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The induc­tion hob for many of us looks like a real alien from the future. The burn­er here is com­plete­ly cold, and the soup in the pot is boil­ing. Mir­a­cles? No, it’s all about the alter­nat­ing elec­tro­mag­net­ic field, which sets the elec­trons in motion at the bot­tom of the dish, and it already heats the con­tents. One ques­tion remains — do you real­ly need such a stove? In order not to be dis­ap­point­ed in the choice, you need to know about some fea­tures of the tech­nol­o­gy, says Sergey Smyakin, an expert on kitchen appli­ances at the Tech­noEm­pire store.

- Many are afraid of induc­tion, they say, elec­tro­mag­net­ic waves have a bad effect on health. No, of course, if you are close to the stove, then they real­ly are, but in such por­tions of EMP it is com­plete­ly safe for humans and pets. Rather, you will expe­ri­ence psy­cho­log­i­cal dis­com­fort from the fact that the usu­al pots, pans and caul­drons may not “make friends” with the induc­tion hob and you will have to buy spe­cial dish­es.

Top 12 rating according to KP

1. LEX EVI 640 F BL with merging zone

An excel­lent mod­el that even pro­fes­sion­als will appre­ci­ate. There is a con­ve­nient touch con­trol, lock, pro­gram­ma­ble timer, resid­ual heat indi­ca­tion. All four burn­ers expand for large dish­es and turn off when over­heat­ed.

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If there is no time, then you can use the BOOST mode to speed up cook­ing or pause work, sav­ing the set­tings. Induc­tion guar­an­tees sav­ings and addi­tion­al safe­ty.

The con­di­tion­al dis­ad­van­tages include the absence of at least one stan­dard elec­tric burn­er.

Main characteristics

Heat­ing ele­ment	induc­tion
Mate­r­i­al	glass ceram­ics
Con­trol	intu­itive con­trol, touch, timer
Pow­er	7000 W
Num­ber of burn­ers	4 burn­ers, pooling/expansion zone
Secu­ri­ty fea­tures	cook­ware recog­ni­tion sen­sor, over­heat­ing pro­tec­tion, resid­ual heat indi­ca­tor, pan­el lock but­ton, boil-dry shut-off, Boost func­tion (rein­forced pow­er) on 4 burn­ers
Burn­er timer	there is
Built-in Dimen­sion (HxWxD)	560x490 mm

Pros and cons

Ener­gy effi­cien­cy, man­u­fac­tura­bil­i­ty, price in rela­tion to ana­logues

No elec­tric burn­er

Edi­tor’s Choice

LEX EVI 640 FBL

Elec­tric induc­tion hob

The induc­tion heater exhibits a high heat­ing rate, saves ener­gy and short­ens cook­ing time

Get a quo­teOther mod­els

2. Bosch PIE631FB1E

Pop­u­lar induc­tion hob made of glass ceram­ic. Mea­sur­ing 59.2 x 52.2 cm, it has four stan­dard burn­ers. There is also a pro­pri­etary Power­Boost func­tion, which sig­nif­i­cant­ly speeds up the cook­ing or boil­ing process. The effec­tive­ness of this mode is evi­denced by the fact that in it the pan­el is able to boil three liters of water in more than two min­utes. Bosch offers a tem­per­a­ture scale from 1 to 9. The stove accu­rate­ly rec­og­nizes the pres­ence of dish­es on its sur­face. Buy­ers should be aware that in high pow­er mode, it starts to make a notice­able noise. In addi­tion, some users report increased pow­er con­sump­tion even when the stove is in stand­by mode.

Pros and cons

Pow­er­ful mod­el, excel­lent assem­bly (Spain)

Con­sumes elec­tric­i­ty even when turned off

3. LEX EVI 640–2BL

Suf­fi­cient­ly pow­er­ful induc­tion hob with a stan­dard width of 60 cm with a mod­ern slid­er type of con­trol, a timer and a Stop & Go func­tion.

Burn­ers have dif­fer­ent diam­e­ters, pro­vide a high heat­ing rate and an accept­able noise lev­el for their class. Fur­ther­more? there is an option to rec­og­nize dish­es, block­ing from over­heat­ing and boil­ing over.

Cook­ing instal­la­tion requires cer­tain skills: remov­ing the ground wire, the man­u­fac­tur­er insu­lat­ed the body of the hob.

Main characteristics

Pros and cons

Edi­tor’s Choice

LEX EVI 640–2BL

induc­tion hob

The mod­el is equipped with a lock but­ton, a resid­ual heat indi­ca­tor, over­heat­ing pro­tec­tion, a boil-off switch and pan recog­ni­tion.

