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Availability:
Only 5 left in stock, order soon!
Arrives
Oct 4 – Oct 5
Recently Viewed
Color: Black
Size: 1800 Watts
Style: Cooktop
Features
- Digital LCD sensor-touch control panel; child safety lock system (press and hold the safety lock key for 3 sec to activate), fast boil button & keep Warm button
- Duxtop induction cooktop uses 120 Volts, 15 amp of electricity standard in all homes; lightweight and compact for easy handling and storage
- Built-in Count-down digital timer with 1 minute increments up to 10 hours; 20 temperature ranges from 100 F to 460 F; 20 power levels from 100-1800 Watts; 5 ft cord
- Induction stoves rely on cookware to heat, so its essential to choose magnetic bottom cookware with a minimum diameter of 5 inches. Auto-pan detection will shut off automatically after 60 seconds if no cookware, or the incorrect cookware is detected
- Although induction itself is a noiseless process, there may be high pitched sounds from the cookware due to multiple layers of metals sandwiched together. Please allow the induction cooker to cool down before cleaning
Description
About Secura SECURA is a leading North American small appliance manufacturer. Our products are sold under the SECURA and Duxtop brands. Our products are top sellers on many online shopping sites as well as in several large national retail stores. Our commitment to our customers is second to none. Duxtop 1800-Watt Portable Countertop Burner with LCD Screen & Sensor Touch • Sensor touch control panel and LCD display for easy control and viewing. • Built-in count-down digital timer programmable up to 10 hours. • 20 power levels, from 100 to 1800 Watts; 20 temperature settings, from 100℉ to 460℉. • Lightweight and compact for easy handling and storage. • Safety features include auto-pan detection, over-heat protection with a diagnostic error message system and a low and high voltage warning system. • 110/120V 15 amps – compatible for use in all homes. Touch the panel slightly to adjust the function, temperature or power, or to turn on the child lock or the set timer. The control panel presents a perfect visual angle for reading, even from a distance. Up to 10-hour automatic timer provides high-precision operation, eliminating the need to wait on your food to be ready. It will switch to level 10 power mode and the timer will automatically sets to 10 minutes. Press “BOIL” button to bring the water to a quick boil. Premium glass surface is easy to clean – just wipe with a damp towel. This portable induction cooktop is compact and lightweight. It can be easily stored when not use, and quickly put into action when you need it, indoors or out. Multiple safety protection functions include child lock, automatic shut-off, over-heat protection and safety cut-out.
Color: Black
Material: Glass+PP
Special Feature: Induction Stovetop Compatible
Brand: duxtop
Heating Elements: 1
Product Dimensions: 11.4"D x 14"W x 2.5"H
Wattage: 1800 watts
Controls Type: Touch
Voltage: 120 volts
Burner type: Induction
Special Features: Induction Stovetop Compatible
Number of Heating Elements: 1
Wattage: 1800 watts
Controls Type: Touch
Voltage: 120 volts
Heating Element: Induction
Power Source: Induction
Color: Black
Material: Glass+PP
Item Dimensions D x W x H: 11.4"D x 14"W x 2.5"H
Item Weight: 6.2 pounds
Brand Name: duxtop
Included Components: Induction Cooktop, User Manual
Manufacturer: Duxtop
Item Highlight: Induction Hot Plate with LCD Sensor Touch BT-200DZ
Warranty Description: 2 year manufacturer
Unit Count: 1 Count
UPC: 769134701657 638339651510
Number of Items: 1
Global Trade Identification Number: 10, 57
Item Type Name: Duxtop LCD Portable Induction Cooktop Countertop Burner Sensor Touch Stove 9610LS
Model Number: BT-200DZ
Part Number: BT-200DZ
Frequently asked questions
If you place your order now, the estimated arrival date for this product is:
Oct 4 – Oct 5
Yes, absolutely! You may return this product for a full refund within 30 days of receiving it.
To initiate a return, please visit our Returns Center.
View our full returns policy here.
To initiate a return, please visit our Returns Center.
