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My darling wife has used her charm and personality to get me to put in a new kitchen ("How much? I could buy several bikes for that!") and so the ancient and trusty rangemaster must go.
What's good in the world of integrated ovens?
Last time I bought an oven it was an insulated box with heating elements, a switch, and a thermostat. Now it seems I need a university degree in contemporary ovenology studies to have any hope. I think I mostly want something that will just work forever, perhaps needing a new element every 20 years or so.
So, what's good, what features are worth having, and what should I avoid.
We bought a Bosch to replace our 15year old whirlpool and it’s good. Enjoy the turbo/fast heat up feature and find the ability to grill with door closed makes for faster results. Have never used the pyrolitic cleaning and as we are not master bakers/chefs went for a lower/mid end one as we just needed a basic single oven and grill really. We just use 2 maybe 3 settings on the dial so no idea what all the others do really to advise if they are useful or not. One watch is the power, we found new ovens can be a fair bit higher load/fuse than ones from years ago.
We have been very pleased with our Siemens ovens. we have used the pyrolytic cleaning and it works really well. We did have one heating element fail at seven years old, but they are used most days.One thing that we would thoroughly recommend is to have them installed at waist/chest height- it’s so much easier to use rather then having to bend down. As above we have never used some features, nor connected them to the wi-fi.
If the old one is fine, just clean it up and it'll look fine with some new units around it. No point changing something for the sake of it.
I think the standard answer is Miele but we have a Bosch one and it's worked perfectly well for the last 8 years. Just make sure that you get one that has pyrolytic cleaning. Means you can turn it up really high and it cooks off everything. You then just wipe out the white residue and it's good as new.
It's funny when we bought this one we were enamoured by all of the cooking functions and I think apart from grill once or twice and the bread feature once. Everything else is just the standard fan.
Miele are definitely a cut above for washer/dryer/dishwasher but I’m not sure much different for ovens.
ovens are pretty simple things in essence. A few elements that get hot, a thermostat and a timer. A fan to distribute the heat.
Siemens/bosch/neff appear to be the same internals with different front panels. Avoid touch controls - they might have improved (and I don’t mind them on our hob) but our touch neff ovens from 10 years ago were a mistake.
Ours have got all the bells and whistles for the time.
pyro cleaning - excellent.
neff hideaway door - good.
telescopic shelves - good but they’re never in the right place. Really want them on overly shelf and expensive to add
full steam/added steam - full steam is good for reheating but really needs to be fully plumbed in rather than the tank we’ve got which is a faff.
meat thermometer - excellent if you regularly cook joints of meat but we probably only use it once a year
Enjoy the turbo/fast heat up feature
So this is a mystery to me - why would you ever NOT want an oven to heat up as quickly as possible? It’s resistance electric so there’s no efficiency change. In fact, the whole time it’s on you’re balancing lost heat with the heat you’re putting in, so turbo heat up should be MORE efficient
In true ‘recommend what you have’ fashion, Britannia - we have a 1m wide range one - two proper ovens (one with rotisserie function) and, after nearly ten years we’ve only had oven lights blow. The quality of it versus similar priced competitors is very good.
As above, Bosch or Neff with pyro cleaning. I like the controls on our Bosch series 5 stuff, knobs for mode & temperature, but the set temperature is shown digitally, and a little progress bar shows, well progress, when heating up. Fast heat also useful sometimes, cuts a few mins off heating time by using a second element. Two slidy shelves would have been nice, you get one.
We have a couple of the Neff ones - touch controls are not my favourite and though they have worked perfectly for 5 years, I suspect they will not last as long as our previous oven that was about 35 years old....we also have the partial steam or whatever its called and I agree with the poster above, it really needs to be fully integrated. Does work well though.
All I would say is that a warming draw is the most useful thing ever and any designer who thinks kitchen appliances need internet connectivity can get in the sea.
Belling get my vote. Our new cooker is great as was the one in our last house. Rangemaster if you want a nicer finish.
My mum got all Neff stuff in her kitchen and has been very disappointed. The all singing and dancing main oven is OK but the extra features add little ( this is for someone who bakes all their own bread). The integrated microwave / fan oven was a diaster. After the glass door spontaneously broke for the third time she had it taken out and a basic fan oven fitted. That works fine but cost a lot more than other brands for the same basic features.
