Bosch PKE611CA1A

Good looks and great performance at a low price. Nice one, Bosch! – For a relatively affordable offering, this Bosch cooktop is a real find. Sporting a black ceramic glass top with big, friendly knobs and an offset hot spot arrangement, my wife and I were immediately attracted to this cooktop when we needed to replace our kitchen's old hotplate, which was accidentally broken. At first, I was a little unsure about… Read more ·  2

the offset hot spot but my wife thought it was a brilliant idea, and so it proved to be; providing extra spaciousness on this 60cm plate. The four knobs with nine degrees of attenuation are bunched inline at the lower right corner of the plate, enabling the corresponding four hot points to be spaced well apart. We had a different, knob-less touch-style cooktop once, and it became unresponsive so we prefer tactile, mechanical knobs like the ones on this Bosch. The elements heat up quickly and are of sufficient variety of size to suit all our different sized pans. We had a local electrician install the cooktop as Australian law forbids the installation of hard-wired cookers by unqualified personnel, so this is an added expense common to all such cooktop and oven installations in our country.

“Pan recognition” is a safety feature of this cooktop that means it won’t heat an element unless it senses that something is in contact with it. A centralised indicator-light cluster illuminates to reveal which element is hot, or may be holding residual heat after the cooking is done. We have cooked stir-fries, pots of steaming pumpkin soup and Tom Yum quickly and without any issue at all. Our daughter has cooked perfect porterhouse steaks on this cooktop too, and reheating leftovers is a breeze thanks to Bosch’s “Quick Therm” technology which gets the elements heated-up within seconds. There’s 17-stage control of the pot settings to enable dialing-in precise heat as might be required for gourmet cooking. Easily wiped clean, we also bought a specialised scraping tool for removing baked-on spillage if needed. We are impressed with the durability of this product, as we can happily report that it has worked flawlessly over a year-and-a-half’s daily use. We love this appliance and because it’s handsome, performs really well and yet is so affordable, we think one can’t ask for more from an appliance, so we’re giving the Bosch 60cm Serie 2 Ceramic Cooktop top marks.

Absolute Disaster! – Very hard to clean. Smudges etc. Was told by Harvey Norman the knobs could be removed for cleaning - not so. Has more scratches after a month (and I am very careful and use only top of range saucepans etc) than my old 15 year one that died. The knobs make it very hard to use anything other than a very small saucepan on the medium size hot… Read more

plate. So disappointed and am virtually in tears everytime I look at it. What a waste of money. I was so excited at having a Bosch product. Boy, that was short lived.

A Big disappointment – I had a ceramic cooktop for 20 years which was no problem to clean. Replaced it with The Bosch PKE611CA1A a year ago and have nothing but problems with cleaning. I use ceramic cleaner and wipe it down after every use but it it retains marks and smears. Also the knobs don't come off so very hard to clean around.

Basic Cooktop but does the job – Cook top is reasonably functional and pretty basic although has some design flaws. The knobs are a pain to clean around and as someone else said the visibility of when the cooktop is turned on is a little poor. I also dislike the large element being at the back, its not that practical but that's a personal thing. It isn't as tough as my old one… Read more

but it is a reasonable cooktop for the price. If you are after something better designed you might want to invest a little more for a better standard and better designed cooktop, but in terms of a basic cooktop its actually ok.

Standard cook top with serious flaws – Electric cook-top with four rings functions ok but has poor user-function design. The markings next to each control are very low-vis - you can barely see them as they are dark gray on black background. This may have looked cool on some 19 year old designer's computer screen but it does not work in the real world. The control top knobs do not come… Read more

off making cleaning underneath them impossible. The 'on' warning light only comes on after a certain temperature is reached not immediately a ring is activated, which could be a safety issue if the knobs are mistakenly turned on and the user walks away not realizing it has been turned on - there is no immediate warning light. And it is very easy to 'bump' the controls on even when gently cleaning the top - which needs cleaning virtually after every use as you do not want splatters or spills to cook onto the top. Overall ok for the money but poorly designed for safe and ease of use.

Bosch cooktop PKE611CA1A Very disappointing-scratches so easily – Bought a Bosch cooktop in December 2019 which was fitted in new kitchen in February 2020. Very disappointed that the glass cooktop scratches so easily even though we have only ever used the Cerapol cleaner. My 7 year old cooktop had less marks and was much easier to keep looking good. Very disappointed that even with limited use (I'm not a messy cook) that it looks so scratched so easily! Would not recommend at all. Show details