View our full returns policy here.
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Similar Products
Top Amazon Reviews
Color: Silver
Size: 1800 Watts
Style: Cooktop
Being unsure of transitioning to an induction cooktop in our kitchen remodel (still happening), I ordered this to test induction cooking. I read lots of reviews and blogs on portable induction cooktops, and I am so sold on this little appliance I took it with me on a recent road trip along with a Hexclad pot to use in hotels for my meals. I still have a perfectly functioning electric stove but I prefer to use this and it's a mainstay in my kitchen. The LCD sensor touch is responsive, intuitive and quick. The booklet manual and instructions were very thorough, as one goes through a learning curve going to induction from gas or electric. If you are patient at first and do your reading, the payoff is quicker cooking and easy clean-up. I've cooked fried foods, stir-fry, regular sauced foods, sauteed and simmered foods, as well as just reheated leftovers. I have found the response to increased or decreased temperatures IMMEDIATE. I love the KEEP WARM feature. The BOIL button will put you at power 10 and within a minute your water will be boiling. I've used the LOCK feature once; not a prime feature to me but it did work. Take advantage of the power levels/temperature conversion charts in the included book. If your recipe calls for say, 325*, the chart will tell you just where to set the power level. If your recipe says to use medium heat, just a glance to the chart will tell you where to set the power. In my experience the 5.0 power that is the default when you power on and hit MENU is the highest I've ever had to use. Induction is so efficient and quick that foods rarely need a higher power, even browning meat. It could be my Hexclad pans but I've also used just stainless steel pots/pans that are magnetized for induction. All it takes is a soapy dishrag to clean the cooktop. I give it a swipe, then a rinse swipe, and dry it with a dish towel. I've never had to scrub like I did on my smooth electric cooktop. Another thing I'll mention is that it hasn't been scratched like my old cooktop. I am gentle on my things, though, and after now fully three months of daily use, it still looks brand new. Keep the handy box with the handle it comes in. You'll want to take it with you like I did -- camping, traveling, to an event as an extra heat source. For the price point of this portable cooktop and the features it offers this purchase was one of the best I've made for the kitchen.
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Reviewed in the United States on July 6, 2023 by FL Sunnygirl
Color: Silver
Size: 1800 Watts
Style: Cooktop
Why did you pick this product vs others?: Let me start by saying I RARELY write a review. But after using this for 5 months, I felt compelled. In brief, all I have to say about this product is "Why did I wait so long to get one???" I love cooking - it is my happy place that takes me away from stresses of work (Bonus: you end up with good stuff to eat in the end). My husband and I have a wonderful gas stove but I was curious about the induction method. After doing some investigation, we were both left breathless at the expense of buying an induction stove/oven unit that would fit the space we have. We weren't willing to spend that kind of money, especially if we really didn't yet have experience working with induction. So I did more homework and learned about Duxtop. Seemed like a bargain and we could test out the technology. A bargain doesn't begin to explain what you get for your money. This unit is AWESOME. I use it far more often than I do my gas stove. It is efficient, works exactly as advertised, the learning curve is immediate. It has a sleek design that looks great, doesn't take up a lot of space, and it works with my cookware. Boiling time is lightning fast, control over cooking speeds is fantastic (there is a lot of control with gas and I was worried about this - turns out that this is nothing to worry about), and gradation of cooking power works well for my purposes. Others have cited that the fan noise is bothersome; there is fan noise but it's not terrible and certainly not a deal-breaker. The cooktop cools very quickly and clean up is easy. After each use, I marvel at how it looks sort of "brand new, out of the box" clean after a simple wipe. My husband and I are still contemplating replacing our gas unit with a full induction unit but that thought is way on the back burner now (see what I did there?) since this inexpensive burner is a staple in our kitchen now. Best of both worlds? I know, I know....gas isn't good for you. But we're using it so less frequently than before ('cept for baking). Bottom line for me: ONE OF THE BEST PURCHASES EVER.