ANOVA Precision Oven.
We have two lovely Neff ones through my partner's work discount scheme. They were expensive but they're bloody brilliant.
- I wish we'd paid the extra £150 for pyrolytic cleaning on the second one -it's amazing.
- Steam facility is fab if you bake bread. It really is that much better than lobbing in some ice cubes.
- in was sceptical about internet connectivity but I'm a convert. Being able to turn it on on the way home so you can stick the dinner straight in/start potatoes cooking when you'll be home in an hour is brilliant.
- hideaway doors are great for low down ovens.
- a lot of the other stuff is nonsense, the 'recipe' settings etc are naff.
On the negatives, we had a rumbly fan replaced after about a year or so, and one has started claiming the water tank is empty when it's not.
Other than that if say well with the money. Worth it over a half-the-price other brand? I suspect not, but our reference point was was a 20 year old IKEA non fan oven, so we're probably not the best people to ask that. Because we think it's amazing 😀
I look at what I'll actually use feature wise and the rest is superfluous
Clock- yes, Timer-yes and that's about it Sooooo you're paying a lot for things you'll never use. Basic works. As long as it blends in to the other appliances, looks the part.
Would say though opt for the 'double oven' so you have a separate grill as combined units never seem to work and if you use the grill sporadically, then grease builds up on the grilling element and smokes when you do put it on.As a separate part it keeps it cleaner.
I'm not saying get Beko or that ilk, spend money, but basic as possible is far less to go wrong.
Another vote for Seimens.
They make great fridges as well.
That ANOVA looks incredible, although not cheap!
I visited Curry's and wandered around the oven section. Was it my imagination or did the Bosch knobs feel a bit plasticity?
A store assistant came up to see if we wanted to buy anything - she said not to buy the expensive ones as I would not taste the difference....!
All the big Germanic brands have several price points, you don’t want big basic, but upper mid tier ideally. They’re mostly owned by the same group though so AEG - BOSCH/NEFF - Siemens; think SEAT/SKODA - VW - AUDI. All much of a muchness, but the higher end have better features and finish and touchy feely bits. Bosch unless series 8 are more plastic than Siemens, but you pay for that.
the basic range of them all are Chinese made, the mid tier are European, top tier usually made in Germany.
Go on Markselectrical or AO and look at the specs.
A store assistant came up to see if we wanted to buy anything - she said not to buy the expensive ones as I would not taste the difference....!
I disagree for what it’s worth. I wouldn’t get the cheapest or the dearest, somewhere in the middle is the best bang for buck.
I just got a neff B1ace oven for 600 gbp. It's really good and has rotary dials, which is what I wanted. Only observation is the oven temp seems to exceed the set temp, so I just turn it down.
Other thing is it keeps bleeping to denote it's warming up, it's achieved temp etc...looks good though.
I have a miele oven too, love it. And no bleeping.
Had Seimens ovens in the last house and they were great but having moved into where i am now after splitting with the Mrs the oven and induction hob are the 2 things i miss from the old house. That could just be because the house im in now has a shite oven and hob though.
Last 2 have been Neff, the slide’n’hide door is really noticeable when you don’t have one - left one when we moved and had one installed in new house.
So this is a mystery to me - why would you ever NOT want an oven to heat up as quickly as possible?
Guessing it draws more current, which could be an issue if you're also running the washing machine etc etc at the same time. (At least in a Spanish house - we have a limited amount of power we can use at one time, otherwise the fuses trip).
When we were looking at ovens for our new kitchen, one thing I did was to download the user manual & have a quick read of any that I was considering.
Some were ridiculously complicated just to get it to turn on & warm up - there was a Beko one in B&Q that was heavily discounted that I was tempted by but when I looked at the instruction manual there were pages & pages of turn this, press that, click here....just to get it to heat up.
We ended up going for mid-range AEG stuff. It seems good so far, but only been using it for 3-4 months.
We got a single oven with no pyrolitic cleaning (will perhaps regret that) and a compact combination oven/microwave so we didn't have to have the microwave on the worktop. This was a bit of an extravagance as they are generally pretty expensive, but so far so good with it.
