Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I found very few reviews for this Cuisinart CDF-200 and bought it mostly on Cuisinart reputation, hopefully my review will prevent others from wasting time/effort/money on this deep fryer. It has what I (I'm a mechanical engineer with a background in data aquisition and controls) consider to be a fundamental design flaw. There are two temperature sensors mounted on the heating element. One that provides closed loop feedback control to regulate temperature and one that provides a hard cutoff if the high-limit temperature is exceeded. The high limit thermostat actually touches the heating element rather than being surrounded by oil which causes it to be hotter than the actual oil. I suspect this was intended to provide a safety shutoff in case the fryer was turned on with no oil, but it causes more problems than it fixes. My unit would heat to about 340F (should go to 375F) and would stop working with no easily visible indicator (power light still on, etc.) and would not reach the set temperature. I finally realized that the small recessed reset button had popped out, and pushing back in would allow the unit to start heating again but not beyond 340F. Overall, the build quality is trash, with lots of sharp edges and very thin sheetmetal, but I've come to accept that all consumer products are built this way and could have looked past it to give it 3-4 stars if the unit actually worked. Even if my unit was faulty (I certainly hope not all of their fryers are bad from the factory) I can point out multiple BAD design decisions. As an engineer, I'm begging consumers not to tolerate this garbage.