duxtopPortable Induction Cooktop, Countertop Burner Induction Hot Plate with LCD Sensor Touch 1800 Watts, Black 9610LS BT-200DZ

The media could not be loaded. This. Induction. Element. Is. Incredible.The Experience(tm):(Feel free to skip down to my TL;DR - however there is much to explain, being an induction newbie!)I could not wait to unbox this Induction cook element the moment it was delivered. I spent a casual hour in the kitchen, absorbing the warnings and usage instructions - then going about the unpacking of all of my cookware in the place. After testing all the cookware with a refrigerator magnet - it turns out that the simple magnet test revealed the majority of cookware items would simply work. Boy, Howdy - does this magnificent little machine WORK.As advertised, it puts more energy efficiently, spot on right where it is needed; right into the cookware itself. Heat changes/power output/temperature control is *instantaneous*. It literally went from zero to sixty in less than half the time and with a 1/4 less energy to heat water for coffee/tea in the microwave. In fact, it takes 5 minutes for my 1,200 Watt over-the-range microwave to heat up 16oz of water to a rolling boil to brew a hefty double dose mug of coffee. This element used less energy and time to get there, bringing a completely full (9 cups) classic stove top stainless percolator to a complete brew, then kept it warm to settle the grinds out and pour - at a speed that left the microwave in it's dusty wake. Let alone actually using the stove top percolator on a ceramic electric range. (That takes upwards of 20 minutes and you have to watch that you don't overcook and sour the coffee)That said, I made a guilty pleasure Black bean & Dirty Rice 'n' sausage gumbo. In a 4qt stainless encapsulated base pot, I seared and mashed up the sausages. Once browned, they were drained of fats. The unattended Duxtop at first paused all energy output with a "Pot" warning, but restarted the moment the pot was returned to the element. Same, last temperature settings. Into that, went the measure of water, the beans (from cans) veggies and seasonings. Starting with frozen veggies, I expected to linger around to get back to a boil. No - she was "rolling" within 3 minutes on *medium power heat*. I covered it all up, then went to "Temperature mode" to let it simmer the veggies tender enough to launch the rice. Setting it at 200*F and covering it for the simmer - things got weird.Because it was now cooking to temperature, it's *IDLE* - waiting for the temperature to naturally decrease. There was absolutely no simmer/boil action going on at all. Which confusing me - but then occurred to me that there is a lot of latent heat in classic, electric coil cook top surfaces that would perpetuate a boil/simmer between thermostat/burner changes. As I was about to touch the controls to set it back into power mode - it switched on again, brought everything to a simmer again. Then it switched off - halting the simmer. But as it progressed, latent heat in that thick, encapsulated bottom Stainless pot kept it gently, constantly simmering after just a few minutes. At that time, I set the timer for the rice and walked away.It shut off as programmed after sounding a series of beeps you can hear across the house. I turned it on again in "Keep Warm" mode, leaving the lid on it canted to thicken the juicy-dirty-rice-n-black-bean brew as I cleaned kitchen. Every grain, every bean, every diced up veggie and sausage bit came out stick free, plump and tender. Even with my most careful watching over my Ceramic-Electric range, one gets stuck on grains or worse, the bottom singes so very slightly with the black bean sauce.Okay, the highlights for our TL;DR crowd and bullet points:The Good:With appropriate "Induction" compatible/ready/made cookware, this thing is a beast.Unrivaled performance due to extreme efficiency. It literally drives power into the cookware directly to heat your foods. None of the burner to air to pot to food nonsense like gas and conventional electric coil or deep infra-red systems. No residual heat to overcook