14 recommendations for the right purchase + the best manufacturers

The task of choos­ing a hob, for those who, for var­i­ous rea­sons, do not fit a free-stand­ing stove, has a fair­ly sim­ple solu­tion. Maybe you don’t need an oven, or your kitchen has very lit­tle space. For the sake of sav­ing work­space, many peo­ple pre­fer to reduce the num­ber of burn­ers, and some, on the con­trary, increase it. Stand­alone hob or com­plete with oven? What details should be focused on? Let’s take a look at the arti­cle below.

Type of surface material

Enamel

Enam­elled sur­faces are con­sid­ered the most afford­able because of their low price and ease of main­te­nance. How­ev­er, units cov­ered with enam­el are not resis­tant to mechan­i­cal and ther­mal loads, as well as to the effects of var­i­ous agents and rough mate­ri­als.

Dif­fer in a wide range of col­or shades.

Enam­elled sur­faces

Aluminum

Alu­minum equip­ment is con­ve­nient and prac­ti­cal to use, while it has an accept­able cost. Alu­minum pan­els are resis­tant to mechan­i­cal and ther­mal stress, unlike enam­eled ones.

Alu­minum Coat­ed

Tip: Alu­minum is impact resis­tant, but it can scratch. When car­ing for an alu­minum pan­el, it is not rec­om­mend­ed to use abra­sive prod­ucts.

Stainless steel

Hobs made of stain­less steel are avail­able to most buy­ers, despite the fact that their price is high­er than enam­eled and alu­minum. They dif­fer in spec­tac­u­lar appear­ance, at the same time, they are char­ac­ter­ized by high strength and resis­tance to mechan­i­cal and ther­mal loads.

Among the minus­es, one can sin­gle out the fact that prints and stains can remain on the sur­face of the steel.

Stain­less steel

glass ceramics

Glass-ceram­ic hobs are cur­rent­ly the most pop­u­lar, although they are expen­sive. They have a mod­ern design and have many advan­tages com­pared to pan­els made of oth­er mate­ri­als, includ­ing:

• absolute­ly flat sur­face;
• ease of clean­ing;
• rapid heat­ing of only the zone above the burn­er itself.

glass ceram­ics

Use­ful: Glass-ceram­ic requires spe­cial care, it can­not be cleaned with abra­sive prod­ucts. Spilled liq­uid, espe­cial­ly con­tain­ing sug­ar, must be cleaned up imme­di­ate­ly, oth­er­wise it can destroy the sur­face struc­ture and reduce its strength.

Strained glass

Enam­elled self-con­tained stoves with tem­pered glass inserts look no worse than glass-ceram­ic ones. The main care for such a sur­face is clean­ing with soft prod­ucts.

Like ordi­nary enam­eled ones, the instal­la­tions are dis­tin­guished by a vari­ety of shades.

Strained glass

Varieties of burners

The heat­ing rate and, accord­ing­ly, the pow­er con­sump­tion depend on this para­me­ter.

1. Cast iron — have the shape of pan­cakes and are already out­dat­ed, because they win only because of the low price. Dis­ad­van­tage: they heat up for a long time, con­sume a lot of elec­tric­i­ty, they do not look very nice.
2. Hi-Light — you should know that this is a heat­ing ele­ment in the form of a tape enclosed in an asbestos base. Heat­ing occurs smooth­ly and quick­ly: in 5–7 sec­onds. Wide­ly used in glass-ceram­ic units.
3. Rapid — the spi­ral ele­ment reach­es the desired tem­per­a­ture in 10–12 sec­onds and cools down quick­ly after turn­ing off. They are also installed on glass-ceram­ic appli­ances.
4. Halo­gen — in addi­tion to the spi­ral heater, a halo­gen lamp is installed in them. Togeth­er they pro­vide just instant heat. But there is also a minus — the entire pan­el becomes hot, and not just the place of cook­ing.

