Appliance Reviews

I bought my WafflePro 830 four years ago. Back then, it was $59.99. Once we figured out our preferred setting, it made PERFECT waffles. -- and I mean PERFECT! They never stuck, they were crispy outside, moist inside, and clean up was a breeze.

This morning, it wouldn't heat. So much for my Sunday morning pecan waffles.

I thumb through my warranty information -- one year, limited. That's useless...

So, I go online to see how much I can get one for now -- after all, a small appliance which was $60 four years ago ought to be around $30 or 40 now, right? WRONG! -- $69.99 here at Amazon.com, and higher everywhere else! And no one's selling them on eBay either!

Like I said -- I loved it while it lasted. But I expect a waffle iron to last longer than 4 years, and I expect the price to come down in four years, too! Look on eBay -- see how you can buy electric waffle irons that are 30 and 40 years old -- some even 50 years old! -- and they still work!

Chef's Choice, that's how a waffle iron should last! Not four measly years...

Two years to the day almost, the waffle iron functioned perfectly. But then the non-stick feature failed. Three-4 months later, using PAM to prevent waffles from sticking, the thermostat began to fail, finallying baking waffles to an unedible crisp. For this kind of price, one should expect a better quality product.

I purchased one of these around three years ago. I love the waffles it makes. After two uses it died. I sent it in. The factory fixed it and sent a letter saying the fuze had blown and not to plug the unit in with the setting at 6, which I have never done. The unit just died again today while cooking a waffle. I have used it about 20 times. I don't understand why the company cannot fix the problem with these units.

These waffle makers are so much better than the other units out there (I own several others), but the reliability sucks!!!

Perhaps I'm expecting too much, but if I spend this much on a countertop appliance, I expect it to last. I agree with some of the other reviewers that the toasting function *does* tend to dry out the toast. My solution is to preheat the oven until both elements are glowing and *then* put in the bread. I watch until it is done & then immediately remove it. It works, but it's a hassle.

What disappoints me the most is that over the last few months I've begun to have problems closing the door. When it started it was only after the oven was quite hot (broiling, etc.). I assumed something in the guide mechanism was warping due to the heat and it always worked again once the oven cooled down. It gradually began occuring sooner and sooner and now the door will not close at all.

I probably only use the oven 2-3 times a month. In my experience, this is not an appliance that can tolerate regular use. I'm very disappointed.

There are some pluses and minuses to the DeLonghi toaster oven/convection oven. Overall, it's pretty impressive.

Plus Side: Lots of toast. Six slice capacity is great for sandwich making, brunch production or two people who eat toast (more than two slices.) It makes good, even toast, too, Big, fat bagels and English muffins fit nicely into it, as do weird size slices of homemade round loaf bread. Convection. This is a great, fast way to cook and it keeps the kitchen cooler in the summer than a big oven.

Minus Side: It takes several interactions with the dials to make a simple piece of toast. (Not just pop in, push lever.) Our hinge on the door swells when heated up and the door won't close exactly. But the warranty is still on...

Overall, pretty fine oven!

I recently received this toaster oven and here's what I have to report:

The toaster oven's fit and finish are fairly nice; however, the weak, wobbly plastic legs are a strange addition to this otherwise nice toaster oven.

The cord is a little short, and the glass window gets very hot, but the dials are easy to use and intuitive.

I found the manual to be a little difficult to follow (maybe since the toaster oven can do so much (toast, broil, bake with the convection fan, bake conventionally, warm, defrost, and dehydrate)) so if you plan on using your convection oven for all that it can perform, then be prepared to carefully read the manual several times.

There is an oven light that can be used to determine when the toaster oven has pre-heated (it goes out), which is a nice feature.

So far I have tested only how well the toaster oven toasts and I am happy to say that all toast has come out perfectly! In fact, I have owned several highly-rated Black and Decker toaster ovens as well as stand-alone toasters, and there is no question that the DeLonghi toasts the best (I believe it uses the convection fan, which helps to produce perfectly, consistently toasted bread).

You should be very happy with this toaster oven.

