BGS102S

This Ovente solid cast iron single burner is working out just fine for me. It's well made and designed with style and functionality in mind. I use it primarily as a coffee cup warmer because I like my coffee kept HOT not lukewarm, and frankly there's nothing out there that will do this better. It's also nice looking and made with quality materials. The nice feature about cast iron burners is that once they get hot (takes about a minute) they keep a more even temperature. While morning coffee cup warming is my primary use, I also have used this for cooking outside and this works fine as an auxiliary stovetop. Although my cooking uses have been more slow-and-low, this can sear a steak with no problem. So far, I love it!

This is a great single burner.. I bought it to use with portable power source in case of power outage. It will work perfect. Great cast iron burner plate and stainless steel housing. Great price too.

I ended up having to buy a Mainstays coil burner hotplate too at Walmart too, because when frying things this hotplate does not get hot enough while the other one does, but this one is safe while cooking while the other one is not and will crust and burn food. Now I use both, this one for safe cooking, the other for frying. Both measure 930W on a wattmeter, but this one cuts off at a lower temperature, while the coil burner from Walmart has the coils visibly red hot, and cuts off not as a function of coil temperature, but what temperature it records inside the body of the unit somewhere. When I prepare rice, I like to fry it in a ton of oil until it gets pink-light brown, then drain most of the oil and pour water on it and boil it to make it swell up. This unit is unable to make it pink-brown, only white, while the Walmart coil burner is able. Also when frying, say bologna, in an egg-flour coating, this unit is only able to fry it white, it will not give it a nice crispy golden-brown look, while the Walmart Mainstays one will. This one is great for cooking not as much for deep frying. So I start out with the Walmart one, fry the rice, drain the oil, but for the water cooking part I switch to this one as it's safe and won't crust the starch on the bottom while cooking in water unlike the other one. Also my uncle had a ton of tomatoes in his garden and I got buckets and buckets full, and to preserve I cook them then freeze in plastic containers. On setting 4 out of 5 on the dial this one does not crust the tomatoes or just very slightly, while still giving a nice boiling simmer over 3-4 hours in a 20 quart pot with a glass lid, unlike any other burner or a gas stove. Tomatoes are notoriously hard to cook without crusting. I gave it 4 stars as it would be nice to get a higher temperature out of it, and just dial down the dial for a lower one. But I really like it, easy to clean, and I'm happy with it.

A TRUE LIFE SAVER! We bought this because we do not want to use the gas stove in our temporary rental. Some countries have even banned gas stoves, ovens, etc. because of the toxic emissions. Although it may take longer to boil water in this portable stove, it works very well AND without emitting harmful gases into our homes. Also doesn’t transmit radiation as many appliances do. Very, very please with this item. Even looks nice in the kitchen. Tip: Use a lid to speed up the heating time.

The breaker on our oven/stove top has gone out completely, and due to a couple of other, more serious issues cropping up at the same time, we won't be able to get it fixed for a few months. So, after a few weeks of "roughing it" with instant pot meals only, we decided to get a dedicated cooktop. And I wish we had ordered it as soon as the breaker went out, because this thing is fantastic! Works extremely well and does exactly what you would want a cooktop to do - cook lol. As others have stated, it's got a little plastic smell to it when you initially use it, but by the second use it was gone for us. It's also not as quick to heat as I was expecting it to be from the reviews, but I think that ultimately depends on what youre used to cooking on. For us, it's a little slow compared to our stove, but we have friends with comparable stoves to ours that lag far behind this cooktop in terms of heating speed. Regardless though, it's speed isn't too bad at all and very easy to get used to after a few uses! Especially for the price!!! The cast iron plates that transfer the heat do stay hot for a lot longer than glass or the traditional wire heating elements, so be aware of that after cooking! Usually takes about 20 minutes or so to cool to a safe touching temp from full high heat! However, imo it's the perfect trade off to not be able to drop food into the burner while cooking lol. All in all, a great cooktop! It feels great to able to properly cook in my own home again. If you have a similar situation to us, or just need a decent cooktop for travel or camping, I can't reccommend this cooktop enough!

This is my third or fourth electric burner that I bought. The first two I had forever and they just weren’t very good. They didn’t heat up enough. I could barely boil water but they were good for some things. The last one I ordered was at least three times more money than this ovente and it also did not heat up enough and the controls were so sensitive that I kept on burning things or just being annoyed because I’m trying to boil water and the temperature slips down to 3 instead of 6. This is perfect. It heats up quickly it gets to a nice hot temperature and the knobs cannot be accidentally touched thus changing temperature. I would recommend this 100%. I am really so excited this is just what I was looking for. I use it on the days where I’ve cleaned my oven thoroughly and just don’t wanna get it messy right away LOL.

I ordered without reading through because I was expecting a coil surface, but this has a solid surface. Takes a while to heat up and stays very hot after use. I was hoping to ditch my electric skillet because of the non stick surface that I want to avoid, but because it takes so long to heat up and then cool off after cooking, it didn’t do as I had hoped. However, might be good for use as an extra burner for anyone who needs one but not as the main cooking appliance as I had hoped. Looks nice but needs devoted attention to use properly. I just don’t have time to fiddle around and wouldn’t leave my house until it cooled off, so ended up late for work. To be fair it does seem well made, but not workable for my living situation. I have returned it.

As others claim it seems a little slow heating up but it is probable due to the heat transfer across the cast iron plate. The trade off exceeds the time delay. The larger, flat, even heat of the cast iron plate is superior to my former 6" coil unit.