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Reviewed in the United States on July 14, 2025 by Deb
Color: Silver
Size: 1800 Watts
Style: Cooktop
This is the first induction cooktop I've ever used so I can't make any comparisons. Also, I've only had it a few days and I'm still learning the best power and temperature settings for various foods. It's by far the best kitchen appliance I own. I'm shocked at what a difference it makes. Boiling water at a high setting is amazingly fast. Setting the temperature to fry or saute, means the temperature stays consistent and you don't constantly have to make adjustments. I'm looking forward to setting a low temperature and using it as a slow cooker. I have an electric rice cooker, but probably won't need to use it anymore. The surface cools down quickly and is easy to clean. I place parchment paper on the surface to prevent scratching (Whirlpool and build.com say this is OK) . I find it easy to clean. I covered my electric glass cook top with a silicone stove cover and placed the induction cooktop on top. I only had to purchase one new nonstick frying pan because the rest of my cookware is cast iron or stainless steel. This is an amazing upgrade from cooking on an electric stove. With my limited experience, I think the two best features are (1) how quickly it heats and cools and (2) the ability to set a temperature so you don't have to keep adjusting up and down. This is a clear winner. I received 23% discount at the time of purchase. If it's listed at full price, you might want to hold off and wait for a discount. However, I think it's worth it at a discounted or full price.
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Reviewed in the United States on February 2, 2025 by HarmonyGenie
Color: Silver
Size: 1800 Watts
Style: Cooktop
SEE UPDATE BELOW: I got this despite that it has the fewest reviews on Amazon, and it looks like most of them are fake/paid for reviews anyways. I picked it though because the duxtop brand has good reviews and this model has the most temperature settings among the cheaper options, and it has a lower temp range too. I read a few people saying with other ones the lowest setting was still too hot. I figured if I was truly going to replace my stove top I wanted the one with the most flexibility and was willing to pay $30 more for it. It moves up in 20 degree increments or .5 power levels. I've only used it a handful of times, and I'm still just getting used to induction cooking in general. The negatives I've had with it apply to all induction burners in general. The cycling heat on and off to maintain temp really threw me off so I tried to compensate by adjusting temps, which I learned I shouldn't do, just let it do it's thing. And when on full power pretty much all of my pans emit this high pitched ringing noise that really sucks. It seems to only be really bad at full power and acceptable at even some of the higher powers just under full. But boy howdy does that thing heat! Water boils so fast you can't believe it. And you do have really quick control of temperatures. I think I'm going to love it once I figure it out. It'd have to be truly terrible for me to use the electric range though. I recommend giving it a shot. This model has the cleanest interface, no special buttons for sauteing or grilling or whatever they say it's for. That stuff would change from pan to pan and dish to dish, anyways and wouldn't be accurate. The 9600 has a boil button which is always accurate, and a keep warm button which will probably work in most situations. At $100 it was worth it to me, but units at half that price have about 95% of the functionality that you could probably get away with and still be good to go, so it's really up to you. It has the same 6.75" diameter coil set underneath the glass, I checked using a high powered flashlight pointed at it with the lights turned off. I did a test of the lowest temperature of 100 degrees, as that is one feature that sets it apart from others. I put 1 cup of water into a 6 inch cast iron enameled pot at 74.6F and set it on 100 degrees. About 15 minutes later the water was at 77.3F. At a half hour in the water dropped to 76.8F. At 45 minutes I concluded the testing and it came in at 75.7F. I then turned the burner off and just let it sit for 15 more minutes, which brought it to 75.3 degrees. To me, this is a mostly good result in that while not accurate, the unit does have the ability to go to an ultra low temperature and keep it some what consistent to a few degrees, although I did not like the trending downward temps. But since this was the lowest setting, I believe higher powers/temps might achieve a more consistent level. My main concern was to find out if the lowest level was going to be too hot, which it most certainly is not! So I think it could be good for those looking to melt chocolate. (See below edit, I was wrong, not good for chocolate!) In conclusion, if