Why You Can Trust CNET Frigidaire FGGF3058RF review: Do extra features make this Frigidaire oven a worthwhile buy?
The $1,150 Frigidaire FGGF3058RF gas range includes a couple of neat features that attempt to give this moderately priced oven a little class.
At first glance, it seems like the Frigidaire FGGF3058RF is a feature-rich appliance available for a reasonable price: $1,150. There's a heating element built around the oven's convection fan for more even cooking. It has specialty cooking modes, such as convection roast and a simple button that just says "pizza" for your favorite frozen or fresh pie. And there's a probe that you plug into the oven wall that tracks the internal temperature of dishes you're cooking, a feature we usually see on more expensive ovens.
Frigidaire FGGF3058RF
The Good
The Bad
The Bottom Line
But when you dig a little deeper into this oven's extras and basic functions, you realize that Frigidaire has created an appliance that is on par with other gas ranges in the less-than-$1,200 price range. The oven takes its sweet time broiling burgers, and it doesn't bake multiple racks of biscuits as evenly you'd hope, especially with that "true convection." And the pizza button? It works, but it's so simple that it almost seems like an unnecessary part of the oven.
Overall, the Frigidaire FGGF3058RF is a decent range. It just doesn't have enough bells, whistles or cooking prowess to make it any more special than other ranges. Consider the $1,000 GE JGB700SEJSS, a cheaper gas range with fewer bonus features, but an equally good performance.
Another day, another stainless-steel range
The Frigidaire FGGF3058RF does little to set itself apart aesthetically from other gas, freestanding ranges. Fortunately, this now-standard design is inoffensive and won't be an eyesore in your kitchen. The Frigidaire is a 30-inch wide freestanding range coated in stainless steel that's supposed to be resistant to smudges and fingerprints (it was indeed resistant, but not impervious, so keep stainless-steel wipes handy). Continuous cast-iron grates cover the five gas burners on the cooktop. The range comes with the nice addition of an option of a griddle you can swap over the middle, oblong burner for foods like pancakes or grilled cheese.
The touch panel buttons often control more than one cooking option.
The touchpad controls can be difficult to get the hang of because one button can access multiple features. For example, there isn't a separate button between convection bake and convection roast; you use the same button to access each cooking mode. And if you're using the temperature probe, you can decide whether you want the oven to continue cooking after your desired temperature has been reached or if you want it to stop. This is a smart option to give users, but it's hard to remember exactly how to get to that selection. You need to make sure you hold onto this oven's user manual so you can keep all the controls straight.
Down in the oven, Frigidaire gives you 5 cubic feet of baking space, which is a bit on the small end for a freestanding gas oven. But in practice, there is plenty of room for large baking sheets and roasts. A convection fan is built into the back wall of the oven to improve the circulation of hot air. As I mentioned earlier, there's a heating element around the convection fan (in addition to traditional heating elements on the top and bottom of the oven) to heat the air while it's circulating.
Notable extras give way to so-so-performance
The useful additions to a seemingly basic gas range gave me high hopes for how this Frigidaire would cook. Its performance during our cook tests was fine, but fell short of the lofty expectations its first impression gave me.
Let's start on a high note. The Frigidaire large burner boiled 112 ounces of water in an average of 11.32 minutes, a fast time when you compare it to the performance of other gas ranges.
Large-Burner Boil Tests (Gas Models)
When it comes to quality, the food that comes out of the Frigidaire is good. A chicken I cooked on convection roast mode had a beautiful golden skin and tasty meat. And the pizza button cooked my frozen pizza as well as I expected. Unfortunately, all the button really does is set the oven to a preset temperature based on if your pizza is fresh or frozen. It's not really innovative, and it would be just as easy to set the temperature yourself.
But the Frigidaire was a slow at broiling burgers. It took the oven an average of 18.52 minutes to broil six hamburger patties, nearly four minutes slower than the fastest gas broiler we've seen in the KitchenAid KGRS306BSS.
Hamburger Broiling Test (Gas Models)
And despite the heating element around the convection fan, the oven didn't evenly brown multiple racks of biscuits I baked simultaneously as much as I expected. The color of the biscuits varied more than I would've liked.
The pictures on the left show biscuits I baked at the same time (the biscuits on the top left baked on a higher rack than the biscuits on the bottom left). The illustrations on the right show color representations of the biscuits' browning.
Final thoughts
I wanted to like the Frigidaire FGGF3058RF more than I did. Its $1,150 price sounded competitive, and its extras seem nice to have. But the oven's performance didn't make this range stand out from other competitors. This Frigidaire is just fine, which isn't enough for me to give this product a strong endorsement.
Frigidaire FGGF3058RF
