Help choosing range cooker please

CrazyHorseB

Thought i'd resurrect this thread after doing a bit of research... How do the Neff range cookers compare to standard Neff built in products and other ranges in this price range (£2kish)?

turk3y

I didn’t even notice Neff did them and I only just brought a range... ohh well being at the 2k end it would have been over the budget anyhow. Neff seem to offer the standard 2 years when registered.

I am sure we would all love catering grade appliances and solid oak cabinetry but its cost vs need. If you need a kitchen now and only have 5k corners have to be cut or extravagances left out, and if you are looking at resale of your house later on a bespoke kitchen will not be worth as much to the buyer as its not bespoke to his idea of perfect, so unless you intend to live there forever or its a suitably grand house where only a bespoke kitchen would be expected. If I had the cash I would have one tho as I do like kitchen and kitchen gadgets.

I personally know of nobody with an oven that’s broken down, I know of some that make some fan noise but still cook. The only moving part is the fan (bar the door hinge) so to design it to break in 5 years would probably take more money in engineering time than building it to last 10. The old fashioned wiring to some old ovens is probably more suspect than the oven and could cause failure I would expect. I doubt they want it to last more tho and are certainly not going to over engineer the product for the price point.

nixinixi

I'd never heard of Lacanche until this thread, so just googled them and don't actually think the lower end prices (John Lewis range) were as bad as I expected after reading here. You can get them for sub £3k....not that I have that kind of money for a range cooker!! BUT what I did notice was there poor energy ratings...some were only achieving a 'C'...so they cost more to buy and to run! (Did like the look though )

PTE

We bought a Lacanche about 6 years ago. We dont have gas to our property so had LPG fitted and just replace bottles every now and then (seem to last ages though). If you enjoy cooking (the process as well as the results), have a family, entertain now and then and work the cooker hard then I would suggest buying the very best you can afford.

The Lacanche (and I suspect most of the higher end cookers) offer a robust and solid construction and really powerful ovens (electric and gas) and gas hob. The hob means that jam making is easy (the previous electric hob never had enough grunt to heat the pan adequately) as well as stir fries etc where you can achieve much higher cooking temperatures. I am sure there is an interesting religious debate over gas versus electricity hobs (my BiL has just purchased an induction hob which seems to be very clever technology) but you dont see many chefs using electric hobs on the telly.

As a previous poster commented, I would check out the prices for Lacanche. I am no cooker expert but I think they represent pretty good value as a mid-priced range cooker. You can spend a small fortune. You can also get much cheaper and 'get the look' of a range cooker. But when we looked at the build quality of cheaper products they just didnt match. One friend actually bought their Lacanche directly from the manufacturer in France apparently saving some money versus the UK prices. And made a bit of a weekend of it to get the cooker directly from the manufacturer.

Incidentally in 7 yrs this is the only improvement we made to our kitchen (other than tiling the floor). The units were acceptable. And continue to serve their purpose. If you were on a limited budget and (to my earlier point enjoy cooking) then I would spend as much as you can on a good quality cooker. But that's just my opinion I am sure others will differ or have different needs.

blue70

Thought I'd add my opinion for what it's worth (although if the OP has waited this long to read all the entries before buying an oven she must be starving ).

I inherited a Rangemaster, it came with the house when we bought it, about 5 years ago. It was probably about two years old then.

It's a 110 Leisure I think. I can't recommend it highly enough. It gets plenty of use and for the £1000-1200 it would have cost I think it's worth every penny. Very versatile - twin oven, griddle, grill, 4 burners on the hob.

Every product can go wrong even those that cost £5k so my advice is get some recommendations and buy the best that you can afford.