How the AEG SapphirMatt took 10 years to become a cooktop revelation

We speak to AEG's Senior Design Leader while eating delicious food to understand how this award-winning cooktop came to be.

The AEG SapphirMatt poaching fish, grilling zucchini and cooking rhubarb

Take a stroll into your kitchen and take a look at your cooktop. Whether it’s gas or electric, there’s a chance it looks remarkably similar to the cooktop your parents used while you were growing up.

Sure, there might be touch controls rather than twisty knobs. Or maybe you have an induction stove when you grew up with gas.

But overall, cooktop design has been remarkably similar for a long time.

That’s especially true for electric cooktops. Most electric and induction cooktops are a sheet of shiny glass, which collects fingerprints and scratch marks easily.

But this year, premium appliance brand AEG launched the SaphirMatt Induction Cooktop, which brings a unique matte finish to the category. It is such a novel offering that it was awarded the Best of the Best distinction in the Red Dot Awards for Product Design in 2024.

In an intimate setting with Scott King, Senior Design Leader at AEG, and Rodney Dunn from Australia’s Best Restaurant for 2024, The Agrarian Kitchen, I got to hear a bit about how the SaphirMatt came to be.