Ninety-nine euros is the price at which IKEA sells TILLREDA in Italy, a black multicooker just over twenty centimeters high which has already been compared to the Bimby. The comparison holds little water, and we might as well say it straight away: the Vorwerk device costs sixteen times more and does a different job. However, it remains to be understood what the Swede’s job is.
One pot, fourteen programs
Signed by designer Emile Jones, the TILLREDA is a “plug-and-play” multicooker, as the IKEA Italia product sheet defines it: you connect it to the socket, choose the program and wait. The internal pot has a volume of 3 litres, but the useful capacity stops at 2, with graduated notches from 0.5 to 2 litres. The declared measurements are 25 centimeters in diameter by 21.6 centimeters in height, small enough to fit under the wall units or in a cabinet.
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Alongside the manual mode and keep warm there are programs for rice, browning, steaming, baking, boiling, yoghurt, soup, stew, porridge, oatmeal and bread rising. If you tried to count them on the Italian page you would find thirteen, against the fourteen announced. What is missing is slow cooking, which the same sheet also mentions in the description, where it speaks of “slow cooked stews”. A translation mistake, in all likelihood, but precisely on the function for which many buy such a device.
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The panel is an LED display with physical buttons, which shows temperature and remaining time during cooking; at the end of the program a signal sounds. The package includes a steamer, the lid can be removed for cleaning and the dishwasher is banned: the pot and basket must be washed by hand. Frying is also excluded, per explicit indication of the manufacturer.
More than a launch, an arrival
Someone presented it as the launch of a new product, even though the TILLREDA had been on sale in Sweden since June, for 1,195 crowns, and in the UK it has cost 85 pounds since July. On the Italian website it still bears the “News” label and is part of a series dedicated to small kitchens, the same as the portable induction hob and the compact microwave oven, which IKEA presents as appliances with basic functions at an affordable price. In short, the audience is clear: students, studio apartments, holiday homes and kitchenettes where the worktops do not stand out for their size.
The comparison with the Thermomix
The most recent Thermomix model, the TM7, costs 1,599 euros on the Vorwerk shop, with a twelve-month subscription to the Cookidoo recipe platform included. The jug contains a maximum of 2.2 litres, just two deciliters more than the IKEA saucepan, but above there is a 10-inch touch display and, above all, below there is a knife unit that chops, blends and mixes. Vorwerk claims its robot replaces more than twenty household appliances, a promise we put to the test here.
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On the contrary, the TILLREDA does not chop or blend. It heats, steams, keeps warm, makes it rise. It replaces the rice cooker, the steamer and the stew pot, which is no small thing in a two-burner kitchen, while remaining another category of object. Putting them on the same scale is like comparing a scooter and a small car because they both have wheels.
What first-time buyers say
At the time of writing, there are two reviews published on the Italian site, both with one star. A customer complains about the absence of instructions in the box: she only found the meaning of the symbols associated with the programs after a long search among online documents, and a few recipes for beginners, she observes, wouldn’t have gone amiss. Another returned the device. He objects to the lid without a handle and the fact that, once cooking is finished, the multicooker automatically switches to keeping warm without the possibility of choice. Two opinions that certainly do not make a statistic, but which can give a first impression on the object in question.
