Belling BEL BI903MFCBLK

Verdict

If you want a lot of cooking space and don’t want to spend a fortune, then the Belling BEL BI903MFCBLK is a great choice. This integrated double oven is easy to use and has simple manual controls. I found that it cooked evenly on its oven settings, with only the coverage of the bottom grill letting the side down.

Introduction

If you’ve got the space, an integrated double oven is a great way to increase your cooking capacity.

With the Belling BEL BI903MFCBLK, you can do this without spending a fortune: in fact, this model is cheaper than some single ovens.

Controls are quite basic and there aren’t some of the more advanced automatic cooking features you’d get in a high-end model, such as the Whirlpool W11I OM1 4MS2 H, but if you want a low-cost, high-quality double oven, this is a good entry-level choice.

Design and features

• Total of 110 litres of cooking space
• Dual ovens and grills
• Catalytic liner on bottom oven

With its glossy black finish and large windows, the Belling BEL BI903MFCBLK looks like a more expensive model than it is. Although a single unit, the oven is split into two ovens.

The main oven is the bottom one, which has a soft-close door, and a large 72-litres of internal space – you don’t get many ovens bigger than this, certainly not in integrated form.

Open the door up, and there are five shelf supports, giving a good range of shelf positions. There aren’t any slide-out shelf rails on this oven, which is a shame: they really do make it easier to add and remove food from the oven.

This oven has its controls at the top, offering defrost, fan oven, convection, fan assist, pizza, base heat, top heat, fan frill and dual grill options. As the options are represented by symbols, you’ll want to keep the manual to hand while you get used to the oven.

A simple analogue temperature dial adjusts the target temperature, and an LED turns off when the temperature has been reached.

This oven has a catalytic liner, which automatically cleans itself of grease stains. It works best at 200°C or higher.

For the top oven, there’s a smaller 38-litres of space, with two shelf supports. This is still a handy oven for cooking smaller amounts of food or for using the integrated grill.

There’s no fan on this oven, so cooking modes are limited to single grill, dual grill and conventional cooking. Again, there’s a dedicated temperature dial for this oven, with its own LED that turns off when the set temperature has been reached.

Belling provides a total of three wire shelves in the box, compatible with both top and bottom ovens, plus a grill pan. That’s a good amount for most uses.

A clock sits in the middle of the oven’s display. As well as telling the current time, this can be used to set a generic timer that beeps at the end or to programme a countdown that will shut the oven off.

For the latter, both ovens are cut off at the same time, so use the setting with care, as you may need to be on hand to continue cooking in one oven when the timer runs out.

Both doors have a panel of glass inside, which can easily be flipped up for cleaning. Dirt and crumbs tend to gather between the inner panel and the door, but I found this easy to clean out.

Performance

• Bottom grill is a little uneven
• Good temperature control
• Handy cost savings with top oven

I started by making chips in the top oven, setting it to 210°C and then running for the suggested 24 minutes. The end result was properly and evenly cooked chips, with a total power usage of 0.305kWh (around 10p, assuming a unit cost of 34p per kWh).

Switching to the bottom oven, the same task produced similar results, but energy consumption was higher at 0.464kWh (around 16p). If you’ve got smaller amounts of food to cook, then using the top oven can result in some good cost savings.

Next, I heated both of the ovens to 200°C. Testing the top oven, I loaded it up with a tray full of ceramic beads and found that it was 297.8°C at the front and 213.8°C at the back where it’s hottest. As you can see from the thermal image below, the heat is well distributed.

Switching to the bottom oven, I found that I had to adjust the temperature dial carefully. At first, the oven was running a little hot, so I dialled it down. For more precision control, a simple oven thermometer is helpful so that you can see what the actual temperature is.

Set correctly, I tested the middle shelf first. This was 204.3°C at the front and 206°C at the rear. Again, the thermal image shows that heat is well distributed.

At the top of the oven, it was 205.6°C at the front and 216.8°C at the rear. My thermal shot shows how well the heat is distributed.

Finally, I switched to the grills. I was pretty pleased with the results from the top grill. Using six slices of bread spread out across a shelf, just the front corners of the left- and right-most slices aren’t so well done. Rotate a dish or centre it in the middle of the grill and you’ll have no problems.

I wasn’t so impressed with the bottom grill’s results. The left-hand side was very under done, with the heat focussed on the right. If I were grilling, I’d stick with the top grill.

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