Philips Viva Collection HD4928/01 2100-Watt Induction Cooktop (Black)

Have been using it since last 6 months and I do not have any LPG stove in our 3 member family. Every cooking is being done on this cooktop and I must say, I have used every single penny I spent. And hopefully it will be giving no issues in next 1 year as well.

Nice

Over all I’m really disappointed by the product and especially cooking experience. I was used to normal gas and it was easy to regulate to propper temperature. This product has only like 8 temperature settings and it is either too hot or too cold and cannot be set in middle. For example when I set 160°C then it is burning toasts and onions… When I set one step lower it is 130°C and it is not enough for frying :(((.

Also you need to buy more expensive induction friendly cookware. And even when I invest to expensive Tefal pan it heat mostly in the center and it is much colder on the edges… You can see on pictures that watter boiling only in middle, and toast being burnt in middle and raw outside :((( The pan is very good and has induction area over whole bottom so I’m sure the fault is in this philips stove… You can see the pan from bottom that induction area is almost over whole bottom… Also due to fact that only center is hot then frying onions is taking much longer than on normal gas stove where heat is better distributed :((( And even though you spent more time frying the onions the result is worse… Onion is little burned from outside and still not soft inside… I’m really disappointed by frying experience compared to gas stove…

There is one positive side and that is that heating is quick. My pressure cooker star whistling quite quickly. Faster than on gas stove. Also you can set time for like 10 minut and leave it which is quite convenient…

Controll is easy. But I hate details. First I love one detail. There is “pause” button which is very cool. If something heats too quickly or you just need to quickly do something else you press pause button and there is no new heat – It is much nicer compared to gas stove where you would need to turn off, light up again and then find right flame again… Here you just press pause again and cook as before… But that is only thing that I love. Otherwise I hate how it is designed…. First basiclly whole top row of buttons is useless. Those buttons are preset temperatures. But anyway those temperatures are wrong or just for items you do not cook… Like there is ‘stirr fry’ button and it set 180C. It totally burns onion… I set usually 180C for beginning and then soon change for 160C. But even 160C is too much burning… But lower setting is only 130C which is not frying at all. I would need like 150C I guess and it is impossible to set :((( …

Also I noticed another issue that stove is sometimes making automatic pauses. It heats and than probably when it thinks it is too hot then it stop completelly and in like 10 seconds starts again. So instead of consistentn temperatures it is doing on and off.

But back to controll. Except from fact that preset temperatures are useless when you want to change temperature it won’t let you or let you to do only one ‘-‘ but not 2 times ‘-‘. Why??? I don’t know probably ill will… You need to first press “manual” button which change temperature completely to 130C and only then you can freely press +/- and set your desired temperature. So basically I never use any preset mode and I always only press ‘manual’ and +/- to set my temperature…

Another control is setting time. I must say satting time is useful feature and I love it, but how it is implemented I hate. When you press time button then by default it set 30 minutes… Ok but when you hold ‘-‘ button it jumps so quickly that in one second it counts to 0 and roll to 3 hours…. Holding increment/decrement is so quick that it is useless. It must have implement some idiot… Anyway you can always click one by one. So to set 10 minutes you must click ‘time’ button and then click 20 times ‘minus’ button to set 10 minutes… It is doable but pretty annoying. Or I long press ‘-‘ it usially jumps directly to 3 hours and then I press 11 times +… Still anoying but I save like 8 clicks… What is super idiotic is that when I want to add 5 minutes I click time and it by default set 30 minutes again :(((( Arrrrggghhhhh…. So instead of just click time and 5 times ‘+’ I need to click 25 times ‘-‘ :((((…. Really this must have done some idiot…. Another unpleasant thing is that if you need to change temperature you can not… Imagine something starts burning and you need to wait like 3 seconds and not pressing ‘-‘/’+’ and then after those 3 seconds time setting mode is automatically left and it will let you change temperatures again… When controlling stupidity is burning my food it makes me angry :((((

So over all I would buy anything else next time… Maybe it will be worse but I would at least try…

Anyway to say something positive at the end I like that product looks quite durable and material quality looks good. Packaging was also well. But power cable is only like 1.2 meters…. That might be too short… But for me just enough… Also I like mechanic buttons, some stove has capacity buttons which is cool looking and totally flat but I like to feel the press and the click. Buttons are under foil so there is no risk of something leaking into them. Cleaning is very easy cos it is almost flat 🙂 Cleaning experience is much better than cleaning gas stove…

Bought a Philips HD4928/01 induction cooktop that has been working great. I like the product in general however I have encountered a strange problem. The product has stopped working during rains when humidity is high. The buttons do not work and the device cannot be turned on. There is no water spill or splash involved and it seems the product starts working again when it does not rain for a few days.