or scorch foods. When it's on, it heats, when it's off, it's cooling.It kinda looks good even sitting there by itself. It has a definitely more modern styling and shape that's appealing. (To me at least) The sloped front facing display and control panel not only makes for easy control adjustment, overhanging cookware will not erratically bump those control settings.Duxtop surface and pot are no hotter than the pot temp itself. There's no cool down waiting for cleanup when the unit finishes it's shutdown and cool off cycle. Sure, it's going to burn you if you immediately go poking about with your fingers the second it stops cooking - but only the heat of the pot itself conducts a small amount of residual heat to where it was directly sitting on the Duxtop surface before. There is NO cool-down waiting for the better half of an hour after using a gas or electric-ceramic stove. Because spills on the surrounding Duxtop element aren't scorched on like in gas or electric - it literally wipes clean with a moist towel in seconds.Extreme efficiency also means less utility bills - it puts more energy, straight into cookware directly. No wasted heat is spent into the air, handles - or worse, you. As such, the kitchen and home stays much cooler so, no running up the energy bills on an overworked AC unit.The Duxtop 9600 series features all glass/ceramic surfaces, even on the touch sensitive pads. No membrane "buttons-go-click" pads to eventually wear out.Portable. Electric. Safe. Eco-friendly - no fumes, toxic gasses or excessive CO2, it goes places tucked in a bag - No open flames and even if accidentally unattended - overtemp shutoff is there to help. If you do not specify a timer setting, it shuts itself off after 70 minutes of active cooking.Lockout control keeps curious fingers and interlopers at bay. Makes for quick, in use wipe-up cleaning a breeze, but avoid the power button. An erroneous touch registered there will shut the unit off immediately. The power button is always active despite having the lockout function engaged.The BAD:You may discover that whole kitchen heart transplant may be needed. Not all materials and metals work. No purely ceramic pots, no glass, no copper or aluminum. A Revereware copper clad pot I had with stainless insert didn't detect or work on the Duxtop. If you do not check cookware with a magnet, the Duxtop will sense if cookware is incompatible and reject it. Simply lay it on the inductor surface and if the "Pot" warning persists, it's a no go.Cast Iron and enameled cast iron:They work the best. But allow time for it's heavier mass to slow warm on a low setting before elevating to cook temperatures. You could warp pots, Dutch Ovens, skillets, fry pans if you go thermonuclear hot out of the gate. Iron is heavy. Cook within weight limits of the element. (25lbs max on the surface) Cast iron is sometimes rough and unfinished on the bottom. To avoid scratching or breaking surface - pick up and gently place the cookware. Do not drag, slide or jostle it about while using the inductor - treat it with the same kindness as you would if you dare to cook with iron on any glass/ceramic range.Massive performance = Massive Power:The Duxtop draws 1800watts @ 120volts AC when gong full speed Lvl 10 power control. Put it on a dedicated 15AMP line and breaker with no other appliances. Preferably on a 20Amp service branch, but many homes built in the last 50 years typically have all 20Amp branch circuit service in the kitchen. For peak power usage, I still caution to make sure no other devices share the same wiring string of outlets.Somewhat noisy operation:The induction element is air cooled via a small computer style fan. It keeps the power drive electronics and surface area cool as it works. But it's on the second the unit starts. There's no modulation range at all no matter what power or temperature setting you use. It continues to run for 2 minutes after the unit is switched off. LET IT COOL and shut down when the cycle is in use. After the fan stops, then you can unplug it.Always ON power consumption:When the unit is powered off and