Maytag MER8800FZ 30-inch Wide Electric Range With True Convection And Power Preheat

Bought this oven in December of last year. It's done really well in general, bakes even, stove tops works well. It gets a lot of use in my house where I stay home with the kids, and cook all of our meals from scratch, on or in it. There a few things I don't love about it. 1) No oven lock- the steam clean feature is great but the lack of a regular self clean cycle also seems to mean they didn't include a lock feature. This means that my 2 year old is able to open the oven door, which happens if she pulls on the handle hard enough, usually while playing like she does with he kitchen drawers and doors, so I have to keep a close eye- if the oven is on especially. So parents beware. 2) The timer button is not intuitive. You have to press the timer button again to make the timer start, instead of pressing start. I find myself trying to press start even after owning this oven for over half a year, if you press start it will give you three beeps, so why not just let you start the timer? Not a big deal, but annoying none the less. The cancel button will turn the oven off AND the timer off. Doesn't seem well thought out and is over complicated. 3) Buttons are a very hard to press, you have to give a lot of oumph, which takes some getting used to. 4) Users Manual was not very detailed to the type of oven we bought, some of the instructions were obviously specific to different models but didn't specify which was confusing. 5) Having a power element seems a bit gimmicky to me, just make all of them equal power so it is easier to keep multiple dishes going at the same time and not potentially burn something because 4 is higher than 4 on a different element. Things I do like: 1) Convection setting is great. I bake bread, desserts and roast vegetables and meat, and they all turn out great. I still move my bread pans around (5 will fit in there nicely), but for a 2 pans of cookies I don't necessarily turn them anymore with this oven. 2) steam clean- no yucky smell and works well in less than half the time of the self clean cycle on my old oven. 3) ceran surface is nicer to clean than my old coil stove. It doesn't look as nice as it does when you first buy it, even with all the cleaning tricks, but that's just the nature of this type of surface. A bit of dish soap and baking soda and a razor blade are a huge help in removing the film that eventually builds up on the burners. Definitely easier for day to day cleaning than cleaning up underneath the burners and all the maintenance of my old stove. 4) SPACE! the extra large element fits our 13" cast iron pan perfectly, and the large oven space allows storing said cast iron underneath the other racks when not in use, which is great. Some space is sacrificed underneath the oven in the drawer, but it's worth it to me to have lots of space for baking and cooking in the oven. I can still fit five bread pans, a 9×13 metal baking pan, a small enamel roaster and a foldup pizza peel in the drawer. Just needed to do a bit of dimensional engineering but it fits fine. Again, the extra space inside the oven is so worth it. Overall, it's a good oven lots of space and does the job and is easy to clean. For safety purposes I wish it had a lock and hope Maytag will take this into consideration.

(This review was collected as part of a promotion.) I wanted to wait to post a review until I've owned it for a while. It's a very nice looking stove and it's our first flat top style electric range so I had no idea how much cleaning is involved to keep the stovetop looking nice but that's not a brand/model related issue. In comparison to an older style electric coil stovetop it definitely takes longer to boil a pot of water but that would be the same with any brand I would assume. The Aqua lift self clean feature is nice, it works great for loosening up stains on the bottom of oven but not as much for the dirty sides or the glass door of the oven. There's still lots of elbow grease involve and haven't been able to get sides completely clean. There's a couple of small lights on the back panel to indicate if the cook top is on or if the surface is still warm which is great, but I wish it had an obvious light to indicate that the oven is on, as the digital read out for the oven is not as noticeable as a light would be as you walk by. The warming element is handy and the oven preheats quickly. I bought a Maytag as it was recommended brand by a friend who owns a appliance part supply company and I've talked to a few repair people who said the same. We've owned it for a year and a half and had to replace main oven heating element, and control board so I am concerned about longevity. I like it, but I understand why there's so many white electric coil stoves still around.