[neutronicus]

Yeah, I used to prefer gas until we bought an all-electric house. The heating rate on the induction range that came with the house is bananas.

The burners go from 1-10 by halves and on 10 the big burner will boil a big-ass stockpot of water in what feels like a minute or two, and that's all I can use it for. 10 is literally too hot to sear meat, it will char it (and set off the smoke detector, apropos of the thread - it's a townhouse so of course the kitchen is right at the fucking center of mass of the house so the other rooms can have better light). It's also super-responsive and lets me get great heat control, if I go from 5.5 to 4 I can see what's happening in the pan change almost instantly. I never had a really fancy gas stove, but the ones I had were certainly not this responsive (although they sure beat the many crappy electric stoves I had).

It adjusts with buttons instead of a knob, which I kind of hate (a lot harder to work while cooking) but obviously that's not a comment on the heating technology.

[emrvb]

The induction stoves I've had the "pleasure" of working with were all very efficient to get water boiling. For every other cooking technique they were terrible. Perhaps I had bad luck with the models I encountered. Maybe it was caused by the pans or maybe it is just getting used to it. But the fact they're almost exclusively controlled by buttons is absolutely a deal breaker for me. I can't handle the stress of 4 pans and pots with buttons not responding because of a smudge somewhere or just because f*k me. Not to mention the models that have 2 sets of controls for 4 burners, where you have to select the appropriate burner first. Those abominations have to be designed by someone who only boils eggs or cooks ramen or hates cooking in general.

/rant