Avoid this product at all costs. The cheap little attachments that the dough is forced through are flimsy plastic and if your dough is even slighty too hard, they break. Ronco warranty won't cover them. So your stuck with a useless piece of plastic

I have loved this machine for months now. It took me a long time to purchase this item because I have been burned by TV inventions before. But ronco is THE BEST. The pasta comes out perfect, Everytime! Trust me... Try it and you will be pleased too! It saves me plenty on groceries. I used to buy the fresh pasta their and it cost me 2-3 dollars a pack... big savings!

Years ago, I owned an older model of this machine, and I loved it. This one appears to be just as good. Simple to assemble and easy to clean, the machine makes great pasta. Just remember to heed the manufacturer's advice to let the dough mix for at least four minutes before trying to extrude the noodles, otherwise, you might end up with cement-like dough in your machine. This product would make a great gift.

I love this fryer, but the only down fall is theat the metal pan bends way to easly. I put in in the diswaher at it just deformed. Everytime I use it and wash it, it bends. It seems that the moveing in the washer from the water preasure bends it up, this is how flimsy it is. Other then that, this is a great fryer!!!!!!

Haven't used this unit too much yet, but so far it works well. The lid on our unit needs a little extra push to get it to lock securely, otherwise it pops up if it's bumped. The pan holds a good amount of oil, and the basket is a decent size, although a little shallow. Takes a long time to heat up though. Turn it on before you're starting to prepare everything, and 15-20 minutes later it should be up to temp.

I recommend getting a separate deep fry thermometer for the unit so you can keep an eye on the oil temperature. There isn't one integrated in the pan, and no obvious sign of any temperature sensor at all aside from the dial setting.

Oil temperature does decrease a bit when you put the food in, but this is easily compensated for by setting the temperature a little higher for the initial heating and then turning the temp setting back to where you want it.

Cleaning is a snap. Lid pops off and can be stuck in the dishwasher for easy cleaning. Food can get stuck between the lid and the silicone sealing ring though, which can be a bit of a pain. Water will also remain in the lid after it comes out, so make sure to dry thoroughly before using again.

The lip of the oil pan is curled so you can safely pour the oil into a container and not have to worry about it dribbling down the side of the pan while you're pouring.

The oil pan seems sturdy enough, and I haven't encountered any problems with it warping in the dishwasher. You probably don't want to put it through the heat dry cycle of the dishwasher though (same with the lid...don't want to risk having the plastic melt or anything)

I read many reviews on many deep fryer models and decided to go with the Philips Deep Fryer Deluxe model number HD6153. I bought it at Target of which they had several in stock on Feb. 16th, 2003. Apparently Target is the only store to carry these. This is my first impression as a 30 year old married man with 1 child who loves to cook. I give this fryer a 4.5 out of a 5 star rating. The first thing I cooked was a pound of breaded okra. I thawed the okra in the microwave first to get rid of all the ice build up on it. Heated the fryer up to 375 degrees (it's max setting), using a 50-50% ratio of peanut and vegetable oil that I bought in a big 5 gallon tub at GI-Joes. Once the oil was at temp. I put the okra in. After 5 minutes it was wonderfully deep golden colored and I removed it and put it on a plate with a paper towel to absorb any extra oil. This cooker has a very large viewing window on it's top that although it fogs up in the first minute of cooking making it very hard to see the food inside, the fog went away soon after and you can see what's going on very nicely. The okra turned out GREAT! A little ketchup and I was very impressed. Crispy and not too oily at all. My next item was to fry up some french fries. I cut up one potato, skin and all into thin slices, more like potato chips than fries. Cooked it for 4 min. on 320 degrees and then lifted them out to heat up the oil to 375 and cooked them for 2 more minutes. They came out very crispy and quite good! Nice golden color too. I cut up a 2nd potato into thick pegs, more traditionally styled, and did the same. Not quite as crisp, but with a little salt, just as good as any restraunt would serve, without the added sugar!
Now for some technical observations' During heating and cooking, there was visible 'smoke' coming from the top and you could smell the cooking oil through out the room but only about half as much as you could if you were frying in a conventional frying pan. I then put the fryer under my vented stove top hood and that took care of the problem. The fryer has a great safety cord that will magnetically detach itself incase a little kid pulled on it for example, so the fryer wouldn't tip over and burn the kid. It's very modern looking and looks nice in my kitchen. One thing that almost startled me was when I took out my first batch of okra, the handle was very warm, not too hot to touch but warm enough to make you say, "Hugh, that's warm, I wonder if it's supposed to get that warm" Also the electrical cord is quite short and may be inconvenient in some situations, but I think Philips did that as a safety precaution. Out of curiosity, I also bought a deep fry thermometer ($9.00) to test the oil temperature on various settings. I noticed that when turned all the way up (375 degrees) the deep fry thermometer read 390 degrees at the time the heating element light turned off. When the light then turned back on again, the oil was at 340 degrees. All without touching the temp setting of 375 degrees. So, it's not exactly a super accurate appliance given it has a 50 degree tolerance (+/- 25 degrees from it's set point), but it still cooked that okra as good as okra can be cooked! The heating element is long and nicely coiled and flattened for maximum heat transfer and the oil was heated in less than 10 minutes, and in only 1 minute from 340 degrees back up to 390 degrees (with the lid open!). The pan is removable and can be washed in the dishwasher along with the fry basket and a quick wipe with a paper tower was all that was needed to clean the rest of the unit up.
For $69.00 I feel like I bought a decent fryer for the money. It was easy to find (If you have a Target store close by) and I look forward to many more yummies in the future.
I give this fryer 2 thumbs up as a little kitchen wonder. It cooked good food and was very easy to operate. Every Target store in America should have this in stock.

