Sunbeam DiamondForce Banquet Frypan FPM4000DF

I was gifted my Sunbeam Diamond Force Banquet Frypan for Mother’s Day two months ago and I have used it nearly every day ever since. I love everything about it,I only ever had el cheapo brands before this.I felt the difference from the moment I picked it up,it feels rock solid. The diamond force non stick coating surface provides superior food… Read more ·  1

release with little to no oil needed.the heat distributes evenly across the pan. It has cool touch handles and lid knob making life and lifting a lot easier. It is dishwasher safe.I am the dishwasher in the house and I can say with the diamond force non stick coating it is super easy to clean. I cook pretty much everything in it,from sausages and eggs…baked dinner..stir fry’s…pan fried fish. I comes with a twelve month replacement or repair warranty. I recommend 100%

Good value for the money but far from perfect – I've been using this for a month while my kitchen undergoes a renovation. The good; - Value for money - Non stick surface - Versatile frypan and skillet - Large enough to cook a meal for the whole family - Heats up quickly The not so good; - The element is either on or off so the temperature is controlled by how long the element is at 100% power… Read more ·  1

vs 0%. This makes it hard to control at lower temperatures and so if you are not careful you can easily burn your food. Think of it like an old school microwave vs a modern inverter.

Perfection – Bought the frypan and skillet combo Was able to make perfect fried eggs and bacon Show details ·  1

Consistent, light and heats quickly – The pan heated evenly for a large surface, the non stick works well and the unit was relatively light considering it’s size. It heated up a lot quicker than my electric stove! My one wish would be for the cable to be a bit longer. Show details

FPM4000DF DiamondForce™ Banquet Frypan – This is our third electric fry pan. We owned two previously from Kmart, they were alright but nothing special, the build quality wasn’t the best but still good value. The Sunbeam is simple to use, the heat is accurate, you can cook many types of recipes with some finessing. We’ve owned this for a month now and couldn’t be happier. Great build… Read more

quality, easy to clean, nice design, strong handle on the top. So far we’ve cooked dumplings, spaghetti bolognese, crumbed steak, chilli con carne and a few other meals. It was easy finding the correct heat setting. The height underneath is adequate, with some designs the heat underneath the electric frypan can damage the benchtop but no issues here. It was well packaged with no design flaws or imperfections. Instructions were well written, and I believe we’ll have this frypan for many years with proper care. Great to see an Australian brand still making quality products!

Pleasantly surprised – After using my old electric frypan for many years this new one was a pleasant surprise as it is definitely better all round. It is lighter weight making it easy to lift out of the cupboard, wash in the sink, dry etc. It is still family sized so can easily cook a 4 person sized meal in it. The lid, while glass, is not too heavy (definitely lighter… Read more

than my old one). The handle on the lid is also heat proof so never gets beyond slightly warm to touch. One thing I found with the handle is that the screw attaching it to the lid worked loose after only a few uses and the handle became quite loose and could have been dropped. I gave it a good tighten but shall keep a watch on this happening again. The non stick surface is very good, nothing I cooked stuck and all food residue just wiped easily clean. Only time will tell though as to how long it will last before starting to catch and deteriorate. I have found this is always the first thing to go on any "non stick" kitchen equipment. I must admit when I opened the box that the "honeycomb" illustration on the box depicting the non stick surface was for illustrative purposes only and not actually the surface of the fry pan. This detail was written there in fine print when I rechecked to make sure I had the correct item! I mainly use my frypan for high temp cooking such as browning meat for casseroles, fried fish, stir fries, bolognaise sauce, chilli con carne etc and found the thermostat very responsive and able to give a good high temperature for cooking in the med - high range, and the min - med range suitable for longer slower cooking. The pan heats up quite quickly as well and the heat seems evenly distrubuted over the base. Yes the thermostat is one of those that continually turns on then off to maintain temp but for the type of cooking I do it is not an issue. The length of the power cord for me is fine at about 1m including the thermostat. It reaches everywhere on the kitchen bench where I need to put the frypan. The thermostat has a small handle on it which allows the thermostat to be locked in place during use and squeezing it easily allows the thermostat to be removed. There is a little tilt lever on the legs at one end to tilt the pan during cooking if needed. I didn't bother using it and it seems to be rather flimsy and in an awkward spot to access when you are handling a hot frypan. I suppose it may be useful to some. As mentioned before the size is good for cooking 4+ serves of anything. We are a family of 2 adults and it holds all the quantity of food I need to cook. I made the lamb shank recipe in the booklet that came with the frypan and it held 8 frenched lamb shanks in a single layer plus sauce etc. I could brown them all at once in the pan which saved time as well. This recipe had to cook slowly for around 3 hours and did just as well as if it was cooked in the oven. Overall for the price it is quite good for what it is and while I don't think it will ever last the 20+ years my mother's original Sunbeam lasted for, if I get maybe a few years out of it with mild - moderate use I will be happy.

