Has anyone recently switched from a gas to a new induction stove? What do you think of it? How responsive is it compared to gas?
I'm remodeling the casita in back and wondering if I need to replace the gas lines or if I can go with electric.
Note: I already understand everything relating to indoor air quality, fossil fuels, cost and safety. I'm looking strictly at usability right now, compared to gas. Reports on modern units are important because I'm told they've improved a lot lately.
Lots of people are talking about how fast an induction stove will boil water. Honestly, what I'm more concerned about is whether you can turn it down in small increments to get the level of simmer or whatever that you want. I'm more interested in the low end of the dial than the high end, as well as how quickly it responds.
Gas is instantaneous and provides an obvious visual cue if you turn the flame up or down.
I understand that there will be a learning curve and some adjustment to get the feel of a new device. That's fine, so long as it actually does what I want it to do.
I'm glad that replies here are overwhelmingly positive. I really don't want to have to reinstall the gas lines. This place may be a rental from time to time, as well, so the fewer open flames in the place, the better.
One of the things I'm seeing is that a lot of induction ranges have touchscreens. You have got to be fucking kidding me. I will under no circumstances ever ever by a touchscreen stove. If it doesn't have knobs that are easily accessible right on the front, it's a no go. I see there are some that do, but it limits the options a bit.
@Mikal the best part of those touch controls is that they tend to be on the top surface of the stove, so that it's easy for, say, a mushroom to jump out of the pan, land on the control surface, and be interpreted as a control input. Great, now one mushroom has stopped the rest from cooking fast!
@Mikal@revk Couldn't agree more. I have always hated any touch screen hob I have used, although granted I haven't used induction.
When I want the heat on, I want it on now. I don't want to be standing there waiting for numbers to slowly increase. Equally when I want the heat off, I want that now.
@Mikal@revk I just spent a depressing minute scrolling the John Lewis website to see that all induction hobs are touchscreen apart from this one from Smeg:
@Mikal there are induction stoves with knobs which we will probably get when we get them. The brainworm that makes everyone put touchscreens on shit is so stupid
Also because touchscreens are a failure mode that you can't bypass when they break. You have to buy a whole new appliance, typically. I found this out with an LG washing machine some years ago. I will never touch that brand ever again because of it.
But touchscreens on stoves, where you may have grease splatter, wet hands or whatever or just… Dumb.
@astrid@eri
Oh, I know! They have touchscreen refrigerators and toasters, FFS 🤦♂️
You wanna know it's even dumber than a touchscreen stove? A Wi-Fi enabled stove. IOT devices are notorious for shipping with bad security and regular humans are notorious for having weak security on their Wi-Fi systems. Creating an attack surface that will allow someone to turn your stove on, turn your refrigerator off, turn your thermostat up or down or whatever, is just mind-boggling dumb.
If I ever win the billion dollar Powerball lottery, I'm going to start a company that makes amazingly functional modern appliances that have the most minimal electronics, all of which will be user replaceable with standard non DRM'd parts. That'll show 'em.
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