cooled, leaving it plugged in still drives some internal components and a Big Red(tm) standby light. This parasitic drain of power is substantial. The manual recommends unplugging the unit between uses.The UGLY!!!The operation manual in no less than 3 places mentions a warning for pacemaker patients. So be very cautious of that.Cosmetics:As such a mirror fine reflective finish on the ceramic it has? It collects smudges and fingerprints very easily - even with clean hands. I find myself wiping it several times a day - but only because - kitty walks across it leaving little pawsies-prints all over it. Mum gets curious, reads the manual - picks it up out of it's spot beside the stove, looks it over, puts it down. Now there is mumsy-pawsies-prints all over it. LOL!Resonance noise:With it modulating power levels, especially in "Temperature Mode" it can emit a sliding scale squeal. You can hear it sweep through frequencies along with a slight hum. This appears to happen more with thin wall stainless, blued carbon steel and to a lesser degree - encapsulated stainless pots with an aluminum heat spreader sandwiched in the bottom. Cast iron does not make any noise at all that I can detect.Cookware Size & Type:Despite passing the magnet test or "certifications" on pot labels - as you vary sizes, composition, manufacturers, characteristics of heating and spread of that heat can vary very wide and wild. Thin walled carbon steel pans and woks can get extreme hot spotting. Keep stirring your food if you utilize thin and steel based pans w/o a cladded-in heat spreader in the bottom. Too small of a utensil, despite being induction ready - may not activate the element. I find anything under 5 inches diameter to be useless.Likewise, too large of a cookware set will have just a localized heat spot just in the middle 6", especially if it's a thinner bottomed piece. It's efficiency and raw power can see you and the Duxtop with a carbon black, perma-bonded sample of your last meal permanently welded on your wide and thin carbon steelies.At the price of entry, this is a rather refined piece of equipment. Precise (In mine at least) thermal controls and power levels took time time to tinker with, but I got fabulous results on my first try. Time and energy savings due to just the inherent nature of induction cooking is all there, in spades.Are there better units with more features? Of course! All will see you parting with your wallet to the tune of $300+ more. The decently granular power and thermal settings will get the most of your basic heavy lifting done simply. Lesser, more inexpensive units will all assuredly blast a 2qt pot into the Ionosphere full of water and boil just fine - yet the finesse of stable power and thermal controls aren't as good. There is also quality and durability issues there. Please, I implore you spend the extra $50~70 and grab this unit.Firm construction and materials will likely see it last very well in my home setting. I couldn't justify the purchase of an "Industrial grade" Duxtop or offerings from other manufacturers for the cash as this was my first time getting my feet wet in induction cooking. For the low-grade price tag, you get a pretty damn good upper-middle grade product with a 2 year warranty smothered atop of it like a warm, smooth chocolate sauce.......Which apparently, with excellent lower end power controls? This Duxtop can *make*. ;>I'll stop typing now - I love induction cooking, though I was suspicious of it before. And my first, entry level purchase into the space was fortunate. I did months of research and reading. Duxtop 9600xx series is a great beginner setup, more than decent overall quality and will not break your piggy bank.Ok, not really. If you don't have a lick of Induction ready/compatible cookware, there's going to be a bump to get over. But grandmaw's rusty cast iron can be scrounged up, cleaned out and re-seasoned for use here. This is a great stop gap device to introduce yourself and learn too; right before you pull the trigger on a kitchen renovation and you're on the fence about modernized Induction cook tops.