In fair­ness, I would like to say that you prob­a­bly won’t have to think for a long time which ones are bet­ter: most of the prod­ucts pre­sent­ed in stores have a Hi-Light heater. Oth­er vari­eties are much less com­mon.

Control type

Mechanical

The mechan­i­cal type of con­trol for turn­ing on and off burn­ers, as well as tem­per­a­ture con­trol, is based on turn­ing the knob. Dif­fers in sim­plic­i­ty and reli­a­bil­i­ty.

Touch

Touch type con­trol is car­ried out by touch­ing the touch but­tons. The advan­tage of this type is the ease of main­te­nance due to the per­fect­ly smooth sur­face.

Mechan­i­cal con­trol

Touch con­trol

Shape and dimensions

The shape of the hob and its dimen­sions affect the over­all appear­ance of the kitchen and the lev­el of com­fort when cook­ing.

Cur­rent­ly, man­u­fac­tur­ers, in addi­tion to stan­dard square ones, offer var­i­ous vari­a­tions of the shapes of cook­ing sur­faces, includ­ing:

• Rec­tan­gu­lar;
• round;
• Hon­ey­combs — hexa­gons that look like hon­ey­combs;
• Tri­an­gu­lar.

Calculation of the maximum permitted hob width

To deter­mine the opti­mal size of the sur­face cor­re­spond­ing to the para­me­ters of the kitchen, it is nec­es­sary to plan the room in advance and take mea­sure­ments.

Rec­om­men­da­tions:

1. From the side wall to the hob, a free gap of at least 30 cm should be left. Fur­ther, dish­es with ready-made dish­es can be placed in this place.
2. For the cut­ting table, you need to take 60–100 cm. This will be enough to pre­pare the prod­ucts. A small­er size can lead to burns when cook­ing, and with a larg­er size, you will have to make a lot of unnec­es­sary move­ments and spend extra time on it.
3. The sink should be locat­ed 40–60 cm from the side wall so that splash­es do not fall on it. It is also nec­es­sary to write down the width of the kitchen sink, then this fig­ure will be need­ed for cal­cu­la­tions.

At the end, you will need to add up all the rec­om­mend­ed gaps and the width of indi­vid­ual zones and sub­tract this amount from the total length of the wall where you plan to place the table, sink and pan­el. The result­ing fig­ure will be the max­i­mum allow­able width of the hob.

Detailed instructions for self-assembly

The hob for the kitchen can be nar­row (small) and wide, oper­ate on nat­ur­al gas, elec­tric­i­ty, or use both “fuels” at the same time. Regard­less of the method of exe­cu­tion, the instal­la­tion must adhere to gen­er­al­ly accept­ed rules.

So let’s start with the tools. When the work­top is built into new kitchen fur­ni­ture and the hole in the coun­ter­top has not yet been cut out, an elec­tric drill or a jig­saw will be required. To work, all mod­ern stoves are con­nect­ed to a sta­tion­ary net­work, so you will also need pli­ers, a sharp knife, an amme­ter and a screw­driv­er.

It is bet­ter to install the sock­et near the hob, its loca­tion will direct­ly depend on the con­fig­u­ra­tion of the fur­ni­ture, the size and shape of the kitchen room. The stan­dard equip­ment of the stove, in addi­tion to the work­ing sur­face, also includes an oven. Since the elec­tric pan­el is installed with­out a cab­i­net, it can be con­nect­ed to a sock­et, which is rec­om­mend­ed to be installed below the sur­face to pre­vent grease and mois­ture from enter­ing dur­ing the cook­ing process.

After installing the kitchen wall, the pow­er source, you can start installing the stove itself. To do all the work cor­rect­ly, we sug­gest you use the step-by-step instruc­tions:

1. It is impor­tant to ini­tial­ly deter­mine the size of the open­ing to be cut in the kitchen work­top by mea­sur­ing. It is bet­ter to make a mod­el made of thick card­board accord­ing to the stan­dards, which is then attached to the coun­ter­top and care­ful­ly out­lined with a pen­cil.
   

