Aigostar 3-in-1 Sandwich, Grill and Waffle Maker

What the maker puts in writing

• “3 in 1 Sandwich Maker: With detachable plates for paninis, grilling, and waffles… Use it to make hot sandwich, grill burgers, veggies, and chicken, or make fluffy waffles and hash browns”
• “Simple To Use: Powered by 120V and 750W, the panini press sandwich maker can quickly and perfectly toast pocket sandwiches, melts cheese, reheat personal pizza, and creates a crispy outer crust”
• “Easy to Clean: Thanks to the non-stick/teflon cooking surface… No oil or butter needed makes for healthier eating and easy cleanup - simply wipe them clean with a damp cloth once they’ve cooled”
• “Indicator Lights and Cool Touch Handle: Built-in a red power light and a green preheat light… The cool-touch handle ensures safe use and convenient portability”
• “Compact Size and Upright Storage: …ideal for small kitchen spaces, dorm rooms, offices, and even RV trips! It locks shut and has a collectable cord.”
• “Perfect Kitchen Appliance: …a perfect choice for housewarming, Thanksgiving, Birthday, Christmas, or Wedding.”
• Reference 300002NVA · Catalog: 1814 g, 226 × 236 × 102 mm

Two lights, which is the clearest signaling under sixty-five dollars

“Built-in a red power light and a green preheat light… lets you know when it’s time to cook”

A single light has to mean one thing, and on a thermostatted appliance that one thing is usually readiness — so when it goes out you cannot tell whether the machine has reached temperature, dropped below it, or lost power.

Two lights resolve it: red says there is current, green says the plates are hot enough.

The shelf, on signaling:

this — two lights, power and preheat, separately BLACK+DECKER, $48.99 — one green ready light, with the best description on the shelf: it “cycles on and off with the thermostat during use”, and “Wait for the green light before adding food” Metine, $49.99 — a ready light and five browning levels, plus a warning about the light GreenPan, $299.95 — an XL LCD display, a one-touch dial with presets and adjustable shade and crunch control, which replaces lights altogether OSTBA, $29.99 and both Dash Flex Press machines — nothing at all, and the Forged Iron at $34.99 has no on/off switch either: “No on/off switch to fuss with; plug in and the… Cooking Surface heats up fast”

And the Metine page carries the warning this one needs. “we bake our waffles by time, not by the indicator light. The green light going off does NOT mean your waffle is ready - it’s just a signal. Always follow the timer.”

That applies here exactly, and this page is careful enough to call it a preheat light rather than a ready light. It tells you the plates are hot, not that the food is cooked.

What follows: cook by the clock. The Metine is the only page on this shelf to publish times — “level 3 for about 8 minutes and level 5 for about 5 minutes” — and with no browning control here, your stopwatch and your notes are the only repeatability you get.

Seven hundred and fifty watts at a hundred and twenty volts

It is the only item sold on Amazon.com here to publish both figures.

The wattages here:

1200 W — the Metine at $49.99, with “dual-sided heat conduction” 750 W — this, and the OSTBA at $29.99 None — both Dash Flex Press machines, the BLACK+DECKER at $48.99, and the GreenPan at $299.95

So the most expensive machine on this shelf publishes no power figure and two of the cheapest do.

At 120 volts, 750 watts is 6.25 amperes — comfortably inside a 15-amp circuit, with room for a kettle on the same run. 1200 W is 10 amperes, which is most of one.

And that matters for exactly the uses this page names: “dorm rooms, offices, and even RV trips”, and “take outside to use in your yard or garden”. A dorm socket, an office kitchenette and a van’s inverter are all supply-limited, and 6.25 amperes is the figure that decides whether the machine works there.

What wattage governs is not the final temperature — a thermostat sets that — but how fast the plates reach it and how fast they recover. A press loses heat every time the lid opens and every time cold food lands on it, and a sixty percent difference in power is a sixty percent difference in recovery.

Which is part of why the Metine can offer five browning levels and this offers none.

