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Reviewed / Fotile
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Credit:
Reviewed / Fotile
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This slide-in electric convection range, with its Energy Star rating and removable Easy-wash Oven Tray, is designed to enhance efficiency and convenience. Read More
The Samsung NE63A6511SS is a spacious range with good performance and great features at a reasonable price. Read More
This double oven electric range is the best we've tested because of its effective burners, spacious ovens that evenly bake food, and sleek look. Read More
While gas ranges may be the pros' choice, and induction may be the (magnetic) wave of the future, radiant electric stoves and ranges are still the most popular cooking appliance in the United States. Electric ranges can provide an impressively wide temperature range, and their performance has come an impressively long way from the coil elements of the past.
The decision of which fuel source to cook with might be out of your hands, but you still have plenty of options when it comes to the brand and model. There are hundreds to choose from, but lucky for you, we've tested enough electric ranges to make some strong recommendations.
That includes our pick for the best electric range overall, the GE GRS600AVFS (available at Abt for $924.00) , which is a slide-in range that performs well and comes at an incredibly reasonable price. If you need a freestanding model, our top pick is the Samsung NE63A6511SS (available at Abt for $924.00) .
The GE GRS600AVFS has an innovative removable bottom tray that can be washed or put in the dishwasher.
This Samsung freestanding range performs well and is highly rated by owners.
The new Fotile FreshBake helps keep indoor air clean with advanced air filtration.
The cooktop on this Whirlpool range has an easy-clean coating that makes it possible to clean with water alone.
The Whirlpool WGE745C0FS is the best electric range we've tested.
Sleek, intuitive control panel
Feature-rich
Longer-than-average preheat and boiling times
Flimsy storage drawer
Uneven broiling
Even baking
Short boil times
Has True Convection
Useful smart features like Air Fry and InstaView
Slow preheat
Air Fry tray sold separately
Solid construction
Quick, even heating
Plenty of features
Rear controls get hot
Burners struggle with low temps
Electric ranges are the most popular type of range in U.S. households. Many homes, apartments, and condos are wired for electric appliances rather than gas, and they're often considered safer in multi-unit buildings as there’s no risk of gas leaks.
Baking enthusiasts often prefer electric ovens because they typically provide steadier heat than gas ovens, which is crucial for consistent baking results.
Those looking to reduce the use of fossil fuel or minimize potential environmental pollution might choose electric or induction ranges over gas.
Traditional electric ranges also tend to be less expensive than gas or induction ranges, making them a more budget-friendly option.
Size and Configuration: Standard home ranges are 30 inches wide and have four or five burners. Space-saving models come in 24-inch width, while larger models can be 36 or 48 inches wide and have six or eight burners. Freestanding ranges have finished side panels so they do not need to abutt cabinetry, while slide-in ranges are so named because they slide in between cabinetry for a built-in look.
Electric Cooktop Styles: Smoothtop electric ranges are the most common these days, whether they’re traditional radiant electric or induction. The surface is typically ceramic or glass. It’s still possible to find electric ranges with coil burners but they are less efficient and much harder to clean.
Convection and Air Fry: In addition to standard oven features such as baking and broiling, it’s helpful to have convection, which includes an additional heat source and a fan to circulate hot air for even cooking and faster baking. An even higher fan speed will enable air-fry functionality.
Smart Features: Wi-Fi connectivity, app integration, remote monitoring, and voice control (via Alexa, Google Assistant, and such), have become more popular and available on a wide variety of models at various prices.
Safety Features: Look for hot-surface indicator lights, which warn when burners are on or still hot, as well as a child safety lock to prevent unintended use, and an auto shut-off feature which can turn the burners or oven off after a set amount of time or inactivity.
True Convection is an oven setting that includes installing an extra heating element and a fan in the oven. By adding an additional heating unit and fan that circulates the hot air, True Convection is great for ensuring that cookies or cakes baked on different racks will bake through at the same rate, rather than the cookies closest to the bottom heat source cooking faster than those on the rack higher up.
If you don't see mention of "True Convection" or "European Convection", but do see the word "convection" in a range's specs, it means that the unit lacks an additional heating element, but does have a fan to circulate the hot air. While you don't get the full baking and cooking effect that you would with True Convection, the added heat circulation can cook or bake food more evenly than it would without a fan.
There are also ranges out there that do not offer convection options at all; these ovens aren't bad, it will just take more time to cook and bake food all the way through. If you're a frequent baker or cook, convection can be a great time saver, but your dinners won't suffer unduly without it.
In a nutshell, slide-in ranges are meant to sit flush with your countertops, while freestanding ranges are meant to sit on top of any surface.
While slotting in and sitting on top of your countertop may seem similar, the main differences between the two involve finish and ease of cleaning. Because freestanding ranges are visible from all angles, they have more finished sides; slide-in ranges are meant to have their sides hidden by the cabinetry, so the finish typically isn't as pretty on the sides.
Additionally, because slide-in ranges sit flush with your countertop, they're a bit easier to clean because they do not have a large lip around the edge. Freestanding ranges often have larger lips around the edge of the cooktop to corral any crumbs that would otherwise decorate your floor. Freestanding ranges also typically have a back-mounted control panel for the same reason.
While slide-in ranges will do fine in a freestanding arrangement, the reverse is less true. If your current cooking setup has the range sitting in a cabinet or countertop cutout, we recommend replacing that range with another slide-in range. Conversely, if your range stands alone in your kitchen, we'd recommend replacing it with another freestanding range to cut down on food debris spilling everywhere.
