Why You Can Trust CNET Dacor DYRP36D review: A gadget for gadget's sake
The $8,999 Dacor DYRP36D, part of the appliance manufacturer's Discovery iQ line, includes a fully functional Android tablet. But the outdated operating system dampens the tablet's usefulness.
Good collaborations bring out the best qualities in the parties involved: peanut butter and jelly, Jay-Z and Beyoncé, hip-hop and Alexander Hamilton. When compatible partners merge, it's hard to imagine one without the other. I wish I could say the same about the $8,999 Dacor DYRP36D, an appliance that combines a high-end oven with an Android tablet for an unsuccessful union of connectivity and cooking.
Dacor DYRP36D
The Good
The Bad
The Bottom Line
You can watch YouTube right on this oven.
The Dacor DYRP36D, part of the appliance manufacturer's Discovery iQ line, is an ambitious dual-fuel range. Its built-in tablet is fully functional, so you can download and access apps right on the range. The tablet also acts as the control panel for the oven, which includes a host of cooking modes and guided programs to help you perfect recipes. The range itself delivers much of what we've come to expect from the Dacor brand: sturdy construction and consistent cooking results. And an accompanying smartphone app makes it easy to preheat the oven and set timers over a wireless network.
But unlike the successful pairings I mentioned earlier, Dacor's creation isn't greater than the sum of its parts. The tablet brings the DYRP36D down. It uses a locked-in, outdated version of the Android operating system. The tablet also failed to send notifications to my phone as the user manual promised. Voice recognition on the oven's phone app couldn't pick up the most basic commands. And unless you just want to pull up a chair and camp out in front of your oven, using the tablet while you're standing makes for a sore neck. Those are a lot of pain points for an appliance that costs nearly $9,000.
I appreciate Dacor's aggressive move into the smart kitchen with its Discovery iQ ovens. But just because a company can put a tablet on an oven doesn't mean it should. Dacor needs to give the DYRP36D and the rest of the Discovery iQ line a makeover that gives as much attention to the appliance's tech as it does to its cooking prowess. In the meantime, you're better off buying a range without the smarts and using your own tablet until Dacor creates a smart oven that adds value to the kitchen.
Tablet gives you a handle on the oven
Let's give kudos where it's due: Dacor started incorporating Android tablets into its Discovery IQ ovens back in 2013, which makes the appliance manufacturer one of the forefathers of smart, large kitchen appliances. The inclusion of a tablet in an oven is an inevitable by-product of the smart-kitchen evolution. We're seeing more connected small appliances that use apps to guide you through recipes. Manufacturers are including hardware like cameras in their appliances to gather more information about the food you cook, along with adding Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and near-field communication (NFC) to make it easier for your appliance to talk to your smartphone or tablet. It makes sense that companies like Dacor would skip the middle man of your own devices and just include a connected device on an appliance.
The boldness of being a trendsetter is apparent in the Dacor DYRP36D's design and features. Like other ranges from the high-end manufacturer, this 36-inch-wide model is an all-stainless-steel beast. There are six gas burners on the cooktop that are covered with formidable cast-iron continuous grates. The 5.2-cubic-foot electric oven is average in size, but the slick soft-close door is a smart feature that makes peeking in on your food a gentle affair.
The Dacor DYRP36D is a 36-inch wide range with a gas cooktop and electric oven. The Android tablet is located beneath the cooktop.
The centerpiece of the Dacor is the 7-inch tablet, which primarily serves as the control panel for the appliance's oven. The tablet runs on Android 4.0 (aka Ice Cream Sandwich), a discontinued operating system. Dacor says the range's hardware doesn't support updating the operating system, a limitation that is evident when you attempt to download apps that are no longer compatible with that version of Android. This includes Pinterest, which would've been a great app to use with the oven.
The oven controls run off of Dacor's iQ Cooking app, which is preinstalled on the tablet. The interactive touchscreen is easy to figure out, no small feat considering that the oven has a dozen cooking modes, a connected temperature probe and guided instructions for basic recipes. The interface explains the oven's cooking modes with helpful illustrations and brief explanations or instructions so you know exactly what heating elements are in play. You can also save settings that you use often, so you only have to hit two buttons if you often bake cookies on convection bake mode at 350 degrees Fahrenheit, for example.
Unfortunately, some of those cooking-mode explanations on the tablet are in opposition to the range's use and care manual. For example, the description for the Pure Convection cooking mode recommends lowering the temperature of a recipe when you use that setting, but the manual advises that you first reduce the cook time when you use this cook mode. These discrepancies might not faze folks who disregard any kind of instructions, but it's enough to irk cooks who just want to get it right.
The Guided Cooking feature asks you to input information about what you're cooking, and the oven will automatically determine the best cook settings for the dish.
Dacor's oven controls also include Guided Cooking, a feature designed to walk you through cooking a dish. You select from a menu of dishes (such as a roasted chicken or rack of lamb), pick your desired internal temperature, enter the weight of your dish, then hit start. From there, the oven sets the temperature and cook time based on the information you entered. Note that the Dacor settings might differ from how you'd prefer to cook a recipe.
