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Home & garden.

18 August 2021

Top five best hobs

Whether you want gas, traditional electric or induction, we've got the best hob for you with our pick of the top-scoring models.

Jane Darling

The best hobs will quickly get your pasta water to the boil, but will also be able to maintain a slow and gentle simmer so that delicate sauces don't burn. They'll spread heat evenly too, so you don't need to keep shifting food around for even cooking.

How to choose between all those flat black squares, though? That's where we come in. We've pulled together a selection of our best hobs, including the best induction, ceramic and gas models, so you can be armed with the knowledge you need to buy the best hob for your home.

If you're not already a member, join Which? to unlock the recommendations in the table below and get instant access to hundreds of other product reviews.

Best hob overall

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87%
£699.00
This is an excellent induction hob, one of the best we’ve ever come across. It can supply plenty of power when needed, but is also great at gentle simmering. It's wider than most four-zone hobs, so if you like plenty of space around your pots and pans, this great Best Buy hob could be the one for you.
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Cheap induction hob

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82%
£229.00
This is a very impressive induction hob for a reasonable price. It will heat up a panful of water quickly, but can also provide very gentle heat for delicate simmering. On top of this, it’s easy to use and to keep clean, and comes with a generous five-year guarantee.
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Best four-zone ceramic hob

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66%
£259.99
This hob is easy to clean, and its touch controls are clear and straightforward to use. But although it simmers brilliantly, it’s not great at spreading heat evenly – something that’s true of many ceramic hobs.
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A good five-zone gas hob

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62%
£579.00
Like most gas hobs, this spacious five-ring hob is slow to heat up large volumes of liquid, but it's good at gentle simmering. The flames spread well, so it fries evenly too. Overall, this hob is simple to use and is our best on test gas hob despite being a few years old.
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A reasonable gas hob

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59%
£879.00
This gas hob isn't perfect but it is the best four-zone hob we've tested for a few years. It's at the pricier end of the scale and certainly looks the part with a smart glass top. It's slow at heating up a pan of water, but it's excellent at both simmering and frying.
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Not found the product for you? Browse all of our hob reviews.

Why Which? hob reviews are better

Whether you're heating a big batch of soup, making bolognese or frying bacon, you don't want to have to constantly fiddle with the hob to ensure you're not left with undercooked, burnt or unevenly cooked food.

That's where Which? comes in. Our rigorous lab testing tells you which hobs to steer clear of and which ones are worth buying.

We time how long it takes each hob to heat large pans of water, to see which ones will keep you waiting. The worst hobs take more than twice as long as the best to heat up.

We also rate how well each hob simmers delicate dishes, such as rice pudding, and we use infra-red technology to assess how evenly each hob spreads heat across the base of a frying pan.

Hobs you can rely on

As well as our extensive lab tests, we ask hob owners to tell us how happy they are with their hobs, and to let us know about any faults they've had. Using this feedback, we can give each brand a unique reliability rating.

In 2020 we compared 17 bestselling brands, including Belling, Bosch, Neff, Stoves, Whirlpool and Zanussi, so we can tell you which brands you can trust to work well for many years.

Visit Top hob brands rated to find out how the big brands compare and how reliable they are.