A frustrating and overpriced option
2/5
I thought I'd give this hob at least a year of use before reviewing, and in that time, it's definitely disappointed. I'm no stranger to cooking on induction, but this AEG model misses the mark in a few places.
There are 15 power levels (including the 'P' boost setting); but only a handful of them are actually of any use. Anything below 11 is useless for all but keeping an already-hot dish warm (not a simmer; just keeping it palatably warm).
Power level 14 (and 'P') are, expectedly, so powerful as to only be useful for boiling water or stir frying (no complaints there).
However, for cooking on a moderate heat, this leaves you constantly fumbling somewhere between 11-13, in an effort to moderate heat output.
To make matters worse, for some reason these useful cooking powers have been left in an unlabelled strip on the (linear, despite the power output feeling anything but linear) power selector scale. Labels are 0, 1, 3, 5, 8, 10, 14, P and - per above - you'll find yourself mostly stroking your thumb (and clean, dry thumbs only, please) somewhere between 10-14, blindly hoping to reach your desired power.
The cook zones are comparatively smaller in diameter than other induction hobs I've used (including considerably cheaper induction hobs). This will affect cheap (or thinner) pans more than, say, a dutch oven. It does also render the ability to pair cook zones a little moot, as there's a large blank cool spot in the middle.
There is considerable delay between the hob acknowledging that cookware has been placed on the hob, and actually activating the induction zone. For example, the flashing 'F' indicator will stop and turn to the relevant cook setting number, but you can hear the induction circuit doesn't activate for up to 10 seconds - even on high power outputs.
To compensate, I find myself turning the hob off and back on to get it to activate quicker (the impatience is my fault here..). Not the end of the world, but feels frustratingly unresponsive at times.
You cannot turn off the screeching 'beep' when turning the hob on/off (or using some, but not all settings).
I haven't (yet?) found a way to make the timer stop beeping when time's up. I'd like to just turn off the hob when using a countdown timer, but you're forced to acknowledge it. Perhaps a safety feature, but a small irk nonetheless.
I've not had any success with the 'prevent boilover' technology: I've run a couple of experiments (using the instructions as reference, and following its impractical-in-real-cooking-scenarios prerequisites), only to watch the pan boil over, or have the heat turned off too quickly.
The design of the hob is sleek (albeit, aren't most induction hobs by their very nature?). I imagine the integration with AEG extractor fans would be a nice feature, although I'm not able to try it out.
At the end of the day, it does what I need it to do: but in a clunky manner, and at considerably more expense than what I could have achieved with a much cheaper induction hob.
Do not recommend.
