Hi everyone

This is a review of our new Miele 5954 induction cooktop (30" induction, but the Canadian model). Most of the comments will apply to the US model also I guess.

One of the reason we originally fell in love with this cooktop is in part because of the layout of the elements. On our previous crappy Maytag range, the large front element died a few years ago. Since we knew a kitchen remodel was in the air there was no point in fix it.

So for the last two years we had to saute and stir-fry on the other large element of the Maytag range located at the back. From this painful experience we knew we wanted a large element at the front of our new cooking surface.

The Miele cooktop surface is big at more then 31" wide so there is a lot of space for big pots and the largest element is in the front. The drawback is that the cooktop will not fit in a standard 30" cabinet. Having the largest element at the front when using a large frying pan is nice.

Also we really liked the idea of being able to install a drawer directly under the cooktop. In a small kitchen, having the luxury of a 27" wide x 22" deep x 2" tall drawer is a really nice bonus.

This model requires a very small amount of space under the counter (actually less in the Canadian model then on the US one for some strange reason). This drawer is used to store all the cooking utensils.

A friend of ours has the Ge Profile 30" induction cooktop and it's a very nice cooktop with the large element at the front, but the stainless trim on that model is too easy to scratch. The Miele has a very small stainless trim giving some protection to the glass from side impacts but no place to show scratches. The trim is also sealed.

The individual timers on each elements are a nice bonus, but were not a criteria for our decision. They do however work very well. When we cooked rice the timer proved to be a nice feature.

Now for performance, speed is amazing as expected from an induction cooktop. This cooktop has a two level booster on the largest element.

It also has another nice feature called an auto cook mode. When adjusting the power output of an element. if you press > first the element will turn on at max power for a short period of time and go back to the setting selected automatically. If you press > instead it will turn on to the requested setting.

The controls work well. I was a bit worried after reading some posts on this forum from people having a problem with responsiveness of the touch pad. Our unit works perfectly and the controls are easy to use.

The price was at the top end of our budget, but overall we are happy with the unit.