Miele KM 8885-2 FL Diamond&Msense Review

Design and Features

• Six cooking zones
• Works with Msense pans

A sleek black hob, the Miele KM 8885-2 FL Diamond&Msense doesn’t look much different from a regular induction hob. Not that’s necessarily a bad thing, as the black glass looks great, whether this hob is surface- or flush-mounted.

I’m a big fan of wider hobs like this, as I like the extra space afforded. However, due to the dimensions of the insert you’ll need, the Miele KM 8885-2 FL Diamond&Msense is more likely to fit when you’re having a new worktop and can make the right-sized hole, rather than an upgrade.

Typically, wider hobs don’t actually have more burners. Take the Hotpoint CleanProtect TS6477CCPNE, for example, which has four burners, but with more space in between them than on a 60 cm-wide hob.

Here, the Miele KM 8885-2 FL Diamond&Msense is full surface induction, which means that you can put pans down wherever you want them. 

Up to six bits of cookware can be placed, so you get two more spaces than on a regular induction hob. While four burners may work for most people, if you find that you’ve always got a lot on the go, the 50% capacity boost here could work for you.

There are two ways of using the Miele KM 8885-2 FL Diamond&Msense hob: with the dedicated Msense cookware, which offers temperature control, or with regular pots and pans.

For the latter, the hob acts like any other that I’ve reviewed. Drop the pan on the surface, and the hob detects where it’s located, giving a slider control underneath to set the power between 0.5 and 9 in half-step increments. There’s also a B (boost) mode for when you want to rapidly boil water.

How many pans you can have on Boost depends on where you place them. First, imagine that you split the hob into three vertical zones (left, middle and top), then divide each zone into two (top and bottom). Each vertical zone can have one pan on boost, and the other pan can either run at power setting 9 (if it’s on the bottom) or 8.5 ( if it’s on the top).

That’s not too bad, and it just needs a bit of pan organisation when you want to use boost mode.

Cleverly, the hob recognises when a pan is moved, and automatically shifts its settings to a new zone. For example, you can have a pan on setting four on the left; shift it to the far right, and it the current power mode will be applied there.

Each zone gets its own timer, which is easily set via the touch controls. Once the timer hits zero, the zone shuts down. 

So far, the Miele KM 8885-2 FL Diamond&Msense is like any other hob, but buy the Msense cookware and you get smart cooking.

Each pan needs to be connected to the hob, which is a slightly more involved process than I’d have liked. First, the hob has to be put into pairing mode, and then I needed to hold the pan’s handle over the indicator on the bottom right. It took me a few goes to get my pan to register.

Once set up, the control moves to the pan, which lights up its controls. This feature requires the cookware to have a coin cell battery, which can last for up to four years; that’s similar to the Ztove cookware.

Rather than setting a power level on the hob, the pans have dedicated controls to select the mode and temperature: simmer for reducing sauces, frying level 1 (150°C), frying level 2 (190°C), and frying level 3 (210°C). 

Using temperature sensors in the pan, the MSense cookware instructs the hob to modulate its power to maintain the same temperature. There’s less choice of temperature here than with the Ztove, which offers selectable temperatures in 1°C increments, but Miele’s option is far easier to use, and the helpful manual suggests which mode to use for different types of food.

Having the temperature sensor built into the cookware gives more accurate results than a hob that uses a temperature sensor, such as the Neff N90. With Neff’s model, you get stable temperatures, but the temperature in the pan and what’s read by the hob can be quite different.

Finally, this hob is compatible with the Miele app, although it doesn’t offer much in the way of remote control.

Performance

• Heats fast
• Msense makes precision cooking easy

I started by testing how powerful the Miele KM 8885-2 FL Diamond&Msense is when used on its Boost setting. Bringing a large pan, filled with 1.5L of water, from 20°C to 90°C took 3m 25s, so similar to a plug-in kettle.

Likewise, 1L of water in a mid-sized pan took 2m 52s to hit the same 90°C temperature. My small pan with 500ml of water took 1m 43s. I’ve seen slightly quicker results, but the Miele KM 8885-2 FL Diamond&Msense is sufficiently powerful enough to quickly boil water, to the point you don’t need a kettle.

I also tested MSense with a fried egg. A perfect fried egg should be cooked through, but with a clean, white underside, avoiding the tough burnt-on bits. This can be hard with a regular pan, as using power levels alone often ends up witih the pan getting too hot, and by that point it’s too late.

Using the frying level 1 setting, I waited until the pan had indicated it was at the right temperature, and then I added a bit of oil and the egg. Cooking time was a bit slower than with a normal hob, but that’s because the low-and-slow approach is better. Once my egg was cooked, it was white throughout, with a nicely runny yolk: I can’t get better than that with a normal hob.

Should you buy it?