Review on 🍔 Cuisinart GR-11 - Multifunctional Grill, Panini Press, and Griddler by Stephen Ball

We just rented an apartment in Italy for a month. The apartment had a great panini press. So in a month I could use this thing 30 or 40 times! I love it! This is what I am comparing this product to, which may not be fair. The one in Italy heats up more evenly than this one. It seemed hotter and warmed up faster. Bread "brown" faster. It had more space between the plates, so we could cut fresh bread nice and thick, put a hearty sandwich on top and still place it evenly between the heating plates. You can't make very thick sandwiches with the Cuisinart GR-11 (don't expect to be able to heat up/roast a Subway subwoofer). A thick sandwich CAN be compressed if you don't mind it flattening ("flattened out") a bit. In this regard, it should be understood that the top plate is not actually free floating to any appreciable extent. This means that if you are REALLY trying to toast a thicker sandwich, the back of the top plate will touch first and then somehow flip forward. This in turn will push the top piece of bread/bun away from the sandwich slightly and may cause some ingredients to jump off the sandwich and onto the grilling surface. The GR-11 seems very slow compared to the Italian one. It takes longer to reheat and toast the bread. I didn't measure it with a stopwatch or anything, but I was quite surprised when I left and came back a few times only to find it still didn't look that "toasted". (I've found that this is partly because the top platen doesn't seem to get as hot as the bottom platen. For example, you can see nice grill marks on the bottom if they haven't already appeared on the top.) then was how described above, everything else fine. No issues with detachable plates as other reviewers have noted and for your basic grilled cheese sandwich on sliced white bread I think it will work satisfactorily. Okay, it's not doing a good job. If you are satisfied with "good", buy, and everything will be "good". If you've used really good ones, this will probably disappoint you a bit.