Product review (3 stars): Mixed Feelings
I have mixed feelings about this product. On one hand, I love the overall design. GE did a great job of fitting 5 burners into a 30 inch cooktop. I looked at a lot of cooktops and they often waste a lot of space around the control knobs to one side of the burners. By putting the knobs in the front center GE conserved space that got put to good use with a fifth burner and it also makes the cooktop look very slick. I also love the griddle that's included and use it fairly often for breakfasts. I do however have some issues with the design of the burner grates. They seem to me to be too high and put too much distance between the burner and the cookware. I have a whistling tea kettle that I usually put on the medium sized burners at the front. The kettle takes much longer to boil than it did on our old glass top electric cooktop and it never really whistles much which tells me that it isn't coming to a very vigorous boil. Also, the handle of the kettle is to hot to handle without a hot pad once it does boil which suggests to me that there is a lot of heat going around the edges of the kettle and being wasted. If I put the kettle on one of the smaller rear burners it never boils. If I put it on the center "power boil" burner it boils all right but it's too hot to handle. I've used gas ranges for many years and this has never been a problem for me before and the only differnce that I can see is the ammount of space between the burner and the cookware. If you have a larger diameter pan it isn't as much of an issue but there still seems to be a lot of heat wasted because of the design of the grates.