Why You Can Trust CNET LG LDE4415ST review: LG fumbles with fast-cooking features
The LG LDE4415ST electric double-oven range is loaded with extra settings for the busy cook, but some fall short of expectations.
LG seemed to have two adjectives in mind when the appliance manufacturer designed the LDE4415ST electric range: big and fast. The appliance, which has an MSRP of $1,799, has two oven cavities that have a combined capacity of 7.3 cubic feet, which makes it the roomiest oven we've seen at CNET Appliances. And if that wasn't enough, LG equipped the LDE4415ST with "Speed" settings that are designed to cut down on cook times.
LG LDE4415ST
The Good
The Bad
The Bottom Line
The basic features on the LDE4415ST cook food well. The roast chicken was downright glorious, and the UltraHeat burner boiled water in a snap. But LG once again fumbles with the addition of bonus features that harm rather than help. As I saw with the LDE4415ST's gas counterpart, the LDG4315ST, specialized cooking modes produced varied, disappointing performances that didn't live up to the LG's promises of improved, efficient cooking. And the LG Smart Oven app compatible with the LDE4415ST is limited in its capabilities.
Once you strip away the bells and whistles, the LG LDE4415ST is a solid range that covers basic cooking well. Opt for this model if you prioritize the flexibility that double-oven cooking brings or find yourself needing to cook chicken in a hurry (hey, it happens). If not, consider a simple, single-oven range such as the $949 Samsung NE59J7630SB.
Range has big, bold LG look
Other than sharing the bold, blocky features that characterize LG ranges, the LDE4415ST doesn't stand out much from similar stainless-steel-covered ranges. This 30-inch-wide model features wide, curved oven door handles and equally sturdy knobs to control the burners. The back panel contains cooking modes on the left, a digital display in the center and the number pad for the ovens, on/off buttons and oven timers on the right side of the display.
The smooth electric cooktop has four burners and a warming zone in the back center of the cooking surface. The front left and right burners contain double and triple heating elements, respectively. Though it's nice to have the option to add a little extra power when you are cooking something in a large pot or pan, the knobs to control the multiple-element burners are confusing. The controls for each element contained in one burner are packed into one knob, so it's tricky to figure out how many elements you have engaged for one of these burners.
The most impressive design aspect of this LG model is its double ovens. Usually, double-oven ranges have a narrow top oven cavity that's ideal for dishes like casseroles or pizzas and a larger cavity below for cooking roasts, poultry and other larger food items. The LDE4415ST, however, defies convention by making the ovens closer in size with 3 cubic feet of space in the top oven and 4.3 cubic feet of space in the bottom oven. This design is like having two smallish ovens in one unit, a boon for folks who often cook big meals. But the LDE4415ST presents an interesting problem, one which I've experienced with other large double ovens, such as the Kenmore Elite 97723: You have to take a pretty deep squat to remove food from the bottom oven since it's so close to the floor. This is when the gliding rack LG includes with the LDE4415ST comes in handy -- the rack slides out of the oven similar to a dresser drawer, so you don't have to reach in as far to get your food.
LG equipped each oven cavity with its own settings and features to provide different cooking experience based on which one you use. Both have the following cooking modes: bake, warm, pizza, self clean and Easy Clean. But only the lower oven contains LG's ProBake Convection system, a feature in which a heating element around a convection fan warms the air as it circulates throughout the oven, so you can't use convection in the upper oven (we've seen similar systems with names like pure, true or European convection on high-end ranges such as the Dacor ER30DSCH). Like other LG models we've seen, the upper oven contains an infrared broiler, which uses ceramic plates to apply a high level of heat to food. The lower oven, however, has a traditional coil broiler.
The range's connectivity to LG's Smart Oven Android app rounds out the oven's features. This feature was also included in the LG LDF4315ST. I didn't like the limited capabilities of this addition because the app uses NFC (near-field communication) to communicate with the oven rather than Wi-Fi, which means you have to hold your smartphone or tablet right next to the oven for the two to connect. The app only allows you to change oven settings such as time or temperature unit rather than set temperatures from a distance. The app is still the same, so you can read more about my reaction to it here.
Convection baking, speed-cooking modes dampen otherwise good performance
The LG LDE4415ST does well when it comes to the most basic jobs that you want an oven to complete. Take the oven's boiling performance, example. The UltraHeat Power Boil burner, aka the front left burner, brought 112 ounces of water to a rapid boil in an average of 9.47 minutes, a respectable time when you compare the LG to other ranges.
Large-Burner Boil Test (Electric Models)
The oven also gave a consistently good performance when I roasted a chicken on convection mode in the bottom oven. The LDE4415ST's use and care manual recommends that you roast meats on a broiler pan, so I followed those instructions to cook a roughly 5.5-pound chicken. The chicken was finished about 20 minutes sooner than usual, but the results were stupendous: even browning, crisp skin and juicy white and dark meat. This excellent performance extended to the Speed Roast mode, a feature that is designed to roast poultry quickly by using the heating element on the top of the oven with the heating element around the convection fan. The manual says that you don't have to preheat the oven when you use this mode, which automatically sets a temperature for you that you can't change. I was dubious about placing a raw chicken in a cold oven. But 50 minutes later, the meat had reached the appropriate temperature and tasted as good as the chicken I roasted in the regular convection roast mode.
The LG LDE4415ST roasted gorgeous chicken on both convection roast and Speed Roast settings.
Unfortunately, the UltraHeat Power Boil burner and the Speed Roast settings were the only trumpeted features that lived up to their lofty names. The Speed Broil setting located in the upper oven took longer to cook six hamburgers than the regular broiler in the lower oven -- an average of 14.12 minutes versus 13.02 minutes. There was, however, a noticeable difference in the quality of the burgers. The patties in the upper oven were juicier than the ones I broiled in the lower oven.
Hamburger Broiling Test (Electric Models)
The ProBake Convection fan left me cold during my biscuit baking tests. I baked two sheets of biscuits with a dozen biscuits on each sheet in the lower oven. The biscuits on the upper rack cooked evenly, but teetered toward burnt around the edges. On the lower rack, the biscuits located on the bottom right corner were consistently under-baked.
The top rack of biscuits (top left) baked more evenly than the biscuits on the bottom rack (bottom left). The color grids on the right show the varying levels of brown of each rack of biscuits.
The most jarring part of testing the oven was baking pizzas on the Pizza modes. Like LG's gas double oven, the pizza I cooked in the bottom oven following the manual's suggestions for a frozen, self-rising pizza resulted in a charred layer of something that used to be cheese. When it comes to cooking pizza in an LG, it's better to follow package instructions rather than the oven's settings.
I cooked the pizza on the left in the top oven with pizza mode two. I cooked the pizza on the right in the bottom oven on the same settings. Per the oven manual's instructions, I cooked the top pizza for 21 minutes and the top pizza for 24 minutes.
Final thoughts
There is a lot to like about the LG LDE44415ST. The double-oven capacity alone would make this a welcome addition to a busy home kitchen, especially with the holidays upon us. You can also rely on this oven to cook poultry well, boil water quickly and broil burgers in a flash (if you use the regular broil mode). But LG needs to tinker with some of its specialty cooking modes, especially the Speed Broil and Pizza settings.