Westinghouse WVE916SA

I have just the oven component of this in the electric version. We have no issues in cooking in it but we find that the electronics goes a bit silly when you open the oven that requires cooking at a high temperature even when you are just opening the oven to say put something else in that requires less time cooking.

This oven (and its Electrolux cousin made in the same Australian factory) has the largest internal volume (125l) and width (750mm) capacity on the Australian market - and probably the world market. I checked at a large appliance store - Gaggenau, Miele, Smeg, Bosch and numerous others - and none of them come close. There was one Miele oven with a reasonably wide internal rack/shelf (700mm vs the Westinghouse 750mm), but its internal height was much lower, which is a real nuisance if you want to cook something high like meat/roast/turkey etc. with something else in the oven at the same time. And price - these European ovens range from 50% more to double to four or even five times the price of the local unit. And their spares and service - if you can get it for some European brands - are priced accordingly. My sparky hates fixing European ovens because their parts are so hard to obtain - and often super expensive - eg. Smeg gas cook top spark igniter $450, $600 fitted. You can buy a new cook top for that price.

The house I recently purchased was originally fitted with a 3 year old Italian brand 90cm wide (externally) oven - but its controls were on the side and its internal capacity was only 70 litres. I also needed a warming space for Christmas dinners etc., so I purchased two Westinghouse WVE916SAs and I am very happy with the results. I like baking bread, and with the new ovens I can easily cook full size (750mm long) baguettes and large loaves without any problems. Impossible with any other domestic oven.

This is a very well designed oven - it should be a candidate for an Australian Design award in my opinion. The cabinet airflow system works extremely well. It draws cool air in from a slot at the bottom and discharges the cabinet cooling air through a wide slot 115mm down from the top of the oven. The warm air discharge slot does not extend close to the edges of the metal oven cabinet in any direction. This means that the kitchen timber cabinetry - including the front decorative panels - never gets even warm. This is a sensitive issue with me as I had to replace a couple of vinyl wrap cabinet panels that had de-laminated around the edge by heat from the previous, less well designed, European oven. I have run the new oven up to 250 deg. C and felt the metal oven cabinet with my hands through a kitchen cupboard slot near the rear of the oven. It remains cucumber cool due to the wide tangential cabinet fan (yes, being an engineer, I was curious and removed the top panel from the oven - only a few screws - and looked inside it). Because of its large size and slow speed, this is the quietest oven cabinet fan I have heard. It is hard to understand the complaints of noise from some other reviewers - perhaps their fans had been damaged/stressed in transit and were rattling?

The dual oven cavity fans are also very large and slow revving - so they are very quiet as well. The cabinet fan remains running for a few minutes after the oven is turned off in order to keep the cabinet cool during the cool down cycle - this is normal for most modern ovens and this one sounds about as loud as my fridge - so I do not find it at all annoying - just a gentle low hum for a few minutes.

The controls are all electronic capacitive touch panel type (like a smart phone). The controls are very simple and intuitive and the mode button displays the various oven element and fan configurations via a small graphic for each mode as it is selected. I had it up and running with the clock set in 30 seconds after the power was first connected to the oven. An electronic clock start/stop timer is also provided as part of the panel.

The oven has 5 electric heating elements - top element, bottom element, two fan elements and grill element - all fully controllable by the touch panel. Mode 1 is the fast warm-up mode - which runs the fan elements and top elements together. Warm-up time was shorter than I expected for such a large oven. The display also tells you the current cavity temperature as the oven is warming up. A handy feature for bread baking is the very accurate temperature control and display. I can set any of the oven heat modes to 35 or 40 deg C and then I have an accurate temperature controlled proving cabinet for proving bread. Very handy compared to the rough, inaccurate, old electro-mechanical thermostats of the past that would not give such fine control for such low temperatures. It also has a food defrost (fan only?) mode that I have used for defrosting fish quickly. Much better than the microwave as it doesn't cook the edges of the fish as it defrosts it.

As far as general cooking of cakes, biscuits, meat, fish etc., the oven performs very well and cooks very evenly as expected due to the dual fans and fan elements I expect. Being a bread baker, I am very fussy about which element I have running at what time and whether I am exposing the bread to radiant heat or convection (fan element) heat. During bread/baguette baking, this can be critical. I use the "pizza" setting initially to create steam via the bottom element and baking trays with some water in them located at the bottom of the oven, with the two fan elements also running to keep the oven at a very hot 250 deg. C. After about 10 minutes the bread oven spring phase is over, so I change to the fan elements only to continue the bake and crisp up the crust.

The triple door glass is very easy to remove and clean via simple catches and completely cold during operation - so safe for the kids. The whole door can easily be removed if necessary via a couple of clips - which is standard for ovens these days. There is also a child lock on the control panel for the under bench situation.

My only "complaint" - it's more of a wish really - Westinghouse have a "steam assist" oven in the 60cm wide range, but no steam assist for the larger ovens. Steam assist would be handy for baking baguettes in the wide oven. "Proper" French baguette bakers use large commercial multi cavity "deck ovens" with steam injection to obtain the familiar crisp, shiny crust - not a real option for a domestic kitchen even if you could afford one. For now at least I will use the baking trays with some water in them and the bottom element heat source (pizza mode) as a steam generator.

Aesthetics - I like minimalist aesthetic design, so the very uncluttered and minimalist flat stainless panels, flat glass and controls very much suit my taste also. And it's easy to clean - yay.

Speaking of cleaning - the cavity fan surrounds have a "pyrolytic" coating and are therefore "self cleaning". The oven interior is just gloss ceramic enamel. However, I have had this oven cavity finish before and found it very easy to clean as long as I wipe it out a few times a year. So it is my preferred choice in any case.

Too much information? Sorry, but I am very impressed with this oven. I like to see a well designed product - especially if it's a local one. A lot of thought has gone into this design.

In summary, it's a great oven, huge capacity, very sophisticated engineering and aesthetic design, great value (low price) and made in Australia so that you can easily obtain spares if need be. And you can support what is left of Australian manufacturing industry.

No - I don't work for Westinghouse :)

The glass on our oven has just spontaneously exploded - it's a mere 4 years old but of course out of warranty. This is not good enough. It seems to be a very common problem and I'm very unhappy. We've recently undertaken other extremely costly repairs, after it kept cutting out while cooking. Very unhappy!

Like some other comments this oven was installed in a newly built house as part of the build contract by Redink homes and the Tenant moved in Dec 2014. A few days ago the glass exploded and now Westinghouse have said that they will not fix it as its out of warranty. Clearly looking at these comments there is an issue with this model and the glass.

Under the Australian Consumer Law (ACL), automatic consumer guarantees apply and the ACCC website states that these consumer guarantees apply regardless of any warranties and apply for a reasonable time depending on the nature of the goods or services. Essentially this means that the consumer guarantees may continue to apply after the time period for the warranty has expired.

Surely an oven is expected to last longer than 2 years and surely its expected to be of high enough quality such that it doesn't have safety issues like exploding glass?

Hopefully someone can assist in resolving this issue.

This oven was installed in a newly built house as part of the build contract - moved in Dec 2015. Before tonight I would have given it a 4 - 5 star as I loved my oven, and it still looked like new. But the glass all of a sudden exploded while there was a joint roasting in the oven at 180C. It was such a shock, but I'm just thankful that no-one was hurt. Not really sure where to go from here to be honest - I will have to get in touch with Westinghouse and will be sure to report back.