   Impor­tant! There must be a gap of a few mil­lime­ters between the edges of the desk­top and the pan­el body.

2. The cut hole should be marked as accu­rate­ly as pos­si­ble. It is not rec­om­mend­ed to cut it too close to the edge of the table, because the thin extreme sec­tions are not strong, they break.
3. In the cor­ners of the result­ing area with an elec­tric drill, you need to drill small through holes (the ide­al solu­tion is to use drills with a diam­e­ter of 7 to 11 mil­lime­ters). When mak­ing through holes, the drill should be installed, held to the sur­face to be treat­ed strict­ly at a right angle.
4. The cut­ting blade of the jig­saw should have fine teeth, this will pre­vent the for­ma­tion of chips on the cut­ting line. Hav­ing installed the can­vas in the pre­pared hole, slow­ly, cut­ting along the markup is per­formed smooth­ly, while the tool must be pressed tight­ly against the table­top.
5. After cut­ting, you should check its cor­rect­ness — the built-in cook­ing sur­face should freely enter its seat, there should also be a small gap. If nec­es­sary, the edges are slight­ly trimmed.
6. It is bet­ter to pro­tect the out­er parts of the wood­en coun­ter­top from mois­ture. To do this, they are treat­ed with a sealant, after which a spe­cial sealant is glued, which is sup­plied as stan­dard.
7. The pan­el installed in the hole with a light touch of the hands sits down until the edges fit snug­ly against the wood­en table­top. Sil­i­cone is pre-applied along the bor­der, which ensures reli­able seal­ing of the joint. Press­ing on the hob should be very care­ful, espe­cial­ly when it is made of glass. Impor­tant! The pan­el must lie on the sur­face of the coun­ter­top even­ly, oth­er­wise, when installing heavy dish­es, it may break.
8. At the final stage of instal­la­tion, the cook­ing sur­face is care­ful­ly attached to the coun­ter­top with met­al clips. Their instal­la­tion is car­ried out from below the pan­el, the case is firm­ly fixed. Excess sil­i­cone pro­trud­ing above the sur­face is care­ful­ly removed with a sharp knife. When an oven is placed under the hob, an insu­lat­ing lay­er is required.

How to install the hob in a wood­en work­top, demon­strate the fol­low­ing video clips:

Mount­ing the hob on the coun­ter­top.

How to embed a hob into a kitchen work­top

Additional functions

Mod­ern mod­els of hobs have a num­ber of fea­tures and addi­tion­al func­tions that dis­tin­guish them from ordi­nary stoves.

1. Safe­ty shut­down — is a device designed to turn off indi­vid­ual burn­ers or the entire instal­la­tion, if for a cer­tain time it does not receive com­mands from the con­trol sys­tem.
2. Iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of the mate­r­i­al and dimen­sions of dish­es. The func­tion allows you to turn on the burn­er only when the pan is locat­ed with­in the heat­ing zone. The sys­tem rec­og­nizes the dimen­sions and fill lev­el of the dish­es.
3. Mem­o­ry write — pro­gram­ming of cook­ing time on dif­fer­ent burn­ers, with the pos­si­bil­i­ty of con­trol.
4. Remov­able mag­net­ic han­dles — a func­tion that pro­tects against acci­den­tal switch­ing on and off.
5. Auto­mat­ic boil­ingor auto­mat­ic boil­ing con­trol — a spe­cial sys­tem based on the oper­a­tion of sen­sors that deter­mine the tem­per­a­ture of the heat­ing of the dish­es.
6. Resid­ual heat indi­ca­torwhich allows you to warn that the sur­face has not yet cooled down to pre­vent burns.
7. Child pro­tec­tionwhich is to lock the con­trol pan­el.

