Electrolux EHC644BB

Easy enough to use – Mostly, this has been a great little cooktop. We've got it in our rental property. Now, I wouldn't buy one for our house that we're building, and I'll let you know why. Although it heats up fairly well, and cooks quite nicely, if you accidentally slide a pan over the on/off button, even using the 'lock' function, the thing turns off!! Unless you can glue your pans to their spots, this becomes very irritating after a while! I do a lot of cooking for my family of 5, so I have run into all the irritations that this cooktop provides!

I don't like that the touch buttons get VERY HOT. Not great when you're having to hold a touch button that's gotten really hot (because you know, you've been cooking...) for a few seconds. This is because, over time, the touch buttons unfortunately become less responsive. I think knobs would be safer than a touchtop cooktop. They don't look as sleek, no, but they're more functional! You can touch them with wet hands without the machine beeping at you! The next cooktop we're getting is 90cm, not 60cm, and has knobs. However, when oil splatters all over the touch areas, the cooktop is fine. It doesn't whinge. It only whinges if the thing touching it is water-based - or metal. So, when cleaning the cooktop, or placing anything metal over the buttons (eg a metal tray), it beeps at you! It just doesn't like extra metal or water anywhere it thinks it shouldn't be. On the upside, one can use the back of a teaspoon to touch the buttons when they get hot, and it works, ha ha! No finger pad burning this way! I don't particularly like machines beeping at me so I find all this beeping a very annoying feature. And you can't turn this beeping off, either, as I think it's meant to be some 'safety' feature. So when things bubble a little roughly, or spurt a touch of water, sometimes the hotplates all get turned off, all because a drop of water hit the on/off button! And yes, it beeps at you when this happens.

The bigger cooking pad (front left) with its 3 levels of cooking plate size (small-medium-large) is good. I use that for large pans and vats! However, it does mean that the pad behind it is inaccessible when using a large vat. We've also noticed that one of the smaller pads heats up & cooks faster than the other pad the same size. I've looked it up and I don't think it's designed this way, but hey, I guess it's just an idiosyncrasy of this cooktop?!

I LOVE that you can time a hotplate to heat on X temperature for X amount of time...and then afterwards, it turns itself off! VERY useful feature! So long as you're cooking something that is not risking boiling over and the lid is on, the cooktop is trustworthy enough that I know I can safely leave the stove on and leave the house to do something, and it will heat for the specified time, then turn off, keeping the pot warm. Great for when I want to finish off a curry, but have to go outside to do something. A very intuitive feature, one that I have not come across before. I would never normally leave a stove on (due to fire risk) when leaving the house, but this unit has changed my mind on that. However, I can see that this intuitive feature might also have its dangers (like what if the stove DIDN'T turn off, just that one time, even though it was scheduled to, and your house burned down?!). So perhaps use this feature with caution, or at least stay near the house if using it! The unit is also good at turning itself off after all the hotplates are off. Sure, it's yet another beep, but I know it's safe for my kids!

It'd be great if there was a 6.5 setting. 6 is too low for oil, 7 is too high. 6 is too low for pancakes. But again, 7 is too high. So when making pancakes/pikelets/crepes or shallow frying (eg pappadums, nuggets, fishcakes), I have to keep flicking between 6 & 7 on the top right and bottom left larger hotplates!! But 7 is good for reduced boiling for vegetables, and also for defrosting bolognese on one of the smaller hotplates. So I've just had to work out HOW this machine works and to adapt to its idiosyncrasies. And it seems, just like people, machines have their idiosyncrasies, too! Probably because they're designed by people...!

You can use a tough (metal) scourer on the cooktop. And you'll need to. Because bits of food slowly cake over the pads! But it shines up nicely, with no scratches noticed. And I haven't caused any chips in the unit, and I've used it A LOT the past 2 years! So it seems pretty hardy.

Basically, this cooktop DOES work well. I've certainly got my gripes, but on the whole, it's a nice, sleek little unit that makes cooking pretty easy. However, we've noticed that our cooktop is a little less responsive in the 2 years we've been using it, and it doesn't heat up quite as much as it used to. And no, it's not because the air temperature is lower. It still does this on warm days. On the up-side, it means I can now do shallow frying & pancake cooking on 7 without flicking it to 6 so often! So I guess the elements don't hold their heating abilities over time. But I'm being picky now, and the 'problem' in fact works out fine for me!

I'm not sure how old this unit is. I can only guess it's well out of warranty. And it still works, just not *quite* as well as it used to. Mind you, we also use it A LOT, way more than the owners ever did!!

Overall, it's a good unit. But if you like to cook with flair, like I do, you may find this unit irritating you after a while.

Excellent to clean but my goodness me what a troubled cooktop! – Annoying ceramic stove top. Has a fast heat up function that ends up burning your food. If you do not use the fast heat up function it may never heat up even on the low settings for maybe 15 minutes?. The lock function when cooking only stops some actions and it will choose to turn itself off for no genuine reason even when in locked mode. The lock and turn on function is very fiddly to get to actually work. Even when LOCKED if anything, yes anything, including a drop of water or a pot or spoon, touches the controls it turns itself off and is quite an effort to get on again. I would like some solutions to these very annoying cooktop issues. Electrolux fix these issues for me please. I hope you check proof of purchase for the 5 star glowing reviews as I believe many are fake!!!!!.

What the heck is going on here? – We purchased this ceramic cooktop after checking the good choice reviews and found it on special for less than the choice price. These cooktops are lovely to cook with and clean but the quick heat up facility (14a) is really not working well. After 5 minutes and a smoking frypan it had still not turned down the temperature. Sometimes I set the temperature to say 8 and find it still turning itself on and off and heating up very slowly. Then I turn it down and it almost seems to turn off completely. I noticed another review of an Electrolux cooktop and they said it had a mind of it's own, well I would agree with that. Have had this for around one month and find it hard to work out. Some strange options of a keep warm option, I like the lock option. I will revisit this review in the future. I still love ceramic cooktops and this one is good but a little strange. Update. Ok a couple of months on and I do love these cooktops, so fast and I think I have worked out any issues. Heating up is sometimes a little slow, turning off and on but take it up high and then turn down. This one is very quick and easy to clean, good functions. We previously had a gas cooktop and the cleaning brought tears to my eyes and the gas prices are very questionable now days. I think we paid around 700.oo for this cooktop as I don't have time to check but I can If you need to know. Update 19/9/22. I question some behaviour of this cooktop. The lock function is not very helpful as it may be on lock but if any water or a plate sits on the controls the unit still turns itself off. The lock should mean it would not be affected by anything but this cooktop still turns itself off mid cooking and needs to be unlocked and started again seemingly whenever anything touches the controls even when locked???????. When using the small pot option I thought I could see some heating being produced with the outer large ring glowing.