Electrolux EW30EF65GS

I managed to find this stove at a severe discount and jumped at the chance to own it. Plus we needed to replace an older stove in the house we just bought that didn't match our other appliances. It was… also a glass cooktop stove so we had something to directly compare it to. In any event, it's a joy to use, and the controls are quite simple. I really like the backlit electronic readout as it makes seeing what's happening very simple -- only the burner which is on is lit, or only the function which is working in the oven is lit. Quite handy, and the blue LED clock looks very classy. Also, the burner displays are great since the temperature/power is represented by a blue dotted line which goes in a circle -- the more blue dots, the higher the setting. No more numbers or Lo/Med/High! The burners get hot very quickly, and the various sizes make it easy to match your pot or pan with the proper size to avoid wasting heat. The oven door is great -- very high quality. The lights inside are also amazing, extremely bright and the best lights I've ever seen inside a range anywhere. The "luxury glide" rack is also very nice and works very smoothly exactly as they advertise. One caveat...our luxury glide rack had some plastic on it (some sort of protective coating) that may have been left there by the guys who installed the range. When we used the oven the first couple of times, the plastic burned and started smoking, necessitating a cleaning. Check yours before you use it. Apart from that, the cooking has been efficient and even, and we really like the lack of an exposed heating element on the bottom, which will make cleaning up spills MUCH easier. We haven't used the warming drawer yet, nor have we tried the convection aspect. The only downside we've found is that the glass surface seems to scratch quite easily. We had one non-stick pan with a slightly textured bottom that we had used with the previous range (GE Spectra) without any problem. With the first use on the Electrolux, we had a couple small scratches in the glass which was disappointing. However, the instructions do tell you to only use flat-bottomed pots and pans. That being said, the GE Spectra wasn't affected, and I would have thought the Electrolux would at least be as durable. In any event, we gave away that pan and haven't had any problems with our other pots and pans (mostly All-Clad and Calphalon), and the Electrolux beats the GE Spectra in every other regard without question. Just a small word of warning. This is the reason I gave it a 4 instead of 5 stars. I wish I could have given it 4.5, actually, because it really is a fairly minor consideration compared to the overall quality. Bottomline is that we're very pleased with our new addition. It looks great and works great, too. The only problem is that it looks so nice that it makes our cheap microwave look just that -- cheap! We may have to upgrade the microwave to match the sleek lines of the range.

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