For example, I used Guided Cooking to roast a 5.5-pound chicken. During my roast chicken tests, I cook the chicken at 425 degrees Fahrenheit until it reaches an FDA-approved internal temperature of 165 degrees Fahrenheit. But in Guided Cooking, the oven cooked the chicken at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for an hour and a half. The Guided Cooking chicken ended up being slightly drier than the bird I cooked during my roasting test, but it still made for an enjoyable meal. Guided Cooking is a great addition for newbies who want to eliminate as much guesswork as possible from a recipe. However, more seasoned cooks might not agree with exactly how the oven chooses to prepare your meal.
More technology, more problems
The Dacor's tablet interface is intuitive and works well when you're using it to operate the oven and manage its bounty of features. But as a plain old tablet, there wasn't much to cheer about. With the exception of the iQ Cooking app, the tablet feels like an afterthought on the oven.
Let's start with the logistics of an oven tablet. It's a shame that you can't remove the tablet from the oven, a feature that would add more versatility to the whole product. Instead, you're stuck in the kitchen if you want to use your tablet. It lies flat above the oven in line with the burner knobs, but the screen tilts to a 50-degree angle so you can get a better view. However, the top of the tablet's screen is always cut off by the cooktop's ledge, so you can't see the full display. This meant a lot of bending over to access apps and features. But the bigger headache is the neck ache you get when you're using the tablet for an extended period of time. I'm 5'3", and the screen came to my waist. I imagine the more vertically blessed among us would have an even bigger problem than I did. The least painful way to use the tablet was to just plop down in a chair right in front of it so it was closer to eye level.
The 7-inch tablet's home screen looks like any other Android tablet.
Then there's the tablet's outdated Android 4.0 operating system. The current version of Android is Android 6.0 (aka Marshmallow), with version 7.0 (Nougat) due out later this year. Google hasn't issued an Android 4.0-specific software update since 2015, which means a lot of potential headaches with downloaded apps.
Many of the apps I tried, such as YouTube and Google Voice Search, crashed repeatedly. At one point, the tablet restarted itself while I was in the middle of using an app. For such an expensive appliance, I'd expect the hardware to be able to keep up with the latest software. Though Dacor does update the iQ app, it's not enough to make up for a glitchy, outdated operating system.
I found the Dacor app that you use on your smartphone to control the oven remotely had its own set of problems. One of the most promising features on the app is voice controls, so you can give simple commands. But the voice recognition understands commands about as well as a hard-of-hearing 90-year-old. The app often didn't catch the entire request or would misunderstand the command -- "Set bake at 200 degrees" turned into "Greece" in the app, along with the digital assistant telling me it didn't understand my request. I know my Southern accent is strong, so I enlisted fellow CNEt editor Andrew Gebhart, a Michigan native with a clear, booming voice, to help. The Dacor app didn't understand him, either.
On the bright side...
As a cooking appliance, the Dacor DYRP36D handled food well. Though there was some uneven baking, the overall performance was what we've come to expect from the brand: slower than the competition, but delicious in outcome.
The highlight of the cooking tests was the roast chicken. Like other Dacor ranges, this is where the oven excelled. Crisp skin? Check. Juicy meat? Check. Delicious? Heck, yeah.
Another impressive cooking feature was the burners' ability to hold a steady temperature over low heat. Like other gas cooktops, the Dacor kept the temperature of the tomato soup fairly consistent when I set the burner to low.
Things began to take a turn during the baking tests. The oven's convection bake feature is powerful, and bakes two racks of biscuits quickly. But the result was uneven browning.
The biscuits that baked on the lower rack (bottom left picture) were browner than the ones that baked above them (top right picture). The pictures on the right are color representations of the biscuits' browning.
The time it took to boil 112 ounces of water was comparable to what we've seen from other, more expensive ranges like the $4,649 KitchenAid KDRS407 or the $7,130 Dacor RNRP36GS -- slower than freestanding, lower-cost units with gas cooktops like the $1,400 Kenmore 74343 or the $1,600 LG LRG4115ST.
Large burner boil test (gas models)
The Dacor also broiled hamburgers at a slower rate than we've seen using other ranges with an electric oven. It took an average of 19.12 minutes to cook six hamburgers at a time, almost 7 minutes longer than the fastest broil times we've seen.
Hamburger broiling test (electric models)
Final thoughts
The evolution of the smart kitchen has always been leading toward the introduction of more powerful, connected and interactive large appliances. We've seen a tablet work well built into a refrigerator, so it only makes sense for an oven to have one, too. But the Dacor DYRP36D dual-fuel range is not the oven/tablet hybrid we're looking for. This collision of a high-end appliance and an outdated Android tablet has too many problems to justify the $8,999 investment. Save your money and splurge on a dual-fuel range without the tablet, like the $6,320 Dacor ER30DSCH or the $4,649 KitchenAid KDRS407.