Kitchen ranges

(1 of 1 customers found this review helpful)

Comment:

We just purchased a WFE710H0AH, effectively identical to the 720, but available in White Ice, Whirlpool's new white & stainless colour. We purchased it to replace our 20-year old GE with solid burners, which worked well but was getting old and awful looking. <br /><br />I have to say, the white and stainless colour combination is very attractive. The oven is also huge, which is great; it has a middle rack where one side can be removed, so you can cook a turkey and have enough room left over for 4 additional pans (one on each of the bottom and middle, two on top). Very cool feature.<br /><br />But there's a lot of disappointment here. <br /><br />The first thing we noticed after connecting the stove: no fluorescent light to light up the cooktop! Since we don't have a range hood with a light, this was a big issue. Then I tried to put in all the pans we'd previously had in our oven drawer. Thanks to the huge oven, the drawer has only about 1/3 the height, so we could barely put in anything. I would gladly have given up 3 more inches of oven height to get it back in the drawer.<br /><br />The side of my stove is partially visible, and I have to say it looks very cheap and chintzy. That should not be the case for a manufacturer's higher-end stove.<br /><br />I haven't experienced the low-temperature cleaning issues yet, but as an engineer, I have to ask: Whirlpool, what were you thinking? We keep the bottom of our stove covered with aluminum foil (or did with our last stove, which had an exposed element), so cleaning the bottom was never the issue. The issue is sides, top and racks. How does your new process deal with these? Not very well, it appears. Back to using Easy-off, I guess.

How long have you owned it:

A month or less

Bottom Line

No, I would not recommend this to a friend.

(2 of 2 customers found this review helpful)

Comment:

This review is for the WFE 540, similar to the WFE 720 listed in CR. This range was the most miserable purchase I ever made, and most of that is rooted in what is called Aqua Lift Technology. Basically, it's a low-temp, 20-minute cycle with 2 cups of water in the bottom tray. You can perform this function multiple times, but it will not clean the oven to any degree close to the high temp self-clean cycle that has worked for a generation or two. Granted, it saves electric energy, but certainly not human energy and time, precious resources for most of us! Additionally, the blue console light is way too bright, blinding at night. Really. No way to dim it, and turning the feature off is too much trouble if you later want to use the timer. Although following directions implicitly, the convection feature did not save any time during a chicken roast. Other than those three disappointments, it looks great.

How long have you owned it:

Three-to-six months

Bottom Line

No, I would not recommend this to a friend.

(1 of 1 customers found this review helpful)

Comment:

Convection-roasted a chicken that turned out FABULOUS, but splattered EVERYWHERE. Time for AquaLift! But what a disappointment. Cannot abide a dirty oven, and two sessions using that cleaning feature were useless, exc for door and bottom of floor tray. Still trying to get Whirlpool to act honorably concerning their claims about this feature. Why mess with decades-old self-clean technology that worked well? Additionally, bottom drawer is constant annoyance--uneven drawer movement, then moves off track enough to go wonky.

How long have you owned it:

One-to-three months

Bottom Line

No, I would not recommend this to a friend.