To give you some perspective on this, the lowest setting on a Bosch induction cooktop held water in a saucepan around 100F when we tested it. The steps (1, 1.5, 2, 2.5, etc.) seemed to equate to about 10 degree increments. We figured that any kind of custard or sauce you could imagine would be a snip using that cooktop. Ditto working with chocolate. The Thermador equivalent appears to have an extra even lower setting at the bottom of the range.

I don't know whether your Viking is operating "as designed", but it certainly is not doing what I would expect from a induction.

I have a Thermador induction cooktop and on the very lowest settings on any of the hobs (0.5), you could hold a hollandaise or similar butter sauce for a long time without breaking or curdling. It certainly would not bring anything to a simmer or boil.

I have an Electrolux wall oven with convection. The fans make a low-pitched hum, not particularly loud, and certainly nowhere near as loud as the overhead vent which also is not particularly loud. When I turn the oven off, I usually leave the door ajar until the fans turn off, which takes a few minutes.

I hope someone with Viking will post if the OP's observations are true of all Viking ranges or not.

Cheryl

I called Viking and the person I spoke to did not think it should be behaving like this (the too high simmer) and it was certainly not a complaint she had heard before enough to say oh yeah that problem. I told her I had an appointment already but wanted to find out if it was a known problem or known behavior. So I guess we will see what happens when my repair man comes. It will be almost 2 weeks (due to my rural location and first appointment didn't work for me).

She did however not seem to be as surprised by my fan noise comments. We will again see what the repair man says.

Still curious if anyone else had any experience like this.

I do love the looks, the quick heat up, easy cleanup, the temperature does respond instantly - when I turn it down from boil the bubbles just disappear as soon as I turn the dial. But then left on simmer they return... what I am doing now is switching whatever needs low simmer to the back burners since they work fine. But I shouldn't have to do that.

If this is a problem that can be fixed I'd be very happy with this despite the fan noise. It does a beautiful convection roast. Although I do wonder how my little Miele can do it so much quiter -- the customer service person did day the fan has to run more if using the induction burners and oven together (which I usually do) -- the fan has to keep it cool enough not to shut down the induction burners.

PostVT, I'm wondering if you asked Brad (luv2putt), who started the thread about his Red Viking induction. Didn't see any comments in that thread about the oven at all, or anything about difficulty with simmering on some burners. But in the last post in that thread, he gives an email address to contact him directly.

That thread has posts by a number of other VIking induction range owners, as well. The link is below.

Here is a link that might be useful: Racing Red Induction

I just thought I'd post a follow up. I had an email about this (but couldn't reply to it) so I thought I'd update everyone in case someone else finds this and wonders.

On the front burner low simmer problems it turned out that I had a problem with 2 burners and another owner on this web site had a problem with only 1. So I knew before I called that it wasn't a consistent design flaw but probably was something that could be fixed.

The repairman came and he noticed (that I hadn't) that you could hear the problem too - that on the front burners on simmer it wasn't kicking in and out like on the back (there is a faint hum when it kicks on -- the front was steady hum it wasn't cycling in and out the heat to get the nice low temp). Clearly something broken. They replaced (warranty) both the main control board and temperature sensors for those burners. It works great now - nice low simmer (very low need to turn up to med low to cook rice -- the simmer is even lower a nice barely keep warm).

So that was a defect and was solved.

However, the repairman did say my fan noise was normal. I might call Viking about it and see what they say. The cooling fans are quite loud (to me) and continue for a while after turning it off. I finally feel relaxed after cleaning up dinner when the sound stops... I'd say 15 minutes to cook french fries and the cooling off fan runs for 30 after I turn it off. My little Miele speed oven is much quieter when the fan runs. I don't know how this oven sound wise would compare to other current full sized ovens. The oven works great -- but it is noisy.

On my Viking induction oven, all of the burners have different wattages. The front left is the highest at 2300 watt element, so if I'm boiling something, that the burner, I'm using. Where the back left is the weakest at 1400 watts, so I simmer there. The right side is equal at 1850 watts each. Hopefully that helps,

We had the Viking induction range briefly. We had no issues with the burners, but the fan noise from the oven and no good indication of actual oven temperature (I do a lot of baking) were big no no’s for me. We returned the Viking and got the Miele instead.