Top Five Best Hobs

Jane Darling

In this article

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 go to the shops armed with the knowledge you need to buy the best hob for your home.

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Best hob overall

87%

£629.00

Reviewed Mar 2019

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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Great value induction hob

82%

£255.00

Reviewed Mar 2019

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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Large electric ceramic hob

67%

£299.00

Reviewed Jun 2017

This hob is easy to use, easy to clean and fantastic at simmering, so your curry won't boil over if it needs to cook gently for a couple of hours. But our tests found that this hob is slower than most and doesn't heat pans evenly - so you'll have to weigh up the pros and cons if you're thinking of buying it.

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A good five-zone gas hob

62%

£479.00

Reviewed Mar 2018

Like most gas hobs, this spacious five-ring hob is slow to heat up large volumes of liquid, but it's great for gentle simmering. The flames spread well, so it fries evenly too. Overall, this hob is simple to use - the stepped controls make it easy to get the flame strength you're after.

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A reasonable gas hob

59%

£851.98

Reviewed Jun 2017

This gas hob sits at the pricier end of the scale and certainly looks the part with a glass top that's reminiscent of induction hobs. It's rather slow to heat up water, but is great at spreading heat evenly and simmering gently. It's also easy to use.

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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.

This year, we've compared 16 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.

Find out how the big brands compare by heading to our advice on reliable hob brands.