I Tested IKEA’s Suspiciously Cheap Cookware (Review & Test Results)

IKEA cookware is cheap, but is it worth buying? 

To find out, I went to my local IKEA, browsed the massive cookware section, and bought their three most popular stainless steel pans. Then, over the course of months, I tested them against 28 other pans.

I measured how fast and evenly they heat, how well they retain heat, their resistance to warping, how hot their handles get, and their overall durability. I also cooked a ton of food in each pan to see how they perform in different scenarios. 

I also compared key specs like weight, thickness, cooking surface, handle length, and wall height. 

On top of all that, I went undercover and tested their customer service, contacting them three times with different types of questions: a factual product question before buying, a request for expert buying advice, and a post-purchase warranty concern.

In this review, you’ll learn the pros and cons of IKEA cookware, whether it’s the best budget cookware on the market, or if there’s a good reason it’s so cheap.

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Use the links below to navigate the review:

• Heat Conduction and Distribution
• Heat Retention
• Real-World Cooking
• Handle Issues
• Durability
• Customer Service
• Bottom Line: Is IKEA Cookware Worth Buying?

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Heat Conduction and Distribution

All three IKEA pans I tested (365+: $30, Hemkomst: $35, and Sensuell: $80) are significantly cheaper than brands like All-Clad, Hestan, Demeyere, and Made In. But that doesn’t mean they don’t perform as well. 

For the first test, I heated all three pans on medium heat and measured the center and edge temperatures at the 2-minute marks using a surface thermometer.

At 2 minutes, the center of the IKEA 365 pan hit 510°F and the edge reached 497°F, a gap of just 13°F. That ranked 3rd for speed and 4th for evenness out of 31 pans.

Disc-bottom pans like this one often get criticized for uneven heating because the thick aluminum base doesn’t run up the walls. So the sides don’t heat as evenly as a fully clad pan. But for most cooking, food sits on the flat surface, not the walls, and in my testing disc-bottom pans actually tend to heat more evenly on that flat surface than fully clad pans. The 365 was no exception.

For context: the de Buyer Alchimy ($190) ranked 1st for heat speed, and Made In ($139) ranked 2nd. The IKEA 365 outperformed the Hestan CopperBond ($450), the All-Clad D3 ($160), and the Hestan NanoBond ($450), which ranked 24th, 16th, and 27th respectively. A $30 pan beating $450 cookware in a head-to-head heat test is not something I expected going in.

The IKEA Hemkomst pan hit 488°F at the center and 440°F at the edge at 2 minutes, a 48°F gap, ranking 10th for both speed and evenness.

The IKEA Sensuell pan heated slower, hitting 442°F at the center and 380°F at the edge (a 62°F gap) at 2 minutes. That puts it 20th for speed and 13th for evenness. Thicker pans take longer to heat up, and at 4.1mm, the Sensuell is the third thickest pan I tested. Once it reaches temperature, though, it holds it well.

The table below shows all 31 pans ranked by heat evenness, measured as the difference between the center and edge temperature at the 2-minute mark.

Frying Pan	Center Temp at 2 Min (°F)	Edge Temp at 2 Min (°F)	Temp Difference (°F)
All-Clad D3 Everyday	365	367	-2
Farberware Classic	499	501	-2
Fissler Original-Profi	329	333	-4
Ikea 365	510	497	13
Hestan CopperBond	411	392	19
Fissler M5-Pro Ply	382	353	29
All-Clad D5	440	410	30
Hestan NanoBond	389	355	34
All-Clad D3	451	406	45
Ikea Hemkomst	488	440	48
All-Clad G5	507	447	60
Demeyere Atlantis Proline	350	289	61
Ikea Sensuell	442	380	62
Demeyere Industry	496	433	63
Heritage Steel Eater Series	413	335	78
Legend 5-ply	492	412	80
Cuisinart MultiClad Pro	403	322	81
All-Clad Copper Core	473	391	82
Caraway Stainless Steel	481	393	88
360 Cookware	504	407	97
Tramontina Tri-Ply Clad	450	353	97
Our Place Always Pan Pro	449	348	101
Hestan ProBond Luxe	472	368	104
Hestan ProBond	465	352	113
Heritage Titanium Series	449	329	120
Made In	529	404	125
Goldilocks	434	290	144
Henckels Clad H3	410	261	149
Misen Stainless Steel	502	340	162
de Buyer Affinity	479	307	172
de Buyer Alchimy	600	424	176

Heat Retention

Heat retention determines how well a pan maintains its temperature during cooking. A pan that holds heat well fluctuates less when you add food, which means more consistent results. 