I owned a Tramontina induction hot plate for several years before it recently stopped working. It was excellent for searing meat especially steaks, and good for only a few other tasks because the temperature control was crude. This DUX unit, by comparison, is fantastic. What a great improvement! It seems all these less expensive induction hot plates, including this one, control cooking temperature by cycling the power on and off as opposed to controlling the induction coil current. Most of them offer a pan surface that alternates between too hot and too cold . This DUX unit has somehow overcome this problem by using much finer control of the duty cycle. The result is vastly improved temperature control and an induction hot plate that is useful for more than just boiling water or searing meat. The Dux is well designed and very nice looking. This is without any question a best buy. I got a "used" one in a box that had been opened at a nice discount. Could not tell it from a brand new one. Unless you need a 220V unit for use with much larger pots and pans, get this one. Remarkably it will control well all the way from blazing hot to warm at approx. 125 deg F. It has a useful timer that goes up to 10 hours and shuts the unit off when the time is up. This DUX unit is far more useful than competing induction hot plates because of its good temperature control, very wide range of settings and timer. It could be the heat source for a fine crockpot substitute. Of course, as with all of these less expensive induction hot plates, you will want to learn to control the temperature indirectly using the numeric settings that control the duty cycle. This one goes from 0.5 to 10 in 0.5 increments giving you a total of twenty settings. The Dux can be made to read out temperature directly but the reading will only be approximate, and may be quite inaccurate in some situations. This in no way affects the usefulness of the Dux however. If temperature is critical, use an "instant" read thermometer. One of the big surprises is that you can make Hollandaise sauce directly without a double boiler if you have the right utensil.. For example, the 12 cm Barazzoni belly shaped milk pot with heavy wire handle is perfect for this purpose. Its base is only 9 cm which is wide enough to let the DUX top know there is a pot on it, so it won't shut itself off, but small enough to fit mostly within the central circle of the Dux. To make a one egg yolk Hollandaise, for example -- something not easy to do directly on a gas or electric range without using a double boiler-- put one cold egg yolk and 4-5 Tbs of cold butter in chunks into the pot all at the same time! The butter can even be frozen! Put the pot dead center on the Duxtop and set it to a low setting "1". You can tinker with the heat a little by moving the pot slightly off center and then back to center as needed, or lifting it, something you can't do with most competing units without having to reset the controls. Whisk until the butter is incorporated and then season the sauce in the usual way. This goes very fast, about a minute or two. This is the easiest anyone is ever going to make a perfect hollandaise sauce.Since reviewing this duxtop, I had a chance to use the beautifully sleek induction cooktop sold by IKEA. The IKEA unit is about half the price, however it lacks fine control of cooking temperature (10 settings versus 20 available on the Duxtop Model 96xx) resulting in significantly more coarse temperature control and a very noticeable cycling between on and off. Furthermore the IKEA unit, as do most other brands, shuts of quickly if the cooking utensil is lifted from the surface and stays off until manually reset, whereas the Duxtop, while it also shuts off to protect the unit, will restart without changing its settings when the cookware is placed back in contact with the surface within a minute or less. Quite often one needs to lift a pan to flip its contents, or for even finer heat control. Having used this Duxtop for a while now, I can't say enough good things about it, it is truly a remarkably well designed and extremely functional induction hot plate for home use..I noticed another review mentioned that they like another brand of induction hotplate better because it boiled water, by their test, 20 seconds faster than the Duxtop. I need not point out how absurd this is. Twenty seconds difference over 4 minutes will result from small differences in the amount of water or the precise positioning of the pan. There is no statistical difference between the time to boil water between these two hot plates. You'd have to repeat this test many times under careful control to have any chance of detecting any real difference in the time to boil water. Incidentally, none of these 1800 watt induction hot plates will boil substantial amounts of water significantly faster than many conventional, natural gas stoves. That's not where an induction cooktop has an edge over a good gas range. The Duxtop is better at controlling both time and temperature than a gas stove and it both heats and cools the surface of a pan far more rapidly. All induction cooktops, even the lousy ones, will get a pan surface blazing hot very fast on their top setting and are superior for searing meat, but do this outdoors unless you have efficient kitchen stove ventilation, because there is going to be smoke, and lots of it. The only place where the top setting should ever be needed is in bringing water to a boil quickly. The high heat of vaporization of water gives some protection to the cooking unit. If you want to shorten the life of the induction hotplate, use it at the top