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joanlast_gw

Any thoughts on Dacor slide in induction range?

JoanLast
10 years ago

I would love to hear experience or thoughts on the Dacor 30 inch Renaissance slide in induction range.

Comments (7)

  • deeageaux
    10 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    $5200 and their power hob is rated at 2800 watts.

    Many people have posted that electric heating element and/or circuit board in Dacor electric ovens go bust after 10 years or so.


    Samsung NE597N0PBSR $1999
    Power Hob rated 4600 watts


    Right now Manufacture Rebate $400
    Take home price $1599 with free shipping.
    If you look a little harder maybe you can find a better deal.

  • jwvideo
    10 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    The Dacor range stove is $5299 at AJ Madison but US Appliance seems to be offering it for $4999.

    But I agree with Deeagaux that the Dacor seems like a so-so range performancewise and twice as expensive as anything else except Viking ($2k more) and the Ilve (about the same price).

    As Deeagaux notes, the Dacor induction has two 7.75" hobs (2.8kWh) and two 5.5" hos (2.3 kWh). Both small hobs are up front with touchpad burner controls along the front edge of the cooktop. Those kWh numbers are max settings, so only one burner per side can be run at full power (pretty much true of every induction range I've seen in the US market.)

    Layout seems a lot like the Whirlpool/Maytag induction units which are 1/3 the price, except that the Dacor has front mounted oven controls and is available in a color (black) besides stainless. Whirlpool induction products (including Maytag and Kitchenaid as weil as appliances for Ikea) have been the subject of complaints about operational noise and issues with long term unreliability. Haven't seen anything that says, one way or another, if Dacor has outsourced its induction appliances or components. DOn't know what to make of the similarity to the WP products.

    The Dacor has a thin blacksplash and is avalable as a slide-in. That means its cooktop has the room of a pro-style stove at a price about $2k less than VIking's induction range. (No knobs controls, though). SIgnificantly more cooktop room for multiple big pans than with the GE and Electrolux slide-in induction ranges. Same thing with the Samsung induction ranges. Whether that matters to you or not is a matter of your personal preferences

    Curiously, the Dacor user manual specifically forbids using pans smaller than the hob diameters (first time I've seen that.) Nothing in there about maximum pans sizes, but folks don't usually buy Dacor ranges when they plan on big canning projects so maybe Dacor just didn't publish a warning as some appliance makers do. (AFAIK, both the GE and Samsung are fine with canning kettles.)

    The manual also forbids spanning burners with a griddle. GE permits burning spanning on the left side and the Samsung freestanding NE597NOPBSR specifially enables you to link the two left side burners to a single control.

    A 7.75 diamter burner can handle most large pans. For instance, a 12" All-Clad skillet -- that's 12" measured across the flared rim --- has a base that, for induction purposes, is about 9" across. Others (Cuisinart, for example) have smaller bases, and so should fit just fine. A Lodge 12" diameter cast-iron skillet has a base that is about 9.5" across. I have a Sitram 12 quart stockpot with an induction disk base that is 7.5" across -- which, according the Dacor manual, means I should not use it on one of the big burners. Probably can use it as it is is only 1/4" smaller in diameter and most induction burners will allow down to 70% of burner diameter -- and sometimes even 60% of burner diameter -- before the pan-recognition sensors fail to recognize a pan. (There was a recent thread here on this topic, btw.)

    OTOH, some nominally larger pans may be too small for the large burners on the Dacor. For example, on my nominally 10" diameter Circulon non-stick fry pan, the induction base is only 6.5" across. If the Dacor manual is to be taken seriously, that pan would be confined to the 5.5" burners.

    Hob controls have a "low" setting (which probably means a low-end .5 step). ABove that, the heat settings go n whole number steps from 1 to 9 (no half steps) and a "H" setting. Interestingly, the H setting is like a boost setting but the manual does not note any time limits on using it. So, the H setting on the Dacor burners is less than the Boost/H setting on the GE and Samsung, but the continuous (non-power-shared) settings are probably about equal. In practical terms, this means you can boil large kettles of pasta water etc. faster on a GE and Samsung induction stove, and you have a bit finer control in the low and mid range settings with half-step settings.

    The blurb on the Dacor site says that the oven has a "green" steam-based, 30 minute light-duty self cleaning cycle in addition to the usual high-heat (pyrolitic) oven self-cleaning functions. (The Samsung does, too. GE was proposing that for the upcoming PHB915 model, but not sure if you can't do the same thing in the existing models.)

    Dacor specs a 50 Amp circuit where GE and Samsung spec a 40 Amp minimum.