I were just rating this unit compared to others in it's price range, I think I'd give it 5 stars. It's more expensive, but I like the user interface more than other options and the low temp abilities sets it apart. But since I'm rating the unit not only against it's peers but also in it's own right just as an induction burner, it gets 4 stars as I have yet to determine if I can live with the high pitch painful noise at the highest setting, and the temperature regulation of constantly turning on and off and on and off is annoying so far. I hope I will learn to love it though. I'll update in a few months when I really get a chance to delve into it. Oh, and the other guy who rated it 1 star and said you have to mess with the lock button to start it is smoking crack. You hold your finger on the power button (wet or dry, I intentionally tested that) for 3 seconds, the blue screen turns on and then you press the menu button. The unit automatically starts at power level 5. You just have to match sure the pan is on the burner before you start it. UPDATE: I figured out that reading the instructions is a good thing! The temperature mode and the power setting mode do function differently. I was thinking it was just two ways to look at the same heat level, but not true. The temperature mode tries to keep the pan at the temp setting you chose (keep in mind the pan temp will be different than the food temp in the pan!). It sucks at this. This is why I was having so many issues with the power cycling. I redid my before water test, this time at 120F degree setting, and the water immediately spiked to 150F and then throughout the course of 30 minutes would drop to a low of 105F. If you took an average of it's temp over that time it actually might have been pretty dang close to 120F or maybe 130F, but with those highs and lows it would be terrible for any chocolate work or anything you needed even temps for. Now, since I am using the power mode things are waaaay better with the power cycling. It just doesn't do it. I did the water test again, this time with 2 cups of water and I used the ".5" power setting which is the lowest. Over the course of 45 minutes the water ranged from 134F to 138F with fluctuations in between throughout. The first half hour it was usually closest to 135F, but near the end was reading consistently 137F. For this pot that I was using, this means the lowest effective and reliable temperature this cooktop can do is about 135F Degrees. This might still be better than other units out there, but I was hoping for less. But I am fairly happy now that I know the power cycling is mostly an issue with the temp settings and not the power settings. I'm almost certainly only going to be using the power settings from here on out, unless I'm doing a long simmering chili or something with a lot of mass in it to help even the fluctuations.
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Reviewed in the United States on October 20, 2016 by Jordan
Color: Silver
Size: 1800 Watts
Style: Cooktop
What do you do if you live in a pre-war NYC apt with outdated electrical wiring and you want to move away from using your gas stove because of all the toxic fumes it generates? Do you consider the new Charlie induction stove, priced at $6k? Do you consider doing takeout from now on, priced at, well, more than $6k? No. You look at induction burners like these that can plug into a 110 outlet just fine. I made a decision to stop using my gas stove and this was the solution, along with my Breville Smart Oven (for baking). I got this induction cooktop because it was the most highly rated single burner of its kind on Amazon. I've used it many times now, and it is definitely one of the easiest things to use and to get used to. It has a high-pitched whine that you'll eventually get used to, and the cooking levels are something you will have to experiment with for awhile for all the types of cooking that you do. I'm impressed with it and wonder why I didn't get it sooner, frankly. One of the biggest things you will need to adjust to is having only one burner size, so to speak. Ideally, your pots and pans should be no more than 10 inches across at the bottom for optimal cooking. The magnetic coil has a diameter of 6 inches across, so that means the larger the pot/pan, the more stirring you will need to do to keep the food, especially outside of that diameter, at a consistent temperature throughout. I find myself needing to be more mindful about how I'm cooking the food than ever before, but this is an ok tradeoff for avoiding all the issues with gas cooking. I also had to give up some of my more complicated recipes that require multiple burners being used at once. That was easy enough to do, although quite sad. The only thing stopping me from buying a second burner for cooking is that they are each 1800 watts, so again, outdated electrical wiring foils my plans. You probably have more options though.