User Reviews

Kup­pers­berg FT6VS16. My wife and I were doing repairs in the kitchen and decid­ed to update the appli­ances at the same time. The Kup­pers­berg com­pa­ny was inter­est­ed, they chose and bought this hob and hood from them. And we were very hap­py with our choice! The burn­ers heat up well and have expan­sion zones, which is very con­ve­nient when cook­ing sev­er­al dish­es at the same time. I liked the fact that there is a timer and pro­tec­tion from the kids, you no longer have to watch the tomboys when they are in the kitchen. We have been using it for sev­er­al months now and hope that it will serve us for many, many years.

Mikhail Cher­net­sky

https://market.yandex.ru/product/12648209/reviews?track=tabs

Hot­point-Aris­ton KIA640C. The hob is very func­tion­al. Fast heat­ing, safe to use (auto­mat­i­cal­ly turns off when water gets on the pan­el dur­ing cook­ing). A very con­ve­nient “timer” func­tion, you set a cer­tain peri­od, after which it gives a sig­nal about the end of cook­ing and auto­mat­i­cal­ly turns off. The dis­ad­van­tage is expen­sive clean­ing prod­ucts for induc­tion cook­ers.

Mali­ka Tsurkan

https://market.yandex.ru/product/13718210/reviews?track=tabs

Popular brands

Hobs can be rough­ly divid­ed into three price cat­e­gories.

• The first cat­e­go­ry includes elite expen­sive high-class equip­ment from man­u­fac­tur­ers Miele, Gagge­nau, AEG, Kup­pers­busch, etc.
• The sec­ond cat­e­go­ry includes mid­dle-class equip­ment that meets the require­ments of the opti­mal price-qual­i­ty ratio of Elec­trolux, Whirlpool, Goren­je, Zanus­si, Bosch, Siemens, etc. brands.
• The third cat­e­go­ry is con­sid­ered to be bud­get, this includes devices from Ardo, Hansa, Aris­ton with lim­it­ed func­tion­al­i­ty and low­er cost.

Pop­u­lar brands

Rating of the best manufacturers

Elec­tric hobs

• Siemens;
• Zanus­si;
• Goren­je;
• Sam­sung.

Gas hobs

Com­bined hobs

• Smeg;
• Asko;
• Ardo;
• Hot­point-Aris­ton.

Expert advice when choosing a hob

So that the hob does not dis­ap­point, con­sid­er the fol­low­ing cri­te­ria when buy­ing:

• the size of the hob, deter­mined by the over­all para­me­ters of the coun­ter­top;
• type of heat­ing and mate­r­i­al of exe­cu­tion;
• pow­er, num­ber and size of burn­ers;
• loca­tion of heat­ing zones;
• ease of man­age­ment, oper­a­tion and main­te­nance;
• safe­ty;
• addi­tion­al use­ful fea­tures.

Watch a video on how to choose a hob

Power

One of the main para­me­ters that you should pay atten­tion to is the work­ing pow­er of the hob. Its total indi­ca­tor depends on the size and num­ber of burn­ers, the speed of heat­ing and the type of heat­ing ele­ment.

Burn­ers of dif­fer­ent sizes con­sume dif­fer­ent amounts of ener­gy.

Most elec­tric hobs range from 3 to 10 kilo­watts.

Many stan­dard mod­els have four burn­ers, with 3 kW for the largest burn­er, 1.5 kW for two medi­um burn­ers, and up to 1 kW for one small burn­er.

This is due to the dif­fer­ent intend­ed use of the burn­ers.:

• Small suit­able for brew­ing cof­fee, heat­ing food or small pots up to two liters;
• Medi­um suit­able for con­tain­ers up to three liters and cook­ing var­i­ous veg­etable dish­es;
• Large Suit­able for fry­ing meat and cook­ing in large pots.

What pow­er and con­fig­u­ra­tion of the hob to choose? You decide. How­ev­er, con­sid­er not only the size of the fam­i­ly and your needs, but also the con­di­tion of the wiring. Old com­mu­ni­ca­tions may sim­ply not with­stand a pow­er­ful device.