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Comment by itcrowd | Hacker News Reader

Induction cooking is good. UI is terrible: touch screen that only allows control over one heat source at a time. Please, please please give me knobs like the ones in gas tops

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Same complaint here. Touch screen that stops working when it gets only slightly wet. I'm forever wiping down that stupid touch screen.

The better European induction cooktops have an individual touch slider control per "ring". I have some family members with those and that control model makes the touch thing a non-issue. No need to wait while pressing +/- either, you just plonk your finger down roughly where you want to be and slide to fine-tune.

Depends on brand. I have one with 4 distinct controls for each heat source. But when I was changing my stove, this was something I looked for - I've used those that can set only one heat source at the time, and they are infuriating for me too.

As for knobs, I'm willing to bet that there are some induction stoves with knobs.

There are. Like you said, you just have to know that's a feature you want and look out for it.

crazy that they would put a touch screen. Ones in Japan are just like little plus/minus arrows (plus button serving as the per-heat-source on button as well). Built-in timer and everything.

The buttons are those little plastic overlays on simple button, so super easy to clean, usable when dirty... and definitely dirt cheap.

American appliance designers should really try just copying good foreign products one of these days. Y'all are in million dollar homes with appliance setups worse than student appartments in many places

Not only is the UI terrible (wet hands and touch based interfaces are terrible), but pets may accidentally turn on the induction if they are prone to walking across your kitchen counter.

This should not be a concern (the danger due to pets, not the terrible UI, which is, indeed, terrible): All modern induction cooktops will not actually engage unless they "feel" a metallic mass which reacts to the magnetic field. If there's nothing, or anything else than an induction-compatible pan/pot on top of the hob, it won't do anything and will turn itself off after 30ish seconds.

So unless you leave pans and pots on the hobs when you're not cooking, you're good.

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