Amazon Basics 1800W Electric Portable Induction Cooktop, Induction Burner with Child Lock, Overheat Protection, Timer, 8 Power Settings, Up to 440°F, for Cookware with Diameter 5.7"-8.2", Black

I purchased this to experiment with induction cooking. I have a nice set of cookware which also works with induction and wanted to see whether it was "all-that".I find this quite convenient for times when I just want to quickly prepare a meal, or when I am cooking for a crowd and need an extra cook-top. It is compact, sturdy, easy-to-clean, quiet, efficient and easy on my electric bill, and makes swift work of bringing liquids up to a boil if needed in a timely fashion.It is light and portable enough to bring with for events, camping, motel room, etc. For the price, I consider it a decent investment. I actually have several "Amazon Basics" cooking items and they all perform quite well.

we got this as a trial for full induction cooktop. The electric stovetop we have is the old 70's model spiral unit, and the elements hardly plug in and make connection, its history. So we removed the burners and dials from half the stovetop and set this up next to two other burners. We expect to get a full 4-burner unit within a year.Anyway, this unit works great. Its a little odd getting used to the controls, but perhaps they all work this way. There are two buttons to push to start up, "On" and "Power", and it automatically comes in at level 8. Changing heat levels is done with the + and - keys, very straightforward. The burner accepts up to 12 inch and heats our Eberhard Faber cookware quickly. As the cooktop itself does not heat up, there is no bottom scorching one one can concentrate on cleanup on inside of pan; this differs from conventional electric flat cooktops. All kinds of foods that were an agony on the spiral cooktop come out perfectly on the induction. Temperature change is rapid and easy to control. setting 3-4 are the standard sautee levels and 1 is for warming. 8 is for boiling water or heatup. We have experimented to detting a cooking time after starting and after the time is elapsed the unit turns off. Its great. We are sold on induction.While we will replace this unit with a 4-burner induction cooktop when we replace our counters, this one may be useful in thge travel trailer. They use a lot of juice at full bore (800 watts/burner at 8) but little heat is wasted, it all goes in the pan. Cooktop cleanup is easy and little effort. This unit would be great for a small kitchen, though having a second burner would be nice and probably still go on a 20 amp circuitAll our cookware (same brand) worked on the induction except one pot, which apparently has a lot of aluminum in its base.Do not try this on non-flat bottom cookware. If your base is non conductive (like aluminum) the unit makes a strange symbol that means, Nope.Nice job amazon!

Update 2024-11-19: I've now been using this cooktop burner for over 4 years. My comments below still hold true, but I just wanted to update my review to mention that it has operated without any problems on average of maybe 4 times a week, so something like 800 uses and counting.Original review: I bought this cooktop when the price dropped below $35, so it seems pretty impressive for the amount paid. It's nice looking and probably a bit larger than I expected. The power cord is substantial. I bought this product primarily to boil water, which a pretty simple use case, and for that it works really well. I found both gas and traditional electric burners on a full-size stove to be too slow for making pasta, and in the summer it adds a lot heat to the kitchen. This burner is *way* faster than the full size GE with ceramic glass cooking surface and produces far less waste heat. The boil pattern on the bottom of the pan suggests that the actual induction circle is rather small, but this doesn't impact boiling. For any kind of frying or creamy soups I think you would want to use pans with a very substantial bottom that spreads the heat. The fans (it sounds like there's more than one) are not quiet, but nor are they unpleasant, particularly given the reduced cooking time. While working from home it's great to be able to cook fresh pasta (single serving) in about 6 or 7 minutes from start to finish.

If you're only boiling water this device is fine. Cooking eggs, stir fry vegetables, or make pancakes, fryng any thing will burn on 240 degrees. The temperature goes up in 40° increments. Anything above 200 Burns everything, 200 barely cooks. The element is so small...while cooking with a medium skillet... nothing cookes around the outside edges. The heating element is five to max 6 in in diameter. I highly recommend looking for something with four Stars and read the reviews very well. This is my third induction cooktop. I bought two regular coil hot plates locally they both had the same issue of cooking only on high heat and burning everything. I believe it's highly possible we are getting poor quality merchandise from China or some other country.

I got this because I was moving out of an apartment and into a space where I'd have to cook on a hot plate.I picked it up about a month beforehand so I could experiment with it get used to settling for this.. needless to say this is drastically better than the electric stove in my apparent (The one of the apartment is one of those black heating coil kinds) I've tested it and it boils water twice as fast it's great for putting a sear on meat. It has a temperature setting as well so you can set it so that it's just going to come up to boiling. Or you can set it to the smoke point of the oil you're using.as other reviewers have mentioned the induction coil is pretty small, but I haven't personally found it to be a problem but that might be because I have multi-layer pans that spread out heat. I did have one pan that wouldn't work with it because obviously aluminum won't work on these you have to check it with a magnet to see if it's going to be compatible, I've actually found myself cooking stuff that requires a stove much more often, because it brings water to a boiled extremely fastI'll update the review after some review if there's an issue or a change in my opinion