What is missing is the cooking surface, and without it the wattage cannot be interpreted. 750 watts over a small plate is hotter than 750 watts over a large one.

Four of the twelve items sold on Amazon.com publish a surface: 10.8 × 5.5 inches per plate on the Metine — about 59 square inches · 8 × 5 inches on both Dash Flex Press machines — 40 square inches · 4 inches on the Dash Mini plate pack at $9.99 · “4-Square” on the GreenPan, with no dimension.

The catalog footprint here is 226 × 236 × 102 mm — about 8.9 × 9.3 × 4 inches — which is the carton, not the plate.

Three plate sets, and hash browns is the one nobody else names

“detachable plates for paninis, grilling, and waffles… grill burgers, veggies, and chicken, or make fluffy waffles and hash browns”

At least three of the fourteen machines on this shelf ship three plate sets: this, the OSTBA at $29.99 (sandwich, waffle, grill) and the BLACK+DECKER at $48.99 (waffle, grill, sandwich). The Metine at $49.99 ships three as well, each measured at 10.8 × 5.5 inches.

Two ship two: the Dash Forged Iron at $34.99 (grill and griddle, with waffle plates sold separately at $13.49) and the Dash Graphite at $49.74 (grill and waffle). And the GreenPan at $299.95 ships two waffle sets, classic and Belgian.

The difference between a panini plate and a grill plate is the one this page does not explain. A panini plate is ribbed and shallow; a grill plate is ribbed and deeper. Both press; neither is flat — and flat is what the Dash Forged Iron’s griddle plate gives you, which is the surface pancakes, eggs and anything small need so it does not fall between the ridges.

Hash browns is the interesting entry, and it is named on no other page here. A hash brown wants full contact and pressure at once — which is a press’s one genuine advantage over a pan, since a pan gives you contact on one side only. A ribbed panini plate will do it with stripes; a waffle plate will do it with pockets, which is a real and slightly ridiculous idea the page does not develop.

“Reheat personal pizza” is the other unusual claim, and it is sound: a press reheats a slice far better than a microwave, because it drives moisture out of the base rather than into it.

The lightest machine sold on Amazon.com here, and it locks shut

1,814 grams.

The complete machines here, by weight: this 1814 g · both Dash Flex Press 2268 g · OSTBA 2313 g · BLACK+DECKER 2812 g · Metine 3602 g · GreenPan 8165 g.

The GreenPan is four and a half times this machine. And the Breville waffle plates on this shelf — a plate set, not a machine — weigh 1619 g, which is nearly this entire appliance.

Which is the honest frame for the portability claim. “ideal for small kitchen spaces, dorm rooms, offices, and even RV trips! It locks shut and has a collectable cord.”

Four machines here publish an upright or locking storage claim: this, the OSTBA at $29.99 (“compact and upright storage-friendly”), the Metine at $49.99 (“stands upright for neat storage”) and the Dash Forged Iron at $34.99 (“this small Grill locks closed to store away”).

The collectable cord is the detail only this page publishes, and on a machine meant to travel it is the right one: a loose lead is what snags in a cupboard and what gets crushed in a van.

But there is a storage problem the page does not solve. Three plate sets means two sets are always out of the machine, and only one item on this shelf holds its spare plates: the GreenPan at $299.95 — “SIMPLE STORAGE: Belgian and Classic Waffle Plates store in the bottom of the unit.”

So a locking body and four loose plates, which on an RV trip is two objects rather than one.

The cool-touch handle is published by three machines here: this, the OSTBA at $29.99 and the BLACK+DECKER at $48.99 (“heat-resistant handle”). And the OSTBA is the only page that says the rest of the body gets hot: “The outer surface gets hot during use—handle with care and avoid direct contact.” That applies to every press on this shelf.

