Why You Can Trust CNET Kenmore 72583 review: Pro name, amateur performance
The Kenmore Pro 72583 gas range is aimed at folks who want a professional-grade appliance without a five-figure price tag. Unfortunately, this $2,899 range is an uneven cooker that falls short of its professional ambitions.
Do you have a favorite celebrity chef? Do you have strong feelings about that ice cream machine on Chopped? Do you love the haughty but lovable way Mary Berry pronounces "layers" on the The Great British Baking Show? You might be a "prosumer," a marketing term you often hear appliance manufacturers use; the buzzword combines "professional" and "consumer" to describe avid home cooks who take their meals seriously and want professional-level appliances and tools to match their passion for cuisine. Popular brands are going after this group of potential customers by building ranges that have the appearance the professional-grade appliances you see on TV with a much lower cost than five-figure models.
Kenmore 72583
The Good
The Bad
The Bottom Line
Kenmore wants to scratch the itch of aspiring chefs with its Kenmore Pro line, a group of kitchen appliances "designed to show off one's inner gourmet." Unfortunately, the Kenmore 72583 range is a poor ambassador for the Pro collection. This 30-inch-wide, stainless-steel gas range's unsteady performance is more amateur than professional (looking at you, uneven baking and tricky oven controls). Kenmore has decked out this model with a couple of cool features, like the Accela-Heat cooking mode that eliminates the need for preheating, but the bells and whistles just aren't loud enough to drown out the issues I had with this range.
The $2,899 Kenmore 72583 isn't up for the intense cooking its intended audience of home cooks will put it through. You're better off with a model like the KitchenAid KSGB900ESS if you want a slide-in gas range. And Kenmore has made good gas ranges; if you don't mind a freestanding model, consider the $1,400 Kenmore 74343 gas range.
This Kenmore sits pretty in the kitchen
The Kenmore 72583 has all the physical features we've come to expect on ranges inspired by their commercial counterparts. The 30-inch-wide slide-in model is covered in stainless steel and topped with continuous cast-iron grates that makes it easier to scoot pots and pans from one burner to another. There are five burners on the cooktop, including a center oval burner for cooking with a griddle or oblong pot. Unlike the electric Kenmore 97723 range that completely eliminated oven and burner knobs, the Kenmore 72583 relies on them for both oven settings and oven temperature. There is a small touchscreen panel on the front of the range, but its functionality is pretty limited. The Kenmore 72583's capacity is small on paper: only 5.1 cubic feet, which is a lot smaller than similar units such as the KitchenAid KSGB900ES (6.5 cubic fee) or Samsung NX58H9500WS (5.8 cubic feet). I never had any problem fitting my large baking sheets into the range, so don't let this oven's size turn you away -- there are more troubling features that make the 72583 less appealing.
Shaky performance gives me pause
We run at least three rounds of each performance test so we can make an accurate assessment of a range's ability. But the Kenmore cooked so unevenly in some of the tests that it was hard to make a blanket determination. Let's look at the biscuit baking tests as an example. I baked 24 biscuits (a dozen biscuits per baking sheet) per round with the oven's convection fan in use. Though the temperature and cook times were the same for each round, the biscuits' brownness varied each batch.
I baked these biscuits were baked at the same temperature for the same amount of time on the same rack, but in different rounds of testing. The results were very different.
Broiling tests revealed even more inconsistency in the Kenmore 72583's oven. During these tests, I cooked six burgers at a time on a broiler pan. The burgers in the middle of the pan were right beneath the burner and cooked much faster than the burgers on the edges of the pan. This shows that the heat isn't getting distributed well, which could make a negative impact if you're popping a large dish such as a casserole under the broiler for a quick browning. And it took a long time for all of the burgers to reach an internal temperature of 145 degrees Fahrenheit, especially when you compare the Kenmore to other gas ranges:
Hamburger Broiling Test (Gas Models)
Some bright spots for this gas range
The Kenmore 72583 wasn't all bad news. For example, the range's Turbo Boil burner boiled 112 ounces of water in an average of 11.4 minutes, a respectable time when you look at other gas cooktops:
Large Burner Boil Test (Gas Models)
I was also a reluctant fan of the Kenmore 72583's Accela-Heat oven setting. This feature lets you cook convenience foods (think frozen pizzas, TV dinners and such) without preheating: the oven's temperature quickly increases to a high temperature, then the bake element and convection fan cycle on and off. I put a frozen pizza in the oven when it was cold, then used the Accela-Heat setting to cook it. The pizza was completely cooked in the time suggested on the box, even though the oven wasn't preheated first. But the Accela-Heat was a little too efficient when I tried the feature with some refrigerated cinnamon rolls, a food that the Kenmore's use and care manual suggested for the special setting. The tops and sides of my cinnamon rolls were burnt after cooking them for the allotted time. Overall, Accela-Heat is a good feature when you want a meal fast; just be mindful of the potential for burning.
Final thoughts
I appreciate Kenmore's attempt to bring commercial-style appliances to the average home cook. But the Kenmore 72583 needs some improvements before it can earn its Pro name. There aren't enough thoughtful features or quick cook times to make up for the range's spotty performance. True prosumers should hold out for a gas slide-in range that will really meet their needs.