Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

First off- I'm convinced many of these reviews are fake. Any time someone writes an unsavory review some person comes along the day after to click "unhelpful" on it even though it has way more information on it than the 2 -3 sentance reviews that have no information but only say "It's great, I love it"- the end. Yet those useless 5 star reviews that say absolutely nothing about the product get thumbs up as helpful. I would come to read the reviews on this product for months before purchasing because I was on the fence before buying it and I'm not kidding when I tell you that virtually any review that had 3 stars or less almost IMMEDIATELY had been clicked unhelpful by someone as if this was being monitored in some way. there are a few too many reviews where this is the only product the reviewer has ever reviewed here on amazon too which is fishy to me. Anyhow, I just don't understand why what I'm about to mention here was only mentioned by a few of the reviewers so far. I'll sum this up with pros and cons. Pros- Removable plates. Size is good. That's all. If it weren't for the fact that the plates could be removed and put in the dishwasher... and like someone else's review noted, the fact that this grill is sized long enough for cooking bacon, I would've just spent 20 bucks on the much more superior cooking machine I once had- the GF champ. Cons: - Takes significantly longer to heat up than previous gf grill models. It takes 15 minutes on the evolve to cook something that used to take me 6 minutes on the champ. - Croshatch grill plate much harder to clean. The previous models have a standard top and bottom grill plate that is easy to clean because they have standard straight grill markings. This model has a top grill that is cross-hatched which makes it 5 times harder to clean. Even after putting it in the dishwasher on high there is still so much residue left in between the crosshatches I have to handwash it for an extra 3 minutes. -Bad experience in getting replacement parts. So the manual says you can get the regular type of straight top plate if you want. Well I tried ordering it from the replacement part company and they told me they don't have them. I was dissapointed but I thought to myself- ok... I might as well just get extra grill plates so that I can have an extra on hand if the teflon scratches or just to not have to run the dishwasher every night I can have an extra clean pair of grill plates. Well that didn't work out either. I was told they didn't have any more replacement grill plates and that I'd have to wait 6 weeks. 8 weeks later they still didn't have them... 16 weeks later still nothing... so basically if you scratch the teflon on these grill plates, you're stuck having to buy a new entire grill because they don't have replacement grill plates and haven't had them for months. customer service is virtually non-existant. - No where in the manual does it explain to you what it means when the temperature display is blinking and what it means when it stops blinking. Probably because they don't want you to realize how long this thing takes to actually heat up to the right temperature. the manual says to preheat the grill to the desired temperature for at least 5 minutes before placing food on it. But the blinking indicates that it is still heating. Once it stops blinking the desired temperature has been reached. It takes WAY more than 5 minutes to preheat the grill to the set temperature. I put bacon on the rack and it took almost 15 minutes to cook. It would've been faster on the stove! On the champ it took me 8 minutes to get perfect crispy bacon. If you go traveling outdoors a lot like rv camping the other plates like the muffin and cake plate might work for you. Otherwise I don't see the point of using this to make muffins or cakes or pizza because the oven makes pizzas, cakes and muffins 50 times better than this grill does and in the same amount of time. I don't have the waffle plates so I can't comment on those. One reviewer below wrote "What did this "evolve" from anyway? A bic lighter?" I couldn't agree more.