-Mike Carlson (AKA WW_Dagger)

I had my toaster 2 years it never toasted evenly burned edges before the middle browned. Even worse the realease button broke off making the toaster useless. My best friend returned hers right away as I should have.

I bought this toaster because of I've had absolutely no trouble with the Cuisinart food processor I own. I've owned this toaster for about 2 years and I've never been happy with it, although I don't use it very often. First of all, it's much weaker than any other toaster I've used and an average piece of toast or bagel requires at least two cycles at '10' in order that it is fully toasted. Secondly, the toasting isn't even - much of the time, the edges will brown, but the center of the slice will only have just started to warm. Some time ago, one of the elements stopped working, so now only one side of the toaster works. The opening is wide, which is a plus for items such as waffles, bagels, etc., but doesn't close tightly enough around the item to evenly warm it. As another viewer has mentioned, the heating time control doesn't work consistently.

It was inexpensive, so I suppose I shouldn't expect much, but Cuisinart is clearly building low-quality, slapping their name on it, and reaping the profits off of suckers like myself. Learn from me and buy a better-quality toaster. Dualit, here I come.

I have been very pleased with every Cuisinart appliance we have (food processor, hand mixer, ect.) and this is no exception.

The large slot fits the biggest of bread with ease. In Idaho we have a local company that makes a bread called Yummy Wheat and this bread is huge (4.5-5 inches tall and 6-7 inches long). Trying to toast this bread in our old toaster was a pain, you would have to stick the bread in on it's side which of corse left 2 or more inches sticking out of the toaster. Then you would have to flip it around to get the rest of the bread toasted, unfortunately you would have these nice toasted edges, but the middle would be burnt.

The pull out crumb tray makes it easy to clean. No more shaking the toaster upside down over the sink to get it clean. And the three year warranty, how can you go wrong.

KitchenAid- 1 year warranty. $69.99
Cuisinart- 3 year warranty. $39.99 <-- Better buy.

If you want a toaster that will last a long time, have consistently browned toast, and looks great buy this toaster, you wont be disappointed.

I have read other reviews and took their advise,I went to see it in action in the store. You are right, the rotating coils get in the way of anything more than a couple of inches hight. I had an old Litton micro , bake, broiler for 19 years and it was the same size as this but it could bake a whole chicken with room to spare. This oven can barley bake cookies or a pork chop. Dont be fooled by the rotating coils, they will get in the way! I wish I could find my old Litton again. they had it right 19 yrs. ago, the coils were on the very bottom and very top just like a conventional electric oven and it had sensors to cook food automatically. WELL those were the good ol' days!! I wont reccommend this oven....

