Andrew James Digital Electric Induction Hob 2000 Watt With 12 Month Warranty

We bought two of these units as replacements for our old induction hobs, now given to our daughter. So far, we have found them very simple to use and extremely reliable and at a fraction of the cost of the old ones. We're probably stating the obvious but this type of hob works only with stainless steel cookware (use a magnet to check the base of your pans).

As far as I can see, this cooker is exactly the same as the Judge. Really fast!!! cooking, certainly cannot leave unattended it's so fast. Only had this cooker for a week, as we've had to disconnect our gas cooker due to kitchen refit in January and us giving our existing cooker away to someone we know in time for Christmas. Without doubt, it's a learning curve and we've not used the timer function yet, so time will tell. Anyway, really pleased with this so far, it's really speeded up our cooking and I think it behaves better than the gas cooker, as cools instantly when turned down. Another thing, really good value in comparison to all the other inductions on this site, even with the postage added on.

Well made, compact, and works from a 13A plug with a maximum of two kilowatts from the mains. And it is an induction hob, so only the pot gets hot, and we already had the right pots for an induction hob. Induction means no smells or fumes or condensation and a cool hob, electric means portable and clean.

As shown in the Az blurb, it has ten power settings and a range of temperature settings and can operate as either power-input controlled or as pot-temperature controlled. The mode selection button also allows a count-down timer that can be applied to either mode - a bit confusing, but one gets used to it.

Power mode. Setting 1 is not quite a simmer, setting 2 is a gentle simmer, setting 3 is a slow boil, and then it really gets going, with not much apparent difference in the higher settings. I would have liked more subtlety in the power settings, like with my De Dietrich 60cm Induction Hob DTi704V. Being extremely quick to the boil, it feels more than the two kilowatts, but that might just be because the controls are rather coarse in their application.

Temperature mode. Lowest is 60°C and it goes up in approximately 20°C steps to 240°C. Except it is totally inaccurate at the lower temperatures, persistently boiling four pints of water furiously on the 60°C setting, long after I would have expected it to have sensed the temperature of the previously boiled pot. I can see the application if one is using a cooking oil at high temperature, in a big full pot that is slow to respond, but not otherwise. Poor.

Timer mode. It works and is accurate, and counts down to turn off the hob. But there is only the one display, so it is not immediately obvious that the cooking mode one left to set the timer is the one that it still in operation. But we quickly got used to it. OK, could be better.

Cooking something delicate like a cheese sauce or a slowly simmered soup might be problematic because of the lack of low-power subtlety. I keep thinking it is going to burn on, even though all the pots have thick bases. The confidence to be able to leave it alone for a few minutes is not there.

So why use the Andrew James? My kitchen is in pieces right now, at the tender mercies of a builder, and will be so for another few weeks, and to continue eating we needed a hob that could run on a 13Amp plug. And buying this hob is much cheaper than living on takeaways. The Andrew James is fine for cooking in the conservatory, and we have done several meals with it, but after having been spoiled by using a proper full-sized induction hob with much more subtle control I could not recommend the Andrew James as a long-term prime hob.

One oddity struck me, if one looks at the base of a wide pan of water just about to boil the pattern of new bubbles indicates that the centre of heat is not in the centre of the ring, but slightly to the left, even though the induction winding is centred on the printed graphic. As an engineer I find this slightly puzzling, there was no other metal near it.

We can live with the fiddly mode selection, but the lack of subtle control is why it loses a star. After all, ten steps vs fifteen steps? It is only a simple software tweak, and for the sake of that "ha'p'orth of tar"...