Miele's for sure, and I'm pretty certain the Advantium still has this function using it's high powered light, though it acts a bit different.

All the rest have a "top brown" setting or something similar but it's smoke and mirrors as none have a top mounted heating element.

I know the Miele does, I saw the exposed element on the weekend. I haven't looked at the others.

Advance disclaimer: I don't own any of these YET. We're beginning a remodel and I've been spending the better part of my free time over the past 2 weeks trying to figure out this exact issue. I did have a chance to compare live models side-by-side last weekend.

The Miele definitely DOES have a dedicated broiler element. In fact that's the main reason we're probably going to go that way vs the Advantium.

The Advantium's broiler uses a halogen light, but it illuminates only about 1/3 of the interior, which means you MUST use the turntable to get anything remotely approaching a broil or top-brown. I've never used halogen broiling, so I don't know if there's a difference between broiling 3" from the element or 7", but that TT means you're going to have to use either round baking pans or whatever rectangular dish which can fit inside a 16" circle and it has to be on the bottom of the oven. There is a rack you can place midway, but it's ONLY for straight convection oven use (no MW, no broil).

ONe thing which is pushing me back to the Advantium, OTOH, is Miele's lack of sensor MW. OTOH, this disadvantage is largely minimized, since the Master Chef menus have pre-programmed settings for many of the functions I had used my old MW's sensor.

Oh yeah, those Master Chef menus: Kind of a PITA. If you mis-key anything, you have to step backwards through numerous screens and/or just hit "off" and start over again. The Advantium's functions are a little easier to select since a lot of the selections are done through a rotary dial. I'm sure practice will minimize this difference between the units, though.

Miele does offer a non-master chef version (H4042) with none of the stored settings, nested menus, fancy display for about $600 cheaper. Unfortunately the dealer's display model wasn't plugged in so I couldn't try it out. My guess is that if you happen to know which settings for combination/time/temp to use, it's much easier to dial in than the master chef, but since I'll be new to combination speed cooking, there will be lots of trial-and-error learning before I could come up with the parameters off the top of my head.

The Miele site does have owners' manuals available, but you have to dig around in order to find them.

Like I said, we're probably going to end up with the Miele. Anybody out there have experience with the non-master H4042?

Regards,
--Mike, the DH.

Thanks Mike. When you talk about the Miele, you mentioned the MasterChef; isn't that only available in a full-size oven? Or does the Miele Speed oven also have the MasterChef menus?

Sales reps I've spoken with love, love the Advantium, and have pushed that over the Miele. Better commissions or sincere recommendations? I don't know. The comments here about cleaning the Miele speed-oven concern me.

I think I'd like to go with the Electrolux if I were sure it would broil. I'm probably more interested in that function than in any "speed cooking". I'm not holding my breath that the Advantium halogen will truly "toast", although it does have a toast function, but that requires you to flip the bread. :-(

T

I own a Miele speedcook and I like it. It has a dedicated broiler element and it is easy to clean. I microwave a bowl of water with some lemon juice for about 4minutes and it is easy to clean. The broiler element drops down easily and allows the cleaning of the unit. The speedcook also has Masterchef controls. I don't really use the speedcook settings, I set the microwave to 3minutes and I pretty much burn everything! Bacon is reheated in 30 seconds so I have set it as a favorite. Oatmeal is perfect in 90secs so I set that as a favorite too. I burnt the peach cobbler I made in the Speedcook. I think the concept of speedcook is lost on me sometimes. I can't understand that something that takes 30minutes in the oven will only take 10minutes in the speedcook setting. I am getting there though. I guess I should perform the necessary function of RTFM!!!

Good luck!

Both the big bake oven and speed ovens come in "master chef" models. I'm pretty sure that means they have lots of menu-driven presets for temp, time and element choice depending on the type of food you're preparing.

The speed and bake ovens are also available in a manually set rotary knob version which seems easier to use once you actually know what you're doing. They're just called the "chef" series, not the Master Chef.

I'm not sure any speed oven is going to fully replace your toaster. Certainly not at $2000-3000. They will broil, bake and roast in combination with MW (or independently), but a $50 toaster will probably toast bread a LOT better.

--Mike