<span style="font-family: georgia, palatino;">I've used induction in a few places, particularly friends' homes, but basically, most of my experience is with the induction equipment I have at home, which are a Max Burton portable burner and a free-standing Electrolux range.
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<span style="font-family: georgia, palatino;">The Max Burton portable is interesting in that it has a timer and also lets you choose between a power setting (10 equally spaced levels, I think) and a thermostat setting, which keeps a preset temperature for you -- more expensive models let you set whatever temperature, but my model, which cost all of 65-ish bucks, if I remember right, has only 6 pre-set temps, I think. If I remember right, one of them is 350F and the other is 250F, which are very practical for frying and pressure cooking. The downside is the cooling fan noise and, since it plugs into a regular outlet, it can only use 1,800W.</span>
<span style="font-family: georgia, palatino;">The range is a very different animal. It doesn't have a thermostat or timer for the burners (although I'm told you can buy Miele-level stuff which will give you that), but it has 4 burners of different sizes/power. Power control is very fine from LO-3.00, in .2 steps, then fine from 3-7, in .5 steps, then from 7-HI/PowerBoost it goes in jumps of 1, with something like 23 steps total, not counting PowerBoost). PowerBoost shares power between the front and back burners, 2 "zones", one left and one right and you can only use powerboost for something like 10 minutes, and it switches down to Hi automatically after that. (Incidentally, different brands and even different models in the same brand may have different features, check them out if they are important to you.)</span>
<span style="font-family: georgia, palatino;">One of the things I've seen people struggle with, when they came to cook at my home and were not used to induction is precisely what people described above -- the size of the pot/pan matters a lot. Most of the induction burners solve this "problem" by not turning on if the pot/pan is too small for the burner, and my range seems to do that too, but it's more "tolerant" of smaller pots than a lot of brands, but if you put a "small" pot (say, 6") on the 10" burner, it will take a surprisingly long time to come up to boil, despite the fact that that is the most powerful burner and can get a gallon of water boiling in no time flat with a wide pot.</span>
<span style="font-family: georgia, palatino;">Another thing that surprises people the most with this range is what I often tell them: do not leave <span style="text-decoration: underline;">anything</span> unattended on PowerBoost ever. In fact, when they first ask me for a demonstration, they are often startled that I do not need to "pre-heat" anything: I just start on powerboost for a few seconds, drop the oil and/or butter in the pan and it immediately starts melting, then I drop the power to "Hi" or even lower and start cooking. You can actually finish an omelette or scrambled eggs before the toaster is done with the bread.</span>
<span style="font-family: georgia, palatino;">I would choose the pots carefully: not only the bottom sizes need to match one of your burners closely for maximum efficiency (a lot of people paid a bunch of money for woks and got disappointed, "wok" work is better on induction by either using a wide frying pan or getting a specialized induction wok burner) but you want to consider the inertia of the pot/pan too -- cast iron will take longer to cool down than something more like all-clad, and those aluminum pots covered in "ceramic" or teflon as a non-stick with a very thin stainless steel bottom to couple to the induction will heat up or cool down fastest.</span>
<span style="font-family: georgia, palatino;">Not sure if among the responses we have answered all you wanted to know, so please do ask whatever you want to know and we may be able to help.</span>
They actually work quite well, but they don't last very long. The first thing that breaks on them is the plastic membrane that covers the buttons. One I received on a buy one, get one free, was dead on arrival. I tried, but I couldn't get through to anyone at NuWave to help me resolve the problem. I think next time, I'm going to spend more money, and get one from a well-known company.