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Reviewed in the United States on December 24, 2025 by Subway Hamster
Color: Black
Size: 1800 Watts
Style: Cooktop
I bought this cooktop as an emergency device in case the natural gas supply is interrupted by shortages or catastrophe. It's also handy as an extra cooking surface for big meals. I chose a magnetic induction model out of curiosity. There's no flame, and it does not heat up an "element." Instead, it very rapidly oscillates the polarity of a magnetic field under your ferro-magnetic pot, which drives the molecules crazy in your pot, causing it to heat up. The physics is not that different from a microwave. This method is extremely efficient because nearly all the sourced energy is converted directly to heat in your pot. It works great for boiling water and sauteeing vegetables, and any cooking that needs high heat. It's very fast and the heat is steady. At lower temperatures that you select on a menu, the heat also seems steady and even, though I did not take measurements. The design is attractive. You want the control panel to be sloped down or offset from the cooking surface, because if you use a large pan, it will cover up the controls. This model has a 9-inch cooking diameter, which works fine for a 10-inch pot. You could get away with 12-inch, though the heat would be more centralized. That might be what you want for sauteeing, however. My device, though purchased new, had clearly been used or at least unwrapped. Telltale signs were the way the cord was wrapped and from a small scuff on the top, cleverly covered with an unnecessary sticker. I've changed my mind about the practice of recycling products that way. While it's techically fraudulent to sell them as virgin, as long as a product works perfectly, is fully guaranteed and returnable, and has no serious flaws or blemishes, it has the distinct advantage that somebody has tested it, so I'm less likely to get a complete DOA dud. The fan on this cooker is louder than I expected, vigorous, but not noisy. The shiny surface is easy to clean but also shows streaks like a phone screen, so it's not easy to polish. Surprisingly few of my household pots and pans were ferromagnetic. The stainless copper-bottom pots didn't work, nor did most of the "non-stick" fry pans. I only had one 8" frypan that was actually steel. Since cookware is moving away from iron and steel, this magnetic induction technology may not have a long future. But for now, it meets my needs and exceeds my expectations.
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Reviewed in the United States on October 26, 2022 by BillAdams
Color: Silver
Size: 1800 Watts
Style: Cooktop
First let me point out that induction cooktops from different manufacturers ALL heat at different rates so please stop saying dumb things like: "My other (insert other brand here) induction cooktop doesn't burn my (whatever) on 50% power setting but this brand does so that means this one isn't as good." That is actually ass-backwards because the more powerful one is better, you just have to figure out the correct power level for whatever you're cooking with your specific pots/pans. The reason no induction cooktop has (or should have) a temp readout is because the temp will NOT be constant with different size/shape pots/pans therefore a temp readout is useless since a small saucepan will appear to get hot faster than an 8qt stock pot and the actual temp could vary by more than 100 degrees on the same power setting. The only way for a temp gauge to be accurate is for the induction cooktop to have a thermal probe INSIDE the pot/pan and it would also need the programming to adjust the cooktop based on the thermal probe's temp reading to keep it as close to the selected temp as possible. A sous vide machine such as the popular Anova does exactly this and can regulate the waterbath temp to stay within 1/10th of 1 degree of the desired temp setting. WIthout the thermal probe inside the pot/pan a temp gauge is pointless as it's literally just guessing the temp which obviously isn't accurate at all. Once you understand how the power levels work and understand that "power level" has nothing to do with "temperature measurement", you can use trial and error to figure out which power settings work best for each thing you cook with your particular cookware. The Duxtop 9600LS's designer was pretty smart in that he made power levels from 0.5 through 5.5 to be 80W intervals for finer heating adjustment, and power levels 5.5 to 10.0 to be 100W intervals since most of the finer adjusting is only needed at the lower power settings. Any setting above 6.0 is usually just for maintaining a boil or bringing your pan up to heat as fast as possible so fine adjustments are not critical for the higher settings. Most other brands have fewer intervals, or pulse the power on and off at longer intervals which causes more burning becuase they may pulse 800W power for 10 seconds then turn off for 10 seconds to maintain the equivalent of power setting "3.0" but that 10sec blast of 800W power is long enough to burn delicate foods like cream/sauces/eggs/fish/etc. This unit has finer power interval adjustments and also has shoter power pulses than most other brands so setting 3.0 will use 500W power and pulse on for something like only 6 seconds and off for 3 seconds. Both methods keep the food at about the same temp overall, but the heat fluctuation is much greater with other brands compared to this Duxtop 9600LS which tries to keep the temp fluctuation to a minimum to avoid burning delicate foods. These are features that almost no one ever thinks of, and they aren't even listed in the description of any induction cooktop but they are CRITICAL to the proper cooking of a lot of different dishes! I've used the (discontinued) model from YouTube's Binging With Babish, the NuWave 1300W 2016 model, and NuWave 1800W Platinum 2017 model, and this is easily the best of all of them. The only better one I've used was a popular commercial $800 model used in restaurants that I can't remember the manufactuer's name of. It was definitely the best but I can't justify spending 8x the price of this one just for my home cooking...unless I was rich. That's why I bought 2 of these to put next to my 4-burner gas stove which allows me to cook multi-course meals all at the same time MasterChef style!
