Which? Don’t Buy cooker hoods

A Don’t Buy cooker hood will put your kitchen at risk of becoming damp, while grease deposits sit on top of your cupboards and on the sides. 

Some of them have even been rated as unsafe after failing industry-standard fire tests. These cooker hoods come with safety alerts that explain just what happened when we put them through our test lab. 

What makes a Don’t Buy cooker hood?

Cooker hoods require installation, so when you've bought a dud, it's a significant pain to get rid of it and replace it with something else. In fact, for many people lumbered with a cooker hood that has puny suction potential, they will simply try to cope with it over the long term. 

These are some of the ways that cooker hoods can be a waste of time and money.

• Some cooker hoods fail to extract much steam, leaving your kitchen humid after boiling. Water condenses on the casing, drips down onto your hob, and your windows become misty before you inevitably have to fling them open to ventilate your kitchen. 
• Some Don't Buy cooker hoods don't extract grease, either. When we test cooker hood grease extraction, we have a big fry-up in our test lab. We like to see filters thick with grease when we remove them. But some cooker hood filters come down pretty clean as the grease settles around the kitchen area instead, usually on top of high surfaces. 

Join Which? to find out which cooker hoods we've named Don't Buys.

How we test cooker hoods

Which? has reviewed the latest cooker hoods, including models by Bosch, Elica, Neff, Siemens and Miele. Our rigorous tests mean we can tell you which cooker hoods will rid your kitchen of steam, smells and grease – and won't hurt your eardrums in the process. 

• Every cooker hood sent to the Which? test lab is tested in 14 different ways to find out how effective it is at removing steam, smells and grease in your kitchen.
• We give every cooker hood a Which? test score, so you can see the best and worse at a glance, plus how each model compares to others when it comes to features and specifications.
• Our Which? tests cover a range of brands, prices and cooker hood types, including: built-in, freestanding, chimney, island and integrated cooker hoods.

Which? is independent – we work for you, the consumer, so you can be sure that our product recommendations are influenced only by our test results. We're not influenced by third parties and we don't accept freebies from product manufacturers or retailers. We buy all the products that we test ourselves, so our advice helps you to make the right choice first time and avoid costly mistakes.

Read all of our cooker hood reviews or see our round-up of the best cooker hoods from our test.

Our reviews will help you to avoid a bad choice when it comes to buying a cooker hood. Join Which? for instant access to our Best Buy and Don't Buy recommendations.