Why You Can Trust CNET LG LSE4613BD review: LG's $2,000 range is a good pick for your kitchen
The $2,000 LG LSE4613BD isn't the best stove we've seen, but it's a solid cooker that's worth consideration.
You can have too much of a good thing when it comes to stoves. There are models available that have options like Wi-Fi, double-oven cavities and even built-in tablets. Sometimes, bonus features make a stove a must-have, but there are also instances when these little extras fall flat because the appliance is terrible at its most basic job -- cooking food.
LG LSE4613BD
The Good
The Bad
The Bottom Line
LG ditches a lot of the extras with its $2,000 LSE4613BD electric slide-in range, a simple appliance with respectable cooking performance, good looks and an easy-to-use interface. Though this stove didn't break any records when it came to cooking speed, it did fairly well on most of our cook tests. The extras that LG does include on this stove are actually helpful rather than extraneous. And its $2,000 price makes it one of the least expensive slide-in models that we've tested.
The LG is a good oven, especially if you want to skip most of the fancy stuff and get right to cooking. The stove is a solid pick for your kitchen if you're looking for a slide-in, electric range.
Looks
The LSE4613BD has the features that are typical of other LG stoves. Its standard 30-inch-wide body has an imposing appearance thanks to hefty, rounded edges and its big burner and oven knobs. The finish of this model is black stainless steel, which is designed to be more resistant to smudges and fingerprints than its popular traditional stainless steel counterpart. The overall effect makes the LSE4613BD feel like it could be the anchor of your suite of kitchen appliances.
There are four burners and a warming zone on the stove's flat, electric cooktop. The front left burner has an UltraHeat feature that's supposed to speed up the time it takes for you to boil water (more on that later). All of the burner knobs, the knob to which you set the oven mode and the touchpad controls are located on the front of the appliance.
The LG LSE4613BD has heavy, curved edges and heavy knobs.
The electric oven on the LSE4613BD has a roomy 6.3 cubic foot capacity. There's a convection fan built into the back wall of the oven, which helps distribute hot air more evenly when you bake. Here are the options you have when you use the oven: bake, broil high, broil low, Easy Clean, self clean, proof, warm, speed roast, convection roast and convection bake.
The oven itself is simple to use. Just turn the oven mode knob to pick a setting on which you want to cook your dish, adjust the temperature on the touchpad and hit start (just make sure you press down hard).
Performance
This LG stove gave some respectable results in our cooking tests. Though its cook times for boiling water and broiling burgers weren't the fastest we've seen in electric stoves, it performed better than some competitors. Let's take a look at the boil test results.
Large burner boil test (electric models)
It took the LSE4613BD an average of 11 minutes, 42 seconds to bring 112 ounces of water to a rolling boil with the UltraHeat burner. Slide-in electric ovens from Electrolux, KitchenAid and Kenmore all had much faster boil times, but the LG still edged ahead of the Frigidaire FPEH3077RF and the Samsung NE58K9850WG.
The LSE4613BD was slow when it came to broiling hamburger patties. Though it was faster than other freestanding electric ovens we've tested, it was slower than every slide-in electric model. It took an average of 14 minutes, 29 seconds to bring six burgers to an internal temperature of 145 degrees Fahrenheit. This doesn't worry me too much, since the LG only lagged behind by seconds.
Hamburger broiling test (electric models)
When we used the convection fan to bake two sheets of biscuits at once, the coloring on the biscuits was pretty even, save for a few spots. That shows that you can probably count on this oven when you need to bake a lot of items like cookies on multiple racks at the same time. Granted, the biscuits did come out dark, but at home, you could decrease the cooking time to make up for that.
The biscuits in the top picture baked on a higher rack than the biscuits in the bottom picture.
A nice feature of this LG stove is its speed roast setting. With this cook mode, you can roast something like a whole chicken without needing to preheat the oven first. It took 1 hour, 20 minutes to cook a five-and-a-half pound chicken, and the bird came out golden and juicy.
Final thoughts
LG with good looks, simple controls and decent cooking performance. Plus, this electric range is one of the least expensive slide-in models that we've reviewed. Consider this stove if bells and whistles aren't your thing, but you still want a good appliance that's not super expensive.