Try non-amonia Windex.

Plain Windex and a microfiber cloth. An up your tolerance for seeing dust and fingerprints. Black appliances are the hardest to keep looking good. White is the easiest. Even stainless is easier to keep looking good.

An up your tolerance for seeing dust and fingerprints.

Probably the best advice you'll get in this thread.

We've had our house cleaned by cleaners a couple times and I watched them to see how they were able to get stuff amazingly streak free.

The answer? They used TONS of cleaner, and it wasn't Aunt Millie's Gentle Green cleaner, either. The only way to get rid of the streaks is to absorb/dissolve 100% of the oils. Try as you might with any sponge or 409 and paper towels, there is almost always some left.

If you did it 5 times in a row with clean paper towels each time I bet you'd have almost no streaks. Short of that I think they will be a fact of life.

-Stooxie

I couldn't decide whether to laugh or groan when I read your post. Truth is, after having rambled on in the recent "sealed vs open burners" thread about how simple it is to clean the sealed burners of my enameled cast iron Aga, I must now confess to having omitted a minor detail in my postings: The enamel color of my Aga 6-4 range is black! Which simply means that, as easy as it may be to get that black enamel rangetop the kind of clean that is free of grease, burnt food, crumbs etc., there's a world of difference between achieving a "hygenic clean" and having those black surfaces look "showroom clean." KWIM? In my experience, achieving the latter look on a black stove is a yeoman's task which always sets me to fretting and cussing. And heaven forbid I turn on the halogens of the range hood while cleaning. When those lights are shining down on my rangetop, getting to a perfect spot-free/streak-free black surface becomes a task that is well-nigh impossible to deliver!

That said, if I'm trying for an especially nice look for my rangetop, I dispense with the soap and water approach and go for an enamel cleaner. It's a paste-like substance which hardens when applied to the surface. When wiped off, it removes all grease, dirt, food, etc. with it and, unlike soap and water, it won't leave streaks and spots behind. Instead, there is a new challenge-- how to get rid of the microscopic bits of powdery residue which cling to the corners and crevices of the rangetop after the wipe off. lol

Thanks for posting this question. I eagerly await the magic solution for keeping black appliances that are actually used in the kitchen in "showroom clean" condition. In the meantime, I continue to regard my well-used and clean, black enamel rangetop as having "patina." :-)

I'm fully convinced that the real answer is simply to buy dirt colored appliances. That's why I'm waiting on bisque to make it's inevitable resurgence. Followed by mud brown and dirt taupe.

Meanwhile, short of delegating the task to a maid or SO, your best bet is to wax or silicone the surfaces after you've gotten them spotless and grease free. Pledge in the brown can is what we've always used in the showroom for both the stainless and the black (and white) and it does prevent as many fingerprints from happening as well as sheds dust a bit more than an uncoated black surface. I think it eliminates the static that attracts dust, but I couldn't prove that. I wouldn't do it on the actual burner area of a stove, but it ought to work on the rest of it.