If your kitchen remodel includes installing a new cooktop, now is a great time to make the switch to electric. Although gas has long been the standard, electric cooktops offer plenty of performance in the kitchen while lowering your carbon footprint and eliminating sources of indoor air pollution. Bonus: By choosing a cooktop and wall oven over a range, you separate two prime heat-generating appliances, which can make your kitchen a lot more comfortable for cooking.
The Expert: I’ve been cooking with an induction stove for the past five years, and before that I cooked with a vast motley crew of electric ranges, including even a few old school coil models. I’m an avid home cook, so I use my stove at least once a day and would definitely say my induction range plus hood has vastly improved my life. We no longer have to frantically clear smoke just because I want to wok-fry some noodles, for example. One of my favorite features is the power boost setting, which increases power by 50 percent to keep that pasta water going on rapid boil even after I add noodles. For the past year, I’ve been reviewing kitchen appliances and gadgets for Input, Popular Mechanics and, when I remember, my Instagram.
With electric cooktops, you have two big categories to choose from at the outset: radiant or induction heating. Here’s what you need to know about each type, along with other features you should consider and reviews of eight great electric stovetops.
How Radiant Cooktops Work
Radiant cooktops heat pots and pans with indirect heat, either from an electric coil or solid metal disc heating element or with radiation from a halogen bulb. There are also semi-halogen models that combine these two heating elements. Halogen bulbs light up immediately and vividly when they turn on, which is an appealing safety feature for consumers. The visible red light signals the burner is on, though the invisible radiation is what’s doing the work for cooking.
Regardless of element design, the indirect heating process works like this: The coil or bulb transfers heat to the ceramic or glass top which then transfers heat to your pot and whatever’s inside.
How Induction Cooktops Work
Instead of transferring heat indirectly, induction cooktops generate heat through magnetic energy. Here’s how it works: The heating element housed underneath the glass or ceramic top is a coil made of copper. When you turn on the burner, an electric current flows through the coil, which in turn produces a magnetic field around it.
The electrons in your cookware, which must be made from magnetic material to work on an induction cooktop, will then try to align with the magnet in the cooktop, causing your pot or pan to vibrate tens of thousands of times per second. The friction of that vibration quickly generates energy and is what heats up your cooking vessel. Induction cooktops do make some noise as a result of the vibration. I don’t hear it anymore, and I’m pretty noise-sensitive, but other users have mentioned this in reviews.
Because induction works by generating heat in the pan or pot itself, this type of stovetop heats up much faster and tends to generate less smoke than a radiant cooktop. However, you can opt for radiant or induction models that have downdraft ventilation built in.
🧲 Tip: Many cookware sets are induction-friendly and say so in the product information. If you don’t have that handy, grab a magnet and see if it sticks. If it does, the cookware will work on your induction cooktop.
Cooktop Size and Number of Burners
Stovetops come in a range of sizes, from smaller 24-inch to larger 42-inch wide models. The most common sizes are usually 30 or 36 inches. Cooktops also offer a range of burner options, usually four or five. According to Emily Paster, a chef and cookbook author who remodeled her kitchen in 2018, that fifth burner can offer much-needed space. “If you’ve got a four-burner cooktop and you could potentially have three things going, that could get real crowded,” she says.
Paster uses a portable induction cooktop for teaching classes. She says these appliances can be very handy if you need an extra burner during the holidays or even if you have a very small kitchen. In choosing a cooktop, she recommends avoiding the temptation to buy every appliance in the same brand even if there’s a discount. Some brands do cooktops better than refrigeration, for example, and vice versa.
Cooking Surfaces
Electric cooktops mostly come in smooth-top form these days, which means the heating element is housed underneath a layer of tempered glass or ceramic, but you can still find electric cooktops in the older visible coil style, too. Smooth-top stoves are far easier to clean than exposed coils, though it’s easier to replace a coil unit if one breaks. To repair or replace a single burner underneath a glass cooktop, you or the repair person will need to remove the entire surface top first. You can use cast iron or other heavy types of cookware on your smooth-top without damaging it, but you need to be careful in how you use it (do not drag your cast iron across burners, for example).
How We Evaluated
To recommend the cooktops below, I combined my own experience using a Bosch induction range at home with reviews from expert sites including Good Housekeeping and The Spruce. For each model, I evaluated its size, number of burners, features, price, and reliability based on user reviews from Amazon, Lowe’s, AJ Madison, and Wayfair. Our list of the eight best electric cooktops includes both radiant and induction options, at different price points, in several sizes, and with various features like power boost and portability.
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