To find out how IKEA pans compare to the competition in terms of heat retention, I heated each pan to 400°F, pulled it off the burner, and measured the surface temperature after 5 minutes of cooling.

The IKEA 365 pan retained 149°F, ranking 6th out of 31. The IKEA Sensuell held 148°F (8th), and the IKEA Hemkomst held 135°F (11th). All three finished solidly above average.

For comparison, the Fissler Original-Profi ($250) topped the rankings at 176°F, and the Demeyere Atlantis Proline ($340) came in second at 166°F. The All-Clad G5 ($300) retained just 115°F, ranking dead last. 

I was so surprised by IKEA 365’s retention score that I ran the test again on a different day and it retained 142°F, which is solid. So the first test wasn’t a fluke.

The table below shows all 31 pans ranked by heat retention. Each pan was heated to exactly 400°F, removed from the burner, and measured after 5 minutes of cooling.

Frying Pan	Temp After 5 Min (°F)
Fissler Original-Profi	176
Demeyere Atlantis Proline	166
All-Clad D3 Everyday	165
de Buyer Affinity	154
All-Clad D5	152
Ikea 365	149
Ikea Sensuell	148
Legend 5-ply	148
Our Place Always Pan Pro	136
Heritage Titanium Series	136
Ikea Hemkomst	135
Hestan NanoBond	134
Cuisinart MultiClad Pro	133
All-Clad D3	132
Demeyere Industry	132
Fissler M5-Pro Ply	131
All-Clad Copper Core	128
Misen Stainless Steel	128
Hestan CopperBond	127
Farberware Classic	126
Goldilocks	126
Tramontina Tri-Ply Clad	124
Heritage Steel Eater Series	123
Made In	123
Henckels Clad H3	123
de Buyer Alchimy	123
Hestan ProBond Luxe	122
Caraway Stainless Steel	120
360 Cookware	118
All-Clad G5	115
Hestan ProBond	115

Real-World Cooking

The controlled test results didn’t lie. Every meal I cooked came out well across all three pans.

I cooked chicken breasts, chicken thighs, turkey burgers, eggs, pot stickers, grilled sandwiches, and vegetables in all three pans. Everything seared and browned evenly across the surface. You don’t need to rotate food to get the outer pieces as brown as the ones in the center.

 Every meal came out well, and there’s no noticeable difference in cooking performance between these pans and brands that cost four to ten times as much.

That said, I did notice some design issues during real cooking that I’ll get into in the next section.

Handle Issues

The biggest downside with these IKEA pans is the design, and it starts with the handles.

The handle on the IKEA 365 is a thin, hollow piece of bent metal with an open end, a visible seam, and a sharp tip. When you wash it, water collects inside and squirts out the other end.

The tip is sharp enough that it digs into your hand if you grab the end. When I scraped it across a piece of cardboard, it cut right through.

The handle also flexes more than it should. The rivets felt secure, but the handle and the thin sidewalls of the pan flexed much more than usual when I wiggled it back and forth. The 365 also has three rivets on the handle attachment instead of the usual two, giving grease and food residue one extra place to collect.

The Hemkomst handle stays cool, but it’s flat and uncomfortable. It doesn’t twist in your hand, which is good, but the edges dig into your palm. It reminds me of the handles you see on a lot of carbon steel pans. And like the 365, it has three rivets.

The biggest issue with the Sensuell is that the handle gets hot. After boiling water for 10 minutes, almost half the handle got extremely hot, starting at the curve near the base.

