The jury is still out...

We purchased this range as part of a kitchen renovation. When we went out to look for a range, we decided that we preferred a dual-fuel range. Unfortunately, we could not find a less expensive range that we liked, so we landed up with the Bosch model. We chose the HDI7152 over the HDI7052 because we decided we wanted the warming drawer and meat probe included in the higher priced model.

INSTALLATION
The range was installed by our contractor with only minor problems. Despite my printing out the relevant pages of the installation manual for him in advance of the installation, the electrician installed the electrical outlet in the wrong location and this had to be moved before the range could be slid into place. So a word of warning (which would seem to be intuitively obvious): make sure that you or your contractor follow the installation instructions carefully, especially regarding the preparation of the electrical and gas outlets.

Once the unit was ready to be pushed into place, we found that it would not slide all the way in. It felt like it was being blocked by the gas hose at the back, but despite rearrangement of the hose, we still could not get it to sit completely flush with the counter edge. It looks like it should be pushed further in by about 1/8 to 1/4 of an an inch. To me this is really not a big deal and it does not affect the function of the stove at all. Otherwise, the lip of the stove top sits perfectly flush on top of the counter with no gaps at all between countertop and stove.


FIRST IMPRESSIONS
I really liked the appearance of this range in the store, and I liked it even more when I saw it in our new kitchen. It has a modern, functional look to it.

When looking over the stove and checking out the knobs, I noticed two minor problems right away. First, one of the enamelled burner covers (the part from under which the flames emerge) was chipped. Second, the multifunction knob (used to control the oven features) was not centred and was rubbing against its surrounding plastic housing. Both of these problems were easily resolved with replacement parts under warranty (though surprisingly, in order to fix the multifunction knob, the entire circuit board had to be replaced, as the knob is an integral part of the board). We were able to use the range without any difficulty while waiting for the parts and repairman to arrive.

The first few times we turned on the burners, there was a gassy smell evident. We were fairly certain that it was NOT natural gas, as we couldn't detect the odour of rotten eggs. I was pretty sure it was some sort of residual chemical used in manufacturing which was burning off. The repairman who came to fix the problems outlined in the previous paragraph confirmed this. The odour disappeared after a few days.

There was also a fairly pungent odour the first few times we used the oven (which smelled like the odour produced when running the self clean cycle on our previous range). Again,
the smell resolved after a few uses of the oven.

Overall, our overall initial impressions of this range were favourable.


SUBSEQUENT OBSERVATIONS
Cooking on the gas burners has worked quite well, though I have noticed that there is less heat in the centre of pots than around the sides. This is especially noticeable with the biggest burner. I have not found this to affect my cooking in any way.

The oven has revealed two annoyances. The first is that as soon as you start the oven on any cycle, a fairly loud fan goes on. This continues as long as the oven is turned on. The noise is short of a whining windy sound, and I find it gets on my nerves a little bit. At first I thought I was running the convection fan by mistake, but this noise is evident on every setting in the oven. We have called the repair place to check this out make sure that it is a normal sound for this oven (I suspect that it is in fact normal).

Secondly, I am not sure if the oven is reaching the temperature that is set. Though we have not baked many things yet, it seems that everything is taking longer than with our previous oven. We will have the repairman check this out also.

We have not used the warming drawer yet.

Otherwise, I continue to have very favourable impressions of this range.


UPDATE (January 9, 2007)
The repairman had a look at our range today. It turns out that the cooling fan which was making such a racket was off centre. He was able to fix it and now the noise level is significantly reduced. It also turned out that the oven was not quite reaching the temperature that was preset - he made an adjustment for this too.