and rearrange the groceries as often as needed to optimize space. After things were reconfigured, I had a shelf in the body of the fridge that could hold larger items, which gave me room to place the jug and claim six of the six individual stress test items.

When I tried to fit everything at once, I was able to fit five of the six items (the frying pan didn't make it, although I could have swapped it out for the party plate on the bottom shelf). I was even able to keep the dog food separate thanks to those plastic sliders on the interior shelves.

LG is also reflected here: six of the six items fit individually, five of the six all fit at once. This indicates a cooler with more flexible capacity than the number alone suggests.

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The judgment

The Kenmore 78022 isn't much to look at, but it's a very consistent performer with a surprisingly well-thought-out list of features in the cooler compartment and storage options that are better than you might expect. With a Sears ad price of $1,100, it's a steal among the freezers.

Having said that, I have a very hard time recommending a fridge freezer that doesn't have a drawer style freezer door. That, coupled with a stainless steel finish and increased capacity, might justify a waste at the $1,800 price tag.LG LDC24370ST, which shares all the strong points of this Kenmore model (except for the price).

The best bet on the bottom freezer could be consideredel $1.500 Kenmore 79022as an intermediate option: it is essentially the same as the 78022 but replaces the swing door freezer with a drawer. We'll be posting this model up for a full review in the near future, but given the consistent performance we've seen from LG-made freezers so far, it seems like a smart buy to me.