setting (10) on a dry pan for extended periods! In searing meat a setting above 8 is not needed. This is undoubtedly why when one selects the boil function on the Duxtop it automatically sets the power level to 10 and automatically sets the timer to 10 minutes; yet another wise protective feature of the Duxtop that competing units do not have.Another big advantage induction cooktops have over any range with an open flame is that a paper towel can safely substitute as a pan lid to trap splatters of moisture and fat while letting steam escape. This arrangement can be used in combination with a lid, which will trap both splatters and steam. Many meats nowadays come pumped full of salt solutions,e.g., most bacon brands. These meats, when fried in an open pan, will create a mess of fat spatters. If a lid is used, steamed rather than browned meat results. Induction cooking solves these problems. Bacon, for example, is as easily prepared, and without creating a mess, on the Duxtop as it is in a microwave by substituting a paper towel for a pan lid. Nothing browns meat faster or more conveniently than an induction cooktop, and there is no mess to clean up!.All in all this is a remarkably good induction hot plate, and is perhaps the first inexpensive induction hot plate for home use to give highly satisfactory temperature control over a very wide range. It brings an inexpensive, portable home unit very close to the control one previously had to pay far more to achieve. In this sense, this appears to be an appliance that breaks new ground that all other home-use induction hotplates will be forced to emulate. We can think of the Duxtop as bringing to the serious home cook what was previously available only in professional or high-end home kitchens. Like the iconic Kitchenaid Mixer that brought professional orbital mixing action to home cooks, this 96xx series of Duxtops appears to me to be the first inexpensive induction cooktop to give professional quality induction temperature control. The only difference you are likely to experience between this unit and one costing far more is the size of the pans and the volume of liquids that it can handle. In most cases this duxtop unit will be sufficient for cooking four to six servings using most standard sized pots and pans. You can successfully use somewhat larger pans up to the width of the unit if you use a lower power setting and allow more time for conduction to even out the pan surface temperature. The only possible improvement I would like to see would be one still lower power setting of say 0.25. That could be even more useful for fermentations such as making of creme fraiche in a bain marie. The present model goes down to a still amazing and very useful 0.5. Yes, you can melt chocolate at the 0.5 lowest setting, but keep your eye on it and stir. After using this thing daily for a few months, I am still amazed at what it can do and how well it does it!edit 2020: After daily use for 9 months haven't changed my mind. A beautifully engineered product. Will be the standard against which all competitors must compete. And the price remains amazingly low for this kind of quality and function. One of the best products for the money I have ever purchased.edit sept. 2020: Oh my goodness, is this thing ever great! Now I hardly ever use my otherwise great Bosch range's gas cook top. For those in the Southern part of the U.S. that make gumbo regularly, this duxtop is a fantastic roux maker because of its great temperature control. It will make it possible for even an amateur chef to achieve an almost black roux without burning it. Look up Chef Paul Prudhomme's method in his cookbook. Use an enameled, cast iron, dutch oven.Edit: After 19 Months of daily use, still perfect in every way.Edit: I continue to be impressed with the spectacular engineering that went into this product. I use it daily, seldom using my Bosch gas stove top. Beware of imposters that look similar but do not offer the all-important 20 levels of heat control, a 10-hour timer and also permit a pan to be lifted from the surface with the unit operating without having to reset the controls (very useful feature!). I have learned that the Duxtop has a number of circuit and heat protection features that are only evident after much use. What a great induction cooktop this is!Edit Mar 2023: Approaching four years now of daily use. Still functions like brand new and looks almost brand new.

So far, so good. I LOVE my industrial gas range that I've had for 12 years. I never dreamed of cooking on anything else. But the more we read about the health dangers of cooking with gas, the more I reluctantly considered other options. I haven't been able to bring myself to actually replace my beautiful dream gas range with induction. But we bought this freestanding induction burner to use on the kitchen island almost as a test of the technology. it's a great burner. I use it now 90% of the time when I only need one burner. After it cools, I just slip it on top of the countertop microwave, and it disappears under the cabinets. I don't know if I'll ever be able to part with my gorgeous gas range, but I do expect to buy another one of these at some not too distant point. It's very safe and easy to clean, has a wide range of temperatures with near-instant responsive time. The boil setting has a built in timer so you don't wander off and leave it. And it has a very low setting for keeping things warm. I bought this specific induction burner after reading half a dozen product review sites, and I've been very happy with it. The only thing I worry about is how long it will last. Hopefully for many years.