BIG pan, EASY clean – Huge electric frying pans appear to have made a comeback - back in the 1970s, I seem to recall they were a kitchen staple. I think they lost their popularity around the time we discovered the microwave - but now, the electric frying pan (or frypan or skillet) seems to be back in vogue, and Sunbeam's Chinese-made DiamondForce Banquet Frypan is a… Read more

good example of a big pan that won't make a big impact on your wallet if you're on a budget. The RRP is $74.95, and at the time of writing (October 2021) I've seen them for as low as $55.96 at Myer online - so as always, it pays to shop around.

FIRST... THE UNBOXING Well, the initial impression was a tad underwhelming, as all the pictures show an impressive blue-glow honeycomb texture on the cooking surface, but this doesn't actually exist at all. It's really quite utilitarian, so I suppose the marketing boffins at Sunbeam felt they had to doll it up a bit for the cameras.

Initial setup is very easy - just wash the pan and its glass lid to remove the factory dust, and you're good to cook - no need even to season the non-stick surface with oil.

READY, STEADY... oh, hang on... The first thing you'll notice BEFORE you start cooking is that at just 1 metre, the power cord is too short. The cord includes the temperature control, so you can't just replace it with a longer one - you'll need to use an extension cord. But try to get one that's as short as possible, otherwise, while you're cooking, you'll also be doing a merry dance dodging all that extra cable - quite a dangerous situation, especially with kids and dogs around - one little leg caught in a loop of power cable could bring the whole pan full of boiling food right down onto it!

If, like me, you have a collection of longer extension cords to hand, you'll need to get creative - perhaps mount a hook somewhere nearby and hang up all that extra cord, well out of the way. If only Sunbeam had provided a 2 metre cord instead of just 1 metre, I feel things would be a whole lot safer and more convenient. But for all I know, maybe there's some ironic Australian safety standard that limits the cord to 1 metre?

...okay, NOW we can COOK!

1. FRIED EGGS & BACON - The first thing I tried was the simplest of all dishes - fried eggs with bacon and tomato! And as you can see from the photo, although I only made enough for myself, the huge size of this pan makes it big enough to feed the cavalry. Very happy with the result.

2. SCRAMBLED EGGS - But of course not everyone likes their eggs fried - some family members will insist on scrambled instead, sigh. And this is where things got messy. Now, I don't know if this might have been less of an issue with a much larger quantity of eggs (maybe 6 or 8) but if you're only scrambling a couple of eggs, the DiamondForce Banquet just doesn't cut it. Why? Because of its...

THERMOSTAT! Everyone has their own way of making scrambled eggs - and if your method is the real-quick high-heat method, then this won't concern you. But if you prefer to cook your eggs looow and slooow for a fluffy, pillow-soft result... well, it just won't work in this frypan - because the element is always either full-on or full-off. No in-betweens. Setting the temperature control to MIN just means that it'll be full-on for less time. So your eggs will cook too fast whenever the thermostat is on, and not at all for most of the time when it's off!

Granted, this is also the way ceramic hobs work. And yet, I can set my ceramic hob to a nice low temperature, and cook perfect scrambled eggs in a regular frying pan. In the words of Professor Julius Sumner-Miller, "Why is it so?"

