Neff N70 Induction Hob 80cm T58FHW1L0 Review

Design and Features

• Five burners
• Combi zone
• Intuitive controls and smart app

I’m a big fan of 80cm-wide induction hobs, as they give a bit more space to cook, making it easier to work with larger pans. Most 80cm induction hobs, such as the Hotpoint CleanProtect TS6477CCPNE, stick to the same four burner layout that a 60cm wide hob has, but the Neff N70 Induction Hob 80cm T58FHW1L0 bucks the trend.

Instead, this model has three standard rings on the left and in the centre, and two Combi Zones on the right, which can be controlled individually or combined into a single large zone for a grill pan or larger casserole dish. That gives you a lot more flexibility than you usually get with a hob of this size.

The top-end N90 T66YYY4C0 hob uses the clever Twist Pad Flex control system, which makes dialling power up and down easy. You don’t get that with the Neff N70 Induction Hob 80cm T58FHW1L0, but you do get the Twist Touch control system.

Tap the burner you want to control, and then slide your finger around the control zone to dial power up and down, moving between the nine power settings, plus the P (power boost) mode at the end. As well as sliding between cooking powers, you can tap where you want on the circle to get a rough power mode, such as in the middle for power mode 5, and adjust from there.

Selecting a zone is as easy as tapping its power button. For the Combi zone, there’s also a ] symbol, which joins the two zones into one.

Using P mode, you can only have this on either the right-hand zones, or one of the left-hand zones at a time. Otherwise, you can run each zone as setting 9. It involves a bit of planning if you want to use P to quickly boil pans, but the Neff N70 Induction Hob 80cm T58FHW1L0 handles power modes better than many induction hobs, which will dramatically reduce the available power levels to some burners when one is using Power Boost.

As well as adjusting power, the dial is used to control the timer, with one timer per burner. That’s alright, and works well enough for smaller time settings (up to 10 minutes), but it is a bit cumbersome to use, with lots of swiping if you want to use a higher setting, such as 30 minutes or even an hour. When a timer expires, the burner turns off.

Finally, there’s a Pause button that pauses all of the burners. It’s handy to have, such as when you get interrupted and need to answer the door.

As with many of Neff’s appliances (and Bosch’s and Siemens’s), the Neff N70 Induction Hob 80cm T58FHW1L0 is compatible with the HomeConnect app for remote control. For a Hob that might seem so useful, but the app’s a useful way to keep tabs on cooking times and get notifications when a timer has expired.

Using the app also gets you two different modes: keep warm and PanBoost. PanBoost is an alternative to the P setting, only it runs for a shorter period, so is suitable for lighter cookware. 

It’s a shame that the keep warm setting isn’t available through the main control panel, although you can use it by setting the Favourite button (a heart on the control panel). You can assign two shortcuts to the Favourite button, via a short- and a long-press.

For example, a short-press can set the back-right burner to keep warm, and a long-press can set the big burner to the P setting.

There’s no fry sensor on this hob, as you get with the N90 T66YYY4C0, so you can’t target a specific cooking temperature and should adjust the heating power to suit what you’re cooking. Unless you’re really into cooking, that shouldn’t be an issue.

Use the HomeConnect app and you can get help on setting the right cooking mode for different ingredients. It’s not something that I think you’ll need long-term, but if you’re new to induction cooking, then the app is helpful.

Performance

• Very fast too heat
• Easy to adjust

I test induction hobs’ power by measuring how quickly they heat water from 20°C to 90°C. Starting with a small pot with 500ml of water, I found that the water was heated in 1m 3ms, which is only a few seconds behind the Samsung NZ84T9747VK.

I then moved to 1-litre of water in a larger pan, using the second burner. This time, the hob took a speedy 2m 31s to heat the pan, which makes it one of the fastest that I’ve used.

With 1.5-litres of water using the biggest ring, the water took 2m 54s to heat. Only the Miele KM7201FR was faster with its double power-boost setting.

Cooking isn’t just about the heating speed, but how easy a hob is to use, and the Neff N70 Induction Hob 80cm T58FHW1L0 is one of the best. Stir-frying fajitas, for example, it’s easy to quickly dial the heat up to sear vegetables and chicken, and then dial down the power for consistent cooking. Once cooked, I could slide the pan to the back-right and use my shortcut for keep warm.

Should you buy it?