On the 365 and Hemkomst, only the first inch closest to the pan gets warm, which is normal. With the Sensuell, you need a towel or oven mitt for extended cooking. On a few occasions I almost burned my hand because I wasn’t paying close enough attention.

Durability

To check the 365’s durability, I flipped the pan over, applied upward pressure to the handle, and it bent right off.

While I was looking at it, it snapped off completely, the pan fell on the floor, and the sidewall dented.

To be fair, the handle probably won’t break off during normal use. But the amount of force it took was way less than I expected from a pan meant to last decades.

For the warp test, I placed each pan on an induction cooktop, cranked it to 425°F, and measured the flatness of the base before and after two minutes of heating.

The 365 and Hemkomst both had a slight concave curve before and after the test, which is normal. Most manufacturers build that in intentionally so the base flattens as the metal expands.

The Sensuell started flat but developed a slight warp during testing. It didn’t wobble dramatically, but it wiggled and rotated slightly when nudged on a flat cooktop. The warp didn’t get worse under high heat, but the pan made a loud buzzing sound intermittently on the burner.

On the positive side, the Sensuell has sealed rims.

Most stainless pans leave the aluminum core exposed around the edge, and over years of use that aluminum can recede, causing the steel layers to separate or become sharp. The Sensuell doesn’t have that problem.

At 4.1mm and 4 lbs, it’s the third thickest and third heaviest pan I tested, which pays off in heat retention. The tradeoff is that it’s harder to lift, clean, and move around.

Customer Service

IKEA is one of the largest retailers in the world, and their cookware section can feel overwhelming. So I wanted to find out how well they support customers navigating that lineup.

To do so, I created three fake email addresses so they wouldn’t give me special treatment, and contacted them three times: once asking factual product questions, once asking for expert buying advice, and once posing as a customer with a warranty concern eight months after purchase.

For the factual questions, the agent got the straightforward stuff right but the sealed rims question is where it got murky. The agent said none of the three are advertised as having fully sealed rims, but noted the Sensuell has smooth, rolled edges that help prevent moisture buildup. When I pushed on whether that counts as sealed, they confirmed IKEA does not officially describe or guarantee the Sensuell rims as fully sealed (for the record, they are sealed).

For the expert advice question, I asked which of the three pans I should buy based on my cooking style and what the real differences were between them day to day.

The chat agent immediately said they couldn’t help and gave me a kitchen team phone number.

I called. The rep had clearly never looked at these pans before. She pulled them up on her screen during our conversation, and after a few minutes the only thing she could tell me was that one pan costs $50 more than the others. No cooking knowledge, no comparison, no recommendation. I tested the same type of question with Caraway, Made In, HexClad, Misen, and Our Place. IKEA’s response was the worst by a wide margin.

For the warranty question, I explained that my IKEA 365 handle had started to bend after eight months of use and asked what my options were. The chat agent told me they’re not trained on kitchen products and pointed me to the same phone number. Based on my experience with that line, I didn’t call. 

If you have a basic factual question, live chat can handle it. Anything beyond that, you’re on your own or you’ll need to wait on hold for a while.

Bottom Line: Is IKEA Cookware Worth Buying?

So after all that testing, is IKEA cookware worth buying?

The short answer is yes. The IKEA 365 pan outperformed pans that cost hundreds of dollars in my controlled testing, and that performance carried over to real cooking. The IKEA Hemkomst pan performed well too, and the IKEA Sensuell pan has the heft of a cast iron skillet, but without the rust, seasoning, and maintenance.

However, I can’t get past the handles. The 365 handle is too flimsy and has a sharp end, the Hemkomst handle is uncomfortable, and the Sensuell handle gets hot near the base and has a silicone grip I don’t love.

This may seem like nitpicking but stainless steel cookware can last for decades. So you should love the design, the feel, and the little details you’ll deal with every time you cook.

If the handles don’t bother you, the value IKEA offers is incredible. But if the handles do bother you, you should look for other options. And the best place to look is this article where I give rapid-fire reviews of the top 31 stainless steel pans I tested.

If you’re in a hurry, my top budget stainless steel cookware brands are Cuisinart Multiclad Pro, Misen, and Goldilocks.