Teflon, named — and the “no oil needed” claim has a trap in it

“Thanks to the non-stick/teflon cooking surface… No oil or butter needed makes for healthier eating”

Three of the twelve items sold on Amazon.com name a coating chemistry:

this — teflon GVODE, $38.99 — “double-layer TEflon”, and “BPA free” GreenPan, $299.95 — “Thermolon Volt, a diamond-infused ceramic nonstick… free of PFAS, PFOA, lead or cadmium”, which makes it the only non-fluoropolymer plate on this shelf

The other nine say “nonstick” and stop.

Naming Teflon is a straightforward thing to do and most of this shelf avoids it. Teflon is PTFE, the standard fluoropolymer non-stick film — durable, slippery, and the thing the GreenPan’s whole page is written against.

And the “no oil needed” claim has a consequence the page does not follow. A buyer told no fat is needed, who then finds a waffle sticking, will reach for a spray can — and aerosol cooking sprays carry propellant and lecithin that polymerize on a hot non-stick surface into a gummy varnish which no cloth and no dishwasher removes, and which collects in exactly the pockets you cannot reach.

The BLACK+DECKER at $48.99 is the only page on this shelf that warns about it: “Avoid metal utensils, abrasive cleaners, and aerosol cooking sprays to help protect the coating.”

If you do grease it, brush a little melted butter.

And the washing instruction here is the shelf’s outlier. “simply wipe them clean with a damp cloth once they’ve cooled.” At least eleven of the fourteen items on this shelf state dishwasher safe. This one does not.

Which may be omission rather than prohibition — the plates are detachable and nothing forbids it. But on a waffle plate a damp cloth is a different proposition from a flat panini plate: a deep pattern has ribs and pockets a cloth does not reach.

Wipe it warm, which the page gets half right: cooled enough to touch, not cold. Set batter on a cold plate is the worst cleaning job this shelf can produce.

What is not published

No cooking surface, as above, which also leaves the 750-watt figure uninterpretable.

No browning or temperature control. Only two of seven machines here have one: the Metine’s five levels (“1–2 for gentle warming, 3–5 for toasting and searing”) and the GreenPan’s “ADJUSTABLE SHADE & CRUNCH CONTROL”.

No timer, and no times. The Metine is the only page on this shelf to publish any.

No dishwasher statement, as above — uniquely among the twelve items here.

No moat. Two items on this shelf solve the characteristic failure of a waffle plate: the Breville at $64.95 — “the no-mess moat design feature prevents excess waffle batter spilling out and onto your counter top” — and the GreenPan at $299.95 — “EXTRA-LARGE MOAT… frames the plates on all sides”. The OSTBA at $29.99 names the consequence instead: “Avoid overfilling the sandwich press to prevent latch damage.” That warning belongs on this page too, because waffle batter expands as it cooks — the steam that lightens it pushes it outward — and batter forced into a hinge sets hard.

No batter quantity, which no item on this shelf publishes. Underfill the first waffle deliberately and use it as the measure.

No waffle thickness or count. The Cuisinart at $56.26 and the GVODE at $38.99 both publish “4 deep pocketed, 3/4-inch thick Belgian waffles” — the only thickness on this shelf — and the GreenPan distinguishes “classic American-style” from “thicker Belgian” with two sets of plates. “Fluffy waffles” is all this page gives.

No plate material. Two items name one: the GVODE’s “food grade aluminum” and the GreenPan’s “CAST PLATES… optimal heat conduction”. Mass is what keeps a plate hot when cold batter lands on it, and at 1814 g for the whole machine these are light pressed plates.

No 180-degree hinge. Both Dash Flex Press machines open flat — “creating an indoor grill on your countertop”, which doubles the cooking area — and the BLACK+DECKER explicitly forbids it: “Always operate the unit in the closed position.” This page says nothing, and a press described throughout as closing is presumably a closed press.

No drip tray, where the Dash Forged Iron at $34.99 publishes one. On a machine sold for burgers and chicken, the fat goes somewhere.

No warranty, which no item on this shelf publishes.

No country of manufacture, which no item on this shelf publishes either.

Availability

Read on the day this page was built: $40 at the American Amazon shop.

Read from Keepa on the day this page was last revised; stock and price both move without notice.