Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

My old indoor grill, a Frigidaire Professional, died after about 5 years and so I bought this Cuisinart as a replacement. The digital display on this is nice in that it shows you the preheat status, grill temperature, and cooking countdown timer. There are only two control buttons on this thing. One is the on-off button. The other is the circular knob, which allows you to adjust temperature, cooking time, and cooking mode (grill or griddle). When you turn the grill on, the machine steps you through the settings for cooking. You twist the circular knob left or right to change the setting, and then push the circular knob to confirm the setting. The machine takes about 5 minutes to preheat to 450 degrees farenheight. My old grill took 9 minutes, so this is a welcome speedup. The top and bottom grill plates make contact with your food, and because of their weight will put a "squeeze" on the food. This is perfect for cooking meats, but the plates will flatten any soft foods such as bread. My old Frigidaire grill allowed me to lock the plates so that the top plate would not crush my ham and cheese sandwiches. I do wish that the countdown timer would turn off the grill when it hits zero. Instead, the grill continues to cook your food and the timer will start to count up. In other words it tells you how much time has passed since the countdown ended. Overall it's a really nice grill and I would definitely recommend it. Hopefully it lasts as long as my old one did.