We bought this just before Christmas and it worked fine for a few weeks. Then the microwave turntable quit rotating and we were not able to use it any longer. I do agree with every one else that you can't really bake anything in it and the toasting is not that great. We called Samsung and they were pretty rude about it. We couldn't return it because it was past the date for the store policy on returning items. We are extremely dissapointed in Samsung and this product. I have also read other reviews where the microwave quit working. This product was a waste of money.

My local Target had this model on clearance for 30% off list price. Having a low resistance to both gadgets and bargains, I bought it on a whim.
It's a decent microwave, but a poor toaster and even poorer toaster oven. The oven has a stationary heating coil at the top and two motorized heating coils at the side that "swing out" when heating is needed and stay at the sides of the oven walls when they are not used (when only microwaving.) While this is high tech, it makes for limited positioning of the oven rack. Basically, you end up with about three inches of clearance between the baking rack and top coil. That's it...so forget about baking anything that isn't flat like a sheet of cookies.

When I made toast, it came out perfect on the top and undone on the bottom. The rack is closer to the top coil than the bottom and there's no way to adjust it. I tried three times to make batches of those "break and bake" cookies that are popular now. Every time they came out unevenly cooked. The oven doesn't seem to heat evenly from front to back either.

I was hoping to save space by getting three appliances in one. I ended up using it just as a microwave, and went back to my toaster and wall oven for any baking. The unit is quite a bit bigger than the midsized microwave oven it replaced, so in the end I ended up losing a little space. On the plus side, the unit has a nice porcelain interior and seems better constructed than the typical microwave.

This is a good idea, poorly executed. I wouldn't recommend this product, even at the clearance price I paid.

During 3 years of owning this toaster we had to get it replaced twice. Both times the knob for pushing down the toast broke. What an annoyance! However, when it was working, this toaster made very good toast, and warmed bagels just fine. It has a very nice appearance, and I must say the Cuisinart company was good about replacing their product. Now if they could just figure out a way to improve that knob .....

I was skeptical of this toaster based on the prior reviews. But when we saw it at Costco for $39.99, we had to give it a try. And so far it's been a very good buy.
We wanted a toaster that could make 4 slices of regular toast, but also toast slices of specialty breads that won't fit in a regular toaster without flipping the slice over, and then burning the middle. This definitely does that.
So far it has been very consistent. I like mine medium, my wife likes hers barely toasted, and we haven't had any problems yet. As far as we're concerned, that is all we care about. The score of 4 stars is only due to the fact that we haven't had it very long, and almost no product is perfect. For the price, I recommend giving it a shot!!

After going through 3 toasters in the past 4 years, I was hoping for something that would toast my bread without burning it or having to put in through 2 or 3 cycles and found it! This cuisinart ... is definitely one of the more expensive toasters out there, but the price is equal to 2 of my throw-away toasters and I will have and enjoy it for the next 10 years. The controls are intuitive as well as easy to clean and the overall design is one that I am proud to leave out on my countertop.

At last, something that does what it is supposed to. A toaster that toasts muffins, bagels, long and thick homemade bread slices, and of course, regular white bread. No regrets with this appliance.

...in quality, not price.

The brushed-metal looks cheap and the plastic handles complete the impression.

All in all, this looks like a plastic toaster. I passed on it and got the VillaWare Retro 4 Slice toaster instead. The VillaWare's not a Dualit, but it's way better than this thing, for just a little more.

I purchased this toaster for it's retro styling. It's feel is rather cheap, it's performance is uneven and it's quite the spacehog. Previously had a Krups with two elongated slots ... so it could handle four standard slices or two long slices (like the incredible sliced Calandra my household loves). I should have stuck with the Krups until another two slot four slice came along. I'm back in the market again.

I bought this toaster because I'm attracted to retro appliances and it fit well into my kitchen design. Amazingly, it's the best toaster I've ever owned, by far. It accommodates breads and bagels and everything between and toasts them evenly at any setting. It doesn't just sit there and look good...it works.

I was so thrilled to receive this large food processor for Christmas after having to use a 2 (or 3?)-cup Proctor Silex for 3 years. I almost gave that little chopper away.... Thank goodness I didn't!

