Why You Can Trust CNET Kenmore 92583 review: This oven shows that Kenmore should stick with the basics
The Kenmore 92583 electric range is another disappointing appliance from the brand's Pro line, a suite of appliances that aren't as consistent as other Kenmore ranges that cost less.
Kenmore has in recent years produced a steady stream of reliable ranges that cook food well. Many of them have even gotten good reviews here at CNET Appliances.
Kenmore 92583
The Good
The Bad
The Bottom Line
Unfortunately, the company's winning streak has ended with its Pro line. The Sears-held brand designed this suite of large kitchen appliances to rival products that come from luxury (read: more expensive) manufacturers. The Kenmore 72583 gas range from the Pro catalog was amateur in its cooking performance and gave me pause about Kenmore's attempt to reach a higher-end market. The Kenmore 92583 electric range solidified my feelings about the company's Pro ranges: These products let the entire brand down.
Like its gas counterpart, the $2,800 Kenmore 92583 has impressive extras -- no-preheat baking, rapid boiling, dual convection fans -- and a physical profile that will make home cooks feel like top chefs. The range nails basic tasks like baking and boiling as you would expect from a product that's nearly $3,000. But it flounders at perfecting the features that are supposed to elevate the range above other mainstream brands. Tests left me with scores of unexceptional test food and questions about Kenmore's move into professional kitchen-inspired appliances.
The Kenmore 92583 isn't the range you're looking for from this brand. Save yourself some money and go with the Kenmore 95073, a freestanding model that makes up for its lack of special features with its fast-boiling induction cooktop and $1,700 price.
A remarkable range at first glance
The Kenmore 92583 has all the physical qualities that a house-hunting couple on HGTV could ask for. The 30-inch wide range has a stainless steel finish, a smooth electric cooktop and a slide-in design, features that allow it to make a confident statement in the kitchen without being too garish.
A few performance details are as equally noteworthy as the range's appearance. The cooktop features a Turbo Boil burner, which lived up to its name in my tests. This burner took an average of 8.93 minutes to bring 112 ounces of water to a rolling boil. Only one other electric cooktop has clocked in a faster time: another Kenmore range, the 97723.
Large Burner Boil Test (Electric Models)
The 5.1 cubic-foot oven also has a couple of pleasant surprises hiding in its walls. The oven comes with dual convection fans that help circulate air more evenly and efficiently throughout the oven cavity. Convection works well when you're baking food on more than one oven rack, and the two convection fans in this Kenmore proved that point well.
The pictures on the right show what happened when I baked two sheets of biscuits in the Kenmore 92583. The biscuits on the top left were baked on a higher rack than the pictures on the bottom left. As you can see from the color grids on the right, the biscuits browned evenly, with the exception of some extra browning in a few corners.
Oven sacrifices quality for speed
The Kenmore 92583 had run-of-the-mill results in most of the cook tests I performed (check out this slideshow for more data and pictures from the tests). But the broiler and the oven's accelerated cooking feature produced glaring results that, unfortunately, overshadowed an otherwise good overall performance.
Based on numbers alone, the Kenmore did well when it came to broiling hamburgers quickly -- it only took an average of 13.75 minutes for six burgers to reach the appropriate temperature. The broiling process, however, was a nightmare because of the plumes of smoke that rolled out of the oven and filled the CNET Test Lab when it was time to flip the burgers. And the patties cooked too quickly on the outside -- some burgers would be medium at their center and charcoal-briquette on their exterior.
Hamburger Broiling Test (Electric Models)
Kenmore has included a cooking option called Accela-Heat on this range. This feature lets you bake food without preheating, and is ideal for frozen foods that have to cook for more than 10 minutes. Kenmore included Accela-Heat on the 72583, and I noted at the time that this feature was good as long as you keep an eye on it. The same holds true for the Kenmore 92583.
I baked these cinnamon rolls with the oven's Accela-Heat mode. The pastries were nearly burnt by the end of the package's suggested cook time.
Accela-Heat cooks food fast, so you're better off disregarding package instructions for cook times and using your own judgement. If not, you'll end up with crunchy, disappointing cinnamon rolls and pizza like I did. What I would like more, though, is for Kenmore to dial back the Accela-Heat a bit so cooks won't have to play a guessing game every time they're in a hurry.
Final thoughts
Kenmore has made ranges that would fit well in any home thanks to the appliances' reliably good cooking performances. But the Kenmore 92583, like the gas version that's also a part of the Kenmore Pro line, reflect a company that's trying too hard to win over big spenders and "prosumers," aka home cooks with professional cooking aspirations. Kenmore needs to tweak the ranges in this Pro line before these are worthy of a resounding recommendation.