Comes with added eccentricty (De Dietrich DTG795X)

Member Name: cybcyb

Product:	De Dietrich DTG795X
Date:	22/01/09 (125 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Stylish, spacious

Disadvantages: Beware of build quality.

A gas hob really isn't the most interesting thing to talk about but I shall persevere so you get a good understanding of this five burner gas hobs aesthetics and usability.

The gas hob was easy fit - well it was for the engineer who fitted it for us into a standard IKEA cabinet meaning you should not have any problems with last minute glitches in getting something like this fitted neatly.

The hob consist of four standard size burners and a much larger "wok" burner on the left hand side. We use the large burner quite often for family cooking as it is more powerful (the website details the varied power levels of each burner).

Covering the burner are the small circular plates which cannot be removed unless you have a screwdriver handy - In other words, there not for you and I to remove! This is a petty as it's something we would normally clean of the hob for ease and thoroughness.

Standing on top of the the burners are two iron grilles that your pots and pans stand on, they are heavy and sturdy and can be removed with ease for cleaning purposes. We don't have a dishwasher but we just place them in a huge bucket of lukewarm water to clean, I don't know if putting them into a dishwasher would be safe or practical.

Being cleaning fanatics in the house we didn't find this to be a chore as we clean up spills as we make them! Sometimes I think we make spills on purpose.

The glass surface covering the hob is a shiny black and is also easy to clean but can smear sometimes. Despite having self-confessed cleaning freaks in the house it can be annoying trying to remove smudges. The silver brushed metal area is also easy to clean but we are wary that it could be very easy to scratch.

THE NEGATIVE #1
Underneath the burners is the glass plate and this is where we had our first incident. We initially thought disaster had struck as our rather expensive gas hob (costing £400) had broken in less than three months. The glass appeared to have cracked, in fact part of the black under coating had degraded revealing some silver lining. Nonetheless, it did require an engineer to replace the glass plate, taking him about 40 minutes to do so.

Be wary of this as there is no way this could have happened from general use as the damage from was under the glass plate.

THE NEGATIVE #2
Perhaps it was because we had only previously used a traditional standalone cooker that we found the knobs that ignite the cooker a little bit confusing perhaps even eccentric.

Whereas traditional cookers ignite first and then allowing you to increase the flame, on this hob, you ignite first and then go slightly clockwise to go to full output but go too far and you switch the hob off again! Conversely, from ignition point, you go anti-clockwise to gradually reduce the output.

We found this hard to get used to as we're in the habit of turning anti-clockwise to completely reduce and kill off the gas - but on this hob, it keeps the gas on the lowest output meaning we left the gas running, wasting energy and money.

CONCLUSION
Overall, I wouldn't go straight to this item unless the style of the hob fits perfectly into your kitchen design. It does the job but we have lost some confidence in this work horse.

Summary: A stylish, spacious hob with a little bit of eccentricty thrown in to boot