As we mentioned earlier, most freestanding ranges have back-mounted controls, but some slide-in ranges do as well.
Both arrangements have pros and cons; on the one hand, having back-mounted controls means you may have to reach over hot food to adjust the oven temperature, the controls are also far enough away that you would have difficulty hitting something on the control panel by accident.
On the other hand, front-mounted controls are easier to reach, but that convenience can turn against you if you brush up against a knob accidentally. Consider the ergonomics of using the range when it comes to picking a front- or back-mounted control panel.
Depending on how much time you spend in the kitchen, it might be worth it to investigate ranges with more burners. When it comes to the cooktop, anything above the standard four-burner setup is a bonus. Some ranges can have five, or even six burners; however, the more burners a range has, the more difficult it becomes to fit large pieces of cookware, such as a spaghetti pot and a frying pan, on their respective burners at the same time.
Sometimes, those extra burners are specialty burners are designed to accommodate special cookware such as a griddle or a wok; other burners are bridge burners that are meant to keep food warm without continuing to cook it.
Another possibility is to have a dual-ring burner, or a burner that includes a stronger heat source wrapped around a weaker heat source. That way, on a single burner, you can choose to use just the smaller heat source for lower temperatures, but you can add the stronger heat source if you need higher temperatures.
As for extra oven features, they can include everything from accessories like special oven racks or a temperature probe to special cooking features.
That can include the aforementioned convection settings, fast preheat, bread proofing, steam cooking (where you pour water into a reservoir and gently cook something with the resulting steam), air fry mode, and many more.
Not only do we perform repeatable, scientific tests on the ranges we review, but we also do real-world evaluations (think: cookie baking and pancake making). That means we can tell you which products will perform the best and will give you the most bang for your buck.
There’s a lot that goes into how we test ranges in the Reviewed lab but here are the highlights:
To test burners, we measure the maximum and minimum temperature of each burner to see if it aligns with the manufacturer's claims. We conduct these tests by using a thermocouple to measure the temperatures of empty stainless steel bases.
A range or cooktop with multiple burners that can reach very high and/or very low temperatures will score well. If burners cannot reach very high or low temperatures—or if only one burner can do each task—scores will be lower.
Burner temperatures are measured in watts and a larger range of wattages means burners will be ideal for a wider range of tasks, from simmering soup to properly searing a steak.
We bake cookies in both standard bake and convection mode (if available) to see how evenly the oven can bake the cookies.
We clock how long the electric oven takes to preheat to 350°F. Because no one wants to wait around forever, shorter preheating times result in higher scores, while longer preheating times result in lower scores.
To test the evenness of the oven heat, we place 12 Pillsbury ready-to-bake sugar cookie chunks on an ungreased cookie sheet in a grid formation and bake them at 350°F for 15 minutes in the center of the oven, and evaluate the browning pattern when they’re done. These lightly colored cookies make it easy to evaluate the evenness of the oven heat, and double as a proxy for other thin food items, such as brownies or vegetables.
We also test the convection baking setting (if available) with two trays of cookies, because convection is generally a more efficient way of cooking or baking something, and it is important to evaluate the evenness across multiple racks of food.
We also use another thermocouple thermometer to subjectively measure how well the oven maintains a set temperature over an hour’s time, evaluating any dips in temperature along the way. A range with solid construction and good insulation can maintain heat well. We use thermal image testing to monitor how well a range is able to hold heat without letting it escape.
Thermal imaging can also help us determine whether a range is dangerously heating control elements—like rear burner dials—so that we can account for that when writing a review.
In addition to evaluating the cooking and baking performance of these appliances, we incorporate more subjective user information into our overall assessment.
For example, how easily can the cooktop surface accommodate multiple pots and pans? Is there a spacious storage drawer? How easy is it to understand the control panel and set the temperature?
We answer all of these questions and more to determine if a product is particularly easy to use or if there are any major drawbacks that would cause frustration to potential owners. That’s why you can trust our expertiese—we use the appliance as you would at home.
The experts seem torn on what the best top-load washer is. To save you some time and trouble, we’ve gone ahead and done the research for you.
User comments around the topic of best dishwashers seem to display the typical amount of rancor and infighting. We’re pulling these user reviews from some of the largest appliance retailers.
Beyond the complaints about the build quality of the storage drawer and a few quality control concerns that creep up in all customer reviews, there are few complaints about the overall satisfaction with this GE range.
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Aside from covering all things sleep, James moonlights as an educational theatre practitioner, amateur home chef, and weekend hiker.
Madison Trapkin
Contributor
Madison covered all things cooking as the kitchen editor for Reviewed in 2021. Formerly the editor-in-chief of Culture Magazine, Madison is the founder of GRLSQUASH, a women's food, art, and culture journal. Her work has also appeared in The Boston Globe, Cherrybombe, Gather Journal, and more. She is passionate about pizza, aesthetic countertop appliances, and regularly watering her houseplants.
She holds a Bachelor's degree from the University of Georgia and a Master's of Liberal Arts in Gastronomy from Boston University.
Monica is Reviewed's Kitchen & Cooking editor and an avid home cook; she's been testing a wide range of kitchen products at Reviewed for three years. Previously the Digital Editor at Culture Cheese Magazine (and a former barista), she's also had her work published in The Boston Globe, Modern Luxury, Boston Magazine, and more.
Our team is here to help you buy the best stuff and love what you own. Our writers, editors, and experts obsess over the products we cover to make sure you're confident and satisfied. Have a different opinion about something we recommend? Email us and we'll compare notes.
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