This issue is no doubt because the DiamondForce Banquet Frypan is made of thin cast aluminium - which is lightweight and cheap - but unlike cast iron or stainless steel, it's very inefficient at retaining heat. So, as soon as that thermostat switches off, your heat is quickly lost to the surrounding air, and voila, your food stops cooking.

This is annoying and impractical - the cooking temperature tends to be either too hot or too cold. Not only eggs, but also sauces can cook too quickly during the thermostat's 'on' cycle, and burn.

3. MEATBALLS - Moving on to dinner meals now, and I gave my recipe for Turkey Meatballs a shot. This is a recipe that makes 16 meatballs, so it serves 3-4. The DiamondForce Banquet Frypan is easily big enough to make twice that quantity, so this gave me a chance to try out...

THE TILT LEVER ...which is supposed to raise one end of the pan to allow for basting, or cooking smaller quantities. I needed to keep those meatballs down one end of the pan - otherwise, that bothersome thermostat quirk was burning my sauce - you'll see this in the meatballs photo. So I thought, this sounds like a job for... The Tilt Lever!

But alas, the spring that's supposed to hold the tilt lever upright is just too weak, so any little movement of the pan left or right - as happens when stirring food - makes the lever drop right down again. You need to be really careful if you want that lever to stay in the upright position - don't let that pan move an inch!

Oh, and you also need to be ever so careful when engaging the lever - it's directly adjacent to the hot pan - and as I found out the first time I tried to use it, it's very easy to scald oneself on the base of the pan - now that's a mistake you only make once!

The meatballs turned out well - but as with the scrambled eggs, it seems that cooking a smallish quantity is something this appliance doesn't handle so well, as the sauce tended to burn whenever the thermostat was heating.

4. PENNE BOSCAIOLA - I decided to try out a recipe from the User Guide - but of course I put my own stamp on it with some extra ingredients (who doesn't?) as I felt the supplied recipe needed some help. Happy to report that all agreed it was a success.

5. GREEN COCONUT CHICKEN CURRY - This one is not from the User Guide, but from the PDF Recipe Book you can download from the DiamondForce Banquet Frypan product page on the Sunbeam website. This time, I left the recipe pretty much as-is apart from halving all the quantities. Another successful meal (photo below).

6. PIZZA - Yes, believe it or not, you can make a very passable pizza in a frypan. I found the basic recipe online (just search for "electric frypan recipes" - you'll never run out of ideas!) and added all my favourite toppings. The base turned out wonderfully crispy. The top was decidedly under-cooked, simply because you don't have any radiant heat from above, so it was rather runny, which made it, shall we say, 'fun' to remove from the pan in once piece - with the aid of two spatulas and my best juggling hands. I probably won't rush to do this again, but if/when I do, I'll use fewer toppings and less pizza sauce. Photo below.

THE WASHUP! The best feature of the DiamondForce Banquet Frypan is that it's dishwasher-safe - which makes washing up so easy, it's a wonder Sunbeam doesn't advertise this! In fact it's not listed as a feature at all - yet it's right there in the specifications. Cooking surfaces with non-stick coatings often come with a warning that dishwashers may degrade the coating over time - but there's no such warning from Sunbeam for the DiamondForce Banquet Frypan, so they must be pretty confident about its durability. But if you're concerned, you can always wash it in the kitchen sink - though it's cumbersome, because it's larger than a standard sink, and heavy.

WHAT ABOUT THE WARRANTY, AND SPARE PARTS? At the time of writing this review (October 2021) no spare parts are available for this appliance - so if you accidentally drop the glass lid and break it; or if you get water inside the temperature control, you've done your dough. But rather than contribute to landfill, please consider taking it to your local recycling centre :-)

On the other hand, if the unit stops working due to a manufacturing fault, Sunbeam will repair or replace it within 12 months of purchase. I really hope that Sunbeam makes spare parts available for this product soon though. It's the environmentally responsible thing to do - let's try not to support the "throwaway society" concept!

PROs: You can chuck it in the dishwasher!

CONs: Power cord is only 1 metre long Thin aluminium base loses heat quickly Annoying thermostat, either too hot or too cold Tilt lever doesn't work well