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Reviewed in the United States on April 23, 2018 by Customer
Color: Silver
Size: 1800 Watts
Style: Cooktop
I purchased this cooktop because it got the highest recommendation from New York Time's Wirecutter, which has been testing induction cooktops for years, and because it seemed like a good way to dip my toe into the induction cooking pool for not a lot of money. It also provided a quick and easy way to reduce the use of my gas stove. Cooking with gas can have a detrimental effect on indoor air quality and indeed personal health, something most of us have not taken as seriously as we should. And as the electricity grid becomes increasingly powered by renewables like wind and solar, phasing out all use of fossil fuels in favor of electric appliances will become increasingly desirable. Thus I wanted to get a glimpse of what my cooking future might look like a few years from now, given that I've long believed that gas provides the best cooking experience. It's interesting how admirable qualities in an appliance can be swamped by irritations -- something every product designer should take seriously. For me the biggest irritation by far is that the unit beeps continuously whenever it's turned on but without an appropriate (ie., ferrous) pot or skillet positioned on the cooktop. The beep is not loud, but it is insistent, and few things irritate me more than being nagged by my machines, especially when it's so needless. (I turn off the sound on my microwave for this very reason. I'll remove my food when I FEEL LIKE IT, thank you very much.) And having become sensitized, I have an increasingly negative reaction every time the beeping happens. That's not the kind of relationship you want with your cooktop. Perhaps I should get some counseling. The nagging happens every morning when I make my coffee. I heat my water kettle on the cooktop, and remove the kettle to slowly pour hot water over my ground coffee. The cooktop starts its hissy-fit the instant the kettle is removed. No pot! It beeps. And beeps. And beeps. Oh, the horror of not having a pot in place. The idea for me is to pour some hot water over the grounds, then return the kettle to the cooktop while the coffee drips, then come back to pour some more water, and so forth. But during the pouring the cooktop is having its mini-nervous breakdown about the missing pot. There's a palpably emotional insistence in both of us, the cooktop and me, to HURRY with the pouring and get that kettle pack onto the thing, to make the thing stop beeping. This is all so unnecessary. Part of the rationale for beeping might be to remind the novice user of what kind of cookware will and will not work. Glass cookware, for example, won't work. Non-magnetic stainless won't work either. Cookware to which a magnet will stick does work. The cooktop detects whether induction-capable cookware is in position, and notifies the user when it is not. On the LCD display, for example, which flashes Pot! when one is missing. The novice will soon learn what cookware is compatible with his unit. Even without the beeping, a good clue about incompatible cookware is that the cookware does not get hot. The blinking display is another reasonable clue. The incessant beeping is not. Once the user has figured out what cookware does and doesn't work, the beeping and even the flashing display serves no useful purpose, other than to tell the user what he can plainly see for himself by glancing at the cooktop and noticing the absence of a pot. No pot? I know, you idiot machine, I'm holding that pot RIGHT NOW while I make my coffee. It's important to understand that the absence of a pot poses no safety issues whatsoever. The cooktop itself does not get hot in any case, because induction only produces heat IN THE METAL STRUCTURE OF THE PAN, not on the surface of the cooktop. And anyway, the cooktop won't energize the induction mechanism without an appropriate pot being in place, so literally nothing is going on in the absence of a pot. Everything is cool, literally and metaphorically. In that respect an induction stove is safer than either gas or conventional electric. Did I mention that I very much dislike gratuitous beeping? But to be clear, a discreet for the purpose of auditory feedback during the operation of the controls, such as when adjusting the cooking level, is fine. What else? Well, the actual active induction zone seems smaller than I thought it would