    This may because the Dacor oven ostensibly has a 2.5 kWh (2550 watt) induction element around its induction fan. The oven in the Dacor also has a removable filter for the induction fan. I"ve seen it mentioned in some other Dacor threads but don't know if it is really useful or just a marketing gimmick.

    Hard to compare longevity and durability of induction ranges and warranty service from Dacor. Samsung warranty sevice seems highly variable with a sizable number of complaints . As Deeagaux says, there have been a fair number of reports here and elsewhere about Dacor electronics having somewhat short lives. Ten years on a Dacor seems like a generous estimate according to some posters here, though. I cannot say the Samsung would or would not be any better but it certainly would be a lot less expensive to replace.

    This post was edited by JWVideo on Fri, Jul 5, 13 at 23:39

  • JoanLast
    Original Author
    10 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    WOW!!!! Thank you so much Deeageaux and JWVideo! That was fabulous! I have a lot to think about. I liked the look of it. I liked the slide in factor. I did notice the green clean. I never clean my current oven due to chemicals. I can't even be around when running my dishwasher. LOL! Slightly over-sensitive...

    It's out due to the fact it takes longer to boil water. I want that crazy fast factor:-) I'm going to keep looking.

    So grateful!
    Joan

  • jwvideo
    8 years ago
    last modified: 8 years ago

    >>>"I'm confused by jwvideo's comments about the burner size."<<<

    My comment was written three years ago about the manual I found at that time. Dacor has probably updated both the range and the manual.

    >>>"I don't know if anybody is still watching this "thread,"<<<

    Been three years since anybody last commented, so nobody is watching it.

    FWIW, I think there was a question last year about Dacor vs. Samsung induction ranges. IIRC, however, nobody contributed anything about having or using a Dacor induction range.

    You might try the Yale Appliances web site and see if they have anything in their blogs about it.

    >>>" I cook with a saute pan almost every day, so this would be a huge problem if it was too large..."<<<

    As a practical matter, a pan with a 9½" diameter base on 9" induction burner should not be a problem. The rule of thumb for this (from most manufacturers, anyway) is that up
    to an inch larger in diameter than the burner field is not a problem.

    The concern with oversized pans on induction burners is that the parts of the pan's base that extend beyond the induction field won't be as hot as the rest of the base. Some of that difficulty can be mitigated somewhat if you are using a "clad" or "disk-base" pan which has a slug of aluminum encapsulated in it. The induction will heat the steel which radiates/conducts into the aluminum which has much better heat spreading abilities. OTOH, cast iron and carbon steel pans do a pretty poor job of conducting heat across the base. Their forte is absorbing and retaining high heat, not evenly distributing it. So, the hot-spot effect can be more pronounced with them when the pan size is larger than the burner's field.

    But, there is a kicker. When a maker says its burner has a 9" diameter -- or the maker just draws a 9" diameter circle for the burner on the stovetop --- that burner might or might not have a field that can go that big. The burner might have a smaller field and the maker was relying on the "rule of thumb" that I mentioned. Or, there might be some outright fibbing. Well, maybe not fibbing, exactly. A nine inch rating may be some marketing person's idea of how far they can stretch the size of the burner for bragging rights and huckstering. The worst examples of this that I have run across are with portable induction cookers (PICs). Many of them have 9" circles and claim to have 9" burners but the field actually turns out to be only about half of that size.

    I have no idea where Dacor sits with this issue. The company has been around for a while but, then, their stoves are so expensive, I would want to check one out before buying it.

    If you can find a Dacor induction slide-in to demo, you can find this out very quickly. Put an inch of water in your 3 qt. saute pan and crank that 9" diameter burner to high. If you see boiling only in the middle 4 to 6 inches of the pan, you are dealing with a burner with a smaller field than the claimed size indicates. If the boil pattern/bubbling spreads across most of the pan base, then the burner is big enough to do what you want when frying and sauteing.

    Of course, a limited boil pattern is no big deal with a stock pot of water. But it can be a big deal with a saute pan.

    Wish I had more info I could give you, but Dacor seems to have sold so few of these stoves that there just doesn't seem to be much info out there.

  • Traiana Paltzic
    7 years ago

    this Dacor model is not slide in, the slide in is when it has the cooktop over countertop , I will get back with a list of slide in models

  • jwvideo
    7 years ago
    last modified: 7 years ago

    Used to be the case that you could depend on any "slide-in" model having slight side overhangs to cover the gaps where the stove butted against the countertops. Not any more. The hucksters have been shifting the terminology on us. Several brands now offer what they call slide-in models but without the overhang over counters. Now, you have to look carefully at specs and pictures if you want the overhangs.Two examples that come to readily mind -- or at least to my mind :>P ---- are the Kitchenaid/JennAir models and the Miele slide in induction range.