Can someone tell me what the advantage is of a slide and hide door? You've only got the door open for a minute tops, and if you're moving stuff in and and out, you'll have the tray/dish moving over the area where the door would be.
Never mind, did some googling. Especially useful for short people, short arms, bad backs and higher ovens. potentially no great impact on your life if you don't have a problem they solve.
Probably going to go Bosch/Siemens - looking at "Which", it seems all ovens are unreliable but at least these are the least unreliable, and I can get the parts.
The higher-end ones (Bosch series 8, iq700) have these very fancy displays, but I think that might just be a bit too much for me. As the old sysadmin saying goes, "All software sucks, all hardware sucks". I doubt this will be an exception.
Interesting comment about the Beko combi-oven - that's also one I had been looking at.
EDIT: that's got me wondering about an open-source oven. Might be a bit niche but could be a much better solution. Raspberry Pi to control a generic oven cavity with whatever sensors you can dream up. Use a command-line over ssh to set the temperature/time/whatever. Access to `/dev/fb` so you can put your own animations on the front panel. It would probably mean my wife would leave me of course.
looking at "Which", it seems all ovens are unreliable
I'd have thought they were one of the most-reliable household appliances, being so simple?
Maybe I'm buying too cheap and basic though (currently own a Hisense from AO's discount outlet shop).
We've just bought a mid range Neff. Grill and oven combined. Because our old Gorenge oven was bigger (we sold all old appliances) I ended up with a warming drawer to fill the space where the separate grill used to be, which I love. Not going to use the bluetooth as I'm a technophobe, preferring the switch and knobs.
Replaced a Whirlpool/IKEA thing with a mid-range NEFF from AO.
Our croissants have never been so flaky, our Yorkshires rise obscenely well, cakes are fluffy, sausages grilled well and it all just *works*. It is permanently 5-10% over hot, but now we know that we adjust heating times accordingly.
You would have thought that they would be reliable, but I've replaced the element twice, the fan three times, and the door seals once in the 20 years we've had our AEG. Apart from that it's been fine.
Our croissants have never been so flaky, our Yorkshires rise obscenely well, cakes are fluffy,
My pie (home made pastry) turned out to be crispy, not soggy and perfect. Looking forward to fluffy cakes and other baked goods.
If you like to cook then a steam oven is worth in my view. Makes fab crispy chicken and bread / dough proving is great.
If you're getting one with an induction hob, 2 things I would do differently from my last decision.
First, get one with knobs, not the touch control.
Second, make sure the induction zones cover the entire area, ie one third isn't just an innefective "warming zone".
Our daughter's Rangemaster is much better in those respects to our Belling, but cost more than twice as much.
We recently got a SMEG oven to replace our 12 year old no brand oven.
It’s a wee bit more expensive than most but the build is solid and it’s got simple manual controls. Much more efficient than the old one as well.
I’d advise making sure that the element(s) and fan(s) are replaceable without pulling the oven out of the kitchen, as both appear to be consumables in many ovens.
First, get one with knobs, not the touch control.
The practicality of touch controls is different between manufacturers. So, while the principle you’re describing is sound YMMV.
our first induction hob was a Whirlpool one. A pan overflow onto the control panel would make it impossible to adjust or it would sometimes just freak out. Wiping up would usually mean turning it back on and starting over with the settings.
contrast that with induction hob 2 - a Miele. Sure, a heavy spill means that the controls don’t ‘feel’ you but light spills or spills on one part of the panel generally have no effect on control or function. Wiping the panel down over the on/off switch can turn it off but it remembers what the settings were when you turn it back on. It was a ‘bit’ more expensive than the first one but so so much better in every respect.
I wasn’t aware of panels that had an ‘ineffective warning zone’. Good call. That would be a waste of space. Is it related to the power consumption? I’m aware that my Miele can be wired up to 1, 2, or 3-phase and this allows more power output. IDK, single-phase seems sufficient to run it all with enough scope to ‘double boost’ big pots of pasta water to the boil.
Not sure where the OP’s interests are now but having moved from a big (100cm wide) dual fuel (gas and electric) range to separate hob and ovens I’d advocate the latter over the former for options.