It served us well for 19 years and for sure earned its keep, it was worth every penny we paid for it at the time. Simple technology with knob dials, not much electronics. Over the years had a few small repairs, half of which I did myself. Thousands of meals were cooked on this stove, many hundreds of bread loaves, cakes and pies were baked. Now was the time to say our farewell to the old friend and buy a reliable replacement. I started looking at what is the latest and the greatest stove one can buy. Couple of decades later and considering many huge leaps in technology I was anticipating an easy solution. But unfortunately once I did my research I came to face a sober reality: the market is monopolized by very few suppliers and is saturated by dysfunctional, purely designed and terribly unreliable products; in other words the quality leaves a lot to be desired!
Just go and check any number of market forums for appliances that are rating currently promoted models and brands. Sometimes it takes to scroll through several pages with 1 star rating before someone had anything positive to say about that particular brand or model. And they are all the same, same ratings for just about every model.
There are lots of websites that promote these lemons. Their own in house ratings and testings apparently reveal nothing wrong and they love just about every model, providing you have patience to go through enough of their own reviews. Strange isn’t it? Diametrically opposite from what the end users, and shall we say the true testers say.
What did happen in these 20 years of progress? Didn’t we suppose to have a better, more modern and and dependable appliances? No?
Don’t even bother go visit appliance distributors if you are not 100% percent sure what you want to buy. Out there in their show room everything looks shiny and polished, everything looks the same. The sales person will without difficulty sway you to buy one of the brands, and behind the most of them is lurking the same company anyways. As usual the sales person will exclaim that they own themselves one of these and that they love them. So you can run, but you can’t hide – whichever one you pick it doesn’t really matter. That is what lack of competition will do to you.
So what did I do?
I did not want to buy anything that is proven unreliable and that pretty much left me with only two options:
- Miele
- Hisense
I love Miele for their unbeatable robust design and reliable performance. We already have their dishwasher, washer and dryer. All three are 19 years old, still running strong. Buy, plug in, operate, forget about it. No hustle, no break downs, no headaches. Simple. That is Miele.
However, the Miele electric stove although unbelievably beautiful and reliable is prohibitively expensive. With taxes and shipping it adds up to above $9,000! Now if that number doesn’t give you a vertigo or at least a severe headache I don’t know what will.
Hisense was my other option. From what I could find I understand that this was their first free standing electrical range model in this part of the world. They are company from China with great reviews of their product quality, primarily in electronics industry. However, they did make cook tops and ovens in the past, and they received some great reviews in Great Britain. Last year Hisense acquired a majority ownership in Gorenje, Slovenian appliance maker. I am familiar with Gorenje, as all our home appliances in my childhood were made by them. They were the biggest and the best known appliance brand in Yugoslavia at the time. My mother still keeps their refrigerator. Truthfully this refrigerator did see better days but it is about 50 years old if I remember properly! I saw this Hisense acquisition as a plus to my cause.
Hisense stove sale cost was about $1,500 with taxes and shipping inclusive.
I put my bet on Hisense. A company with a good reputation, carrying a good line of products coming to North American market with a new electrical range. If I with 10 hours of research could find the somber state of the affairs on the market I am sure Hisense knows it too. And if that is true the product they are bringing on must be better, otherwise why bother at all?
I ordered it yesterday, seller had 22 units in stock. I guess I am one of few that is willing to take a risk. We shall see.
At the end I already know how bad the others are, Hisense is a wildcard albeit a one with a good reputation; and for all the above noted reasoning it might just work.
And no I don’t get paid by anybody for this review. It is just my personal, consumer point of view.
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