be. It appears to be about 6 inches in diameter. You can readily see this by placing an inch or so of water in a large diameter skillet and bringing it to a boil. A tight circle of boiling water develops about 6 inches across in the center of the pan, with not much happening outside that circle. If all you're doing is boiling a liquid, such as when I make my coffee, this is not a problem, because convective forces keep the liquid mixed and at a uniform temperature. But it might be a problem for other kinds of cooking. The effect is interesting to observe. While I certainly didn't expect uniform edge-to-edge heating on a 12-inch skillet, this smallish induction zone came as a bit of a surprise. And it demonstrates how tightly concentrated is the induced energy, so much so that it can somewhat overwhelm the ability of even a high quality skillet to evenly distribute the heat outside that induction zone. By contrast, a gas burner has a flame that spreads out over the entire bottom of the pan and can even go up the sides, which results in a larger area of uniformity for more even heat across the entire pan. For that reason the gas burner will almost certainly cook more evenly, even though the induction element is more energy efficient because all the energy used to produce heat is induced in the pan itself. A couple of further comments on this. First, this is a PORTABLE cooktop. I have no experience with the capabilities of built-in induction cooktops. They might do a much better job of handling a variety of pan sizes. Something to investigate. And it might be argued that a portable cooktop is really only intended to be used with smaller pans anyway. All that said, it seems to me that a somewhat larger induction zone -- say, 8 inches -- would be a big improvement, and would be more suited to most of the cookware I use. Another thing that surprised me a little is that energy output (ie, heat control) is produced by pulsing the induction element. One thing that's said about induction stoves is that the temperature change is instantaneous, similar to gas. And it is. Maybe even more so, since with gas the heat must be conducted from outside the pan. But the heating output of this cooktop is controlled by in effect turning the induction element on and off over appropriate intervals to maintain the desired temperature or heat level. You can hear that happening when you're boiling water at reduced power: The boiling sound starts and stops, starts and stops, starts and stops. I would have thought that the induction element would run continuously, with its power output continuously adjusted according to the desired cooking temperature. This isn't necessarily a criticism. At least, I don't think so. And speaking of sound, this unit is somewhat noisy. That's because it has an internal fan to cool its own electronics while it's running, and presumably also to remove the small amount of heat that is conducted into the cooktop from the bottom of a hot pan. The NYT review warns of this, and also points out that the sound level from the cooktop is no louder than running a kitchen exhaust fan -- which you really should be doing if you're cooking with gas. All this reads like a list of negatives, although I really didn't set out to write a scathing critique. Better maybe to call this product a collection of mostly reasonable tradeoffs, except for the gratuitous beeping, which is an outright design flaw. The build quality certainly seems good. It's really easy to wipe clean. The unit is compact enough to not take up an inordinate amount of counter space, and is easy enough to relocate or put away when it does. It makes it easy to augment your current cooking setup. It's priced low enough to make for a low-risk purchase, and if you find you like the product you might view it as a bargain. It does draw a lot of power, which is a consideration given that it plugs into a standard wall outlet. That means there really oughtn't be too much else on the same electrical circuit while the cooktop is operating. Otherwise you'll find yourself blowing breakers. This unit will use all the capacity of a 15 amp circuit, and three fourths the capacity of a 20 amp circuit. So, then. Do I wish a few things were different? Yeah. Would I buy it again? I think so. Would my rating be higher than 3 stars without the stupid beeping? Absolutely.
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Reviewed in the United States on February 16, 2023 by Mike Brennan