My first day with the food processor started out wonderfully. I chopped tomatoes, apples, pears, lettuce - whatever I could find in the fridge that warranted a good chopping :). Then I made hummus. As soon as all the ingredients turned into a lovely paste, I heard a horrible grinding sound. The machine stopped. A suspicious smell of burning plastic wafted through the air. It would only work in spots after that - and then it just wouldn't work at all.

We exchanged the machine for a new one exactly like the first, hoping that the first one we got stopped working because of a manufacturing fluke. After washing all of the pieces (except the base, of course)and putting them all together, the second food processor made a short grinding noise and then wouldn't start at all. What a joke.

If you want to save time and spare yourself some aggravation, don't buy this product. I'm back to using the little chopper until we can find an affordable and functioning larger food processor. It may be less convenient, but at least it works. :)

I've been wanting a food processor for a long time, but they are usually so expensive that I gave on getting one. It wasn't until I went to Kohls to look for a blender that I spotted the Black & decker food Processor which I read the reviews about it at Amazon.com. The things that was said about it are so true. It's reasonable priced, holds the same amount of food as the more expensive ones do and it does the same about of work: slices, chops, makes dough,etc... I would highly reconmend anyone who loves to cook to buy it.

This Black & Decker food processor is a truly great kitchen device. It's as good as a Cuisinart model, for a fraction of the cost. I've used it to make pesto, puree soups, blend herbed butters and many other tasks. It does these jobs with gusto and ease, and offers a pulse speed- a slower mode that is good for gentler mixing/chopping, and a high speed that will really chop things up. There is a food chute which allows you to add ingredients or liquids while processing without splattering stuff all over the place. Have you ever cut your fingers accidentally on a razor-sharp processor blade? That will never happen with this model because in a very intelligent design decision, the cutting blade is serrated! It is more than sharp enough to cut/blend when turned on, but you cannot cut yourself on it when you handle the blade. Very smart move and much appreciated by this chef. With a ten-cup capacity, the processor is large enough to hold plenty of liquid/food. Clean-up is a breeze- just twist the bowl off, remove the top and soak in hot water and soap. The machine comes with a dough-mixing attachment, which I haven't used yet. Highly recommended.

We we're so excited when we opened the box, read all the instructions and plugged it in. Waited the 30 minutes and found no cooling...fan motor not running. Called and left message on the Vector customer service line, said they would return call in 24 hours...They did, told me what to try and then decided it was defective. Returned to Target.direct - easy, but shy about reordering...think we'll try another brand. Too bad, cause it would have been perfect for our applications.

The unit is not as loud as the previous user described. Its a nice quiet fan. Ive heard some pretty loud PC Fans, and this is nothing compared to that! It holds 6 12oz. Cans nicely. Though I will say that they are not getting cold as fast as I would like. Its been aprox. 5.5hrs and they are barely cold. Hopefully tomorrow they'll be nice and chilly. The other downfall is that it shows on the box pictures you can lay the unit on its back to place meals in, and for car travel. This would seem impossible since the fan is on the back, and it tells you not to obstruct this fan for cooling purposes. And lastly, The COOL - HOT switch is right on the side, in an easy to flip by accident kinda spot. I would certainly hate to find, when im at the peak of thirst, that the switch has been turned to HOT. HOT Soda sounds like a BIG Problem! Other than that, nice little product.

Well, I have had this little fridge for 2 days now and so far it works great, It can fit very tall bottles, sobe and 32oz. bottles fit with about a 1 in. clearance. Something my old mini fridge couldn't fit. The only complaint I have is that it doesn't get very cold, I like my drinks ice cold. I left a thermometer in overnight and the fridge only got down to 54*F. Not impressed with its cooling, but what can you except for the [price I paid]? A great thing about this fridge is that you can take it anywhere, you can even take it with you in the car. It comes with a AC/DC adaptor so you can use it at home or on the road. Overall this is a great fridge and would highly recommend it. It's perfect for garage, dorm, desk, bedroom, car or anywhere you want a cold (but not ice cold) drink.