Amana AGR6603SFS Gas Range Review

Why we like it

Pros

• Produced extremely evenly-baked cookies and cake, and a near-perfectly roasted pork loin.
• Bake assist presets make preheating a snap.
• 5.0 cubic-foot oven preheats in just over 6 minutes.

Cons

• Weak broiler that barely browned a tray of toast.
• Unimpressive high and low temperatures on the range.

Features

Bake Assist—Preset temperature settings at 375º, 400º, 425º F. Just select a temperature and press start.

Warm hold—Keeps the oven at 145ºF to 190ºF to keep dishes warm until you’re ready to eat.

Sealed burners—Simplifies cleanup easy by keeping spills from dripping beneath the cooktop.

Temp Assure—Evenly distributes heat through the entire oven to help food cook evenly.

Self clean—Automatically cleans in two to four hours.

What user reviews say

This range scores 4.5/5 stars on Home Depot. Owners love its easy-to-read digital temperature controls and that the oven heats evenly. One reviewer swears that there are “not enough words to describe how awesome this stove is,” and 94% of customers would recommend buying the range.

What we found

We also put the AGR6603SFS through the same battery of tests we use on every range we evaluate to see how well it performed.

We checked high and low temperatures for each of the burners, examined how evenly it heated a pan, baked cakes and cookies, roasted a pork loin, and broiled a tray of toast to serve as a heat map of hot and cool spots in the oven. We scored the food on a scale of 10 compared to the rest of the ovens and ranges we've tested this year.

Oven results

TIME TO PREHEAT 6:18 to 350º F. This is a very fast preheat time for an oven of this size.

COOKIES This Amana baked some of the most even cookies we’ve ever seen, with a near-perfect score of 9.8/10 compared to other ranges we’ve tested. They’re slightly unevenly baked on the bottom, but not nearly enough to matter to an average cookie-eater. This bodes well for avid bakers.

CAKE 9.9/10 for consistency compared to other ranges we've tested—one of our best cake scores in recent testing.

PORK LOIN 9.99/10 for consistency compared to other ranges we've tested—perhaps our most even pork roast to date.

TOAST 9.84/10 compared to other ranges we've tested. While this toast scored high on evenness, it can hardly be called toast. The fact that this tray of bread sat under the Amana’s fully-preheated broiler for 3 minutes and barely browned speaks to the power—or lack thereof—in this broiler.

Range results

TIME TO BOIL 48 OUNCES OF WATER Twelve to thirteen minutes on average, but as fast as about eight minutes on the front left burner. This is a fairly low score compared to our other ranges.

MAXIMUM TEMPERATURE REACHED ON BURNER The surface of a pan hit 483ºF on the right front burner, other burners got between 377º-475º F. This is a mediocre score, certainly not great compared to other ranges we’ve tested.

MINIMUM TEMPERATURE REACHED ON BURNER A pan reached 130ºF on the right rear burner, other burners hovered between 164º-172º F. This is a very unimpressive score compared to the other ranges we’ve tested.

Should you buy it?

Probably not. Though its oven is stellar, the cooktop scored very poorly, and that's an important half of the range to ignore. Additionally, the only thing that sets this Amana apart from this Whirlpool range is its Bake Assist temperature presets. Otherwise, the Whirlpool version is cheaper and is essentially the same 5.0 cu ft. gas range, with basically the same burners, made in the same factory in Tulsa, OK, and based on the exact same design. If you're sold on this model, buy whichever is on sale.