A curate's egg (Rangemaster 90)

Member Name: alpha23

Product:	Rangemaster 90
Date:	03/09/09 (104 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: sturdy

Disadvantages: poor controls

I bought the Toledo (90 cms wide) as it was about the only range cooker with both gas hobs and more importantly a gas oven. (The second oven is electric).
The range is delivered and installed by Rangemaster who are both very good with their communications for arranging a date and time and very good with delivery. As my building work was incomplete they did not install it but installation is reasonably simple.
It is very much a cooker which does what it claims to do. The hob arrangement is slightly counter productive with both the simmer and highest rated rings both at the front. The non stick griddle sits on two gas rings and works well but it would have been more convenient if it were designed to sit on the wok burner.
The grill is very efficient and the gas oven works well.
The second oven is a strange appendage. It is not really wide enough to accept regular roasting pans and is clearly a cut down version from the wider (120 cms) Toledo model. However it is good as an ancillary oven and for an electric oven heats up reasonably quickly.
The ignition for the grill broke (probably a combination of my incompetence and poor design). Rangemaster arranged for a service engineer to correct it within two days. The service engineer came from a sub contractor that services a complete range of manufacturers so it was reassuring when he said that it was his favourite cooker - easy to repair - hardly anything went wrong with them compared to others - and that it was really well built.
It is easy to clean but the silver rings around the hob burners do get dirty very easily.
It has some major faults.
The smaller electric has a nice magnetic catch so the door is very easy to close. The gas over has some kind of spring bayonet catch which requires a firm action like slamming the door to ensure it closes. Often it just rebounds back open.
The controls have had no design input at all from any human being. They are a complete mess. Some turn clockwise, some anti clockwise; some begin at the highest setting and turn to the lowest, others start at the lowest and turn to the highest; the geography of the controls, which control effects which burner/oven is poorly laid out so you are often turning the wrong thing on. For the cost of this cooker you would expect something better than this.
In conclusion - it works - looks quite good and has really bad controls.

Summary: quite good