Get a quoteAll mod­els

4. Electrolux EHH 56240 IK

Inex­pen­sive induc­tion hob with four burn­ers and a rat­ed pow­er of 6.6 kW. The sur­face quick­ly heats up the cook­ware, even if it is not direct­ly designed to work with induc­tion. How­ev­er, this mod­el has some nuances. For exam­ple, a pow­er man­age­ment sys­tem that lim­its the load per phase to 3.6 kW. In prac­tice, this means that if you cook simul­ta­ne­ous­ly on two ver­ti­cal burn­ers, the stove starts click­ing the relay loud­ly, turn­ing on the fan and switch­ing the burn­ers at inter­vals of 2–3 sec­onds. The prob­lem is solved by a home elec­tri­cal net­work with two phas­es.

Pros and cons

5. MAUNFELD EVI 292-BK

Bud­get induc­tion hob, only two burn­ers. Suit­able for those who are look­ing for a com­pact solu­tion and for those who want to try induc­tion, but do not want to over­pay. The stove pow­er is only 3.5 kW. Despite the bud­get, there is an accel­er­at­ed heat­ing mode, which allows, for exam­ple, to boil water in a lit­tle more than a minute. EVI 292-BK has 10 cook­ing modes, a timer and a touch pan­el lock, which is use­ful for homes with chil­dren and ani­mals. When installing the pan­el, you should pay atten­tion to the instal­la­tion of the fan, if it is in the wrong posi­tion, it makes noise and may break. The pan­el works rather strange­ly at min­i­mum pow­er modes, there are ques­tions about the dura­bil­i­ty of the device — for some users, burn­ers burn out after a year of oper­a­tion.

Pros and cons

6. Gorenje IT 640 BSC

Rel­a­tive­ly afford­able induc­tion hob with four burn­ers. The mod­el received a resid­ual heat indi­ca­tor and a safe­ty shut­down. Prob­lems with the pow­er grid, which are observed in many com­peti­tors, are not here. The stove is able to rec­og­nize even small dish­es, for exam­ple, a cezve for brew­ing cof­fee. True, you will have to put up with the char­ac­ter­is­tic sound that the Goren­je IT 640 BSC emits, despite the aver­age load.

Pros and cons

7. Zigmund & Shtain CIS 219.60 DX

Cook­top with design­er frills. The glass-ceram­ic here is not just made in the orig­i­nal col­ors — it has a pat­tern. Dimen­sions for a four-burn­er induc­tion cook­er are stan­dard — 58 x 51 cm. The pan­el per­forms its func­tions prop­er­ly — fast heat­ing, respon­sive touch con­trols and a timer. But many may not like the sound­track of work — the induc­tion pan­el makes noise with a fan.

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Pros and cons

8.Hansa BHI68300

“Peo­ple’s” induc­tion cook­er, which is very often rec­om­mend­ed for pur­chase on the Inter­net. The advan­tages of this mod­el include its price, sta­bil­i­ty and sim­ple oper­a­tion. For exam­ple, there are also light indi­ca­tors for find­ing dish­es on the sur­face around the burn­er, which can be use­ful. Pro­tec­tion from chil­dren and pets will come in handy for many. The reverse side of the advan­tages of the Hansa BHI68300 is the often occur­ring mar­riage, when the stove at one fine moment stops turn­ing on. In addi­tion, some users com­plain about the per­sis­tent smell of plas­tic in the first months of cook­ing on the hob.

Pros and cons

9. Indesit VIA 640 0 C

Induc­tion cook­er from a well-known man­u­fac­tur­er of kitchen appli­ances. By the way, Inde­sit promis­es that the sur­face will last 10 years (how­ev­er, the war­ran­ty is still stan­dard — 1 year).

The four-burn­er hob has dimen­sions of 59 x 51 cm. The VIA 640 0 C is dis­tin­guished by intu­itive touch con­trols and is unpre­ten­tious to the dish­es. The dis­ad­van­tage of induc­tion pan­els in this price range is that there is a hum and click of the relay when three or more burn­ers are oper­at­ing simul­ta­ne­ous­ly. In addi­tion, this mod­el is very sus­cep­ti­ble to the qual­i­ty of wiring and volt­age drops.

Pros and cons

10. Whirlpool SMC 653 F/BT/IXL

This “induc­tion” boasts not only func­tion­al­i­ty, it will be a real design­er dec­o­ra­tion of the kitchen. Here, a non-stan­dard place­ment of burn­ers is imple­ment­ed, of which, for­mal­ly, there are three. In fact, the SMC 653 F/BT/IXL has two huge heat­ing zones, each of which rec­og­nizes the area on which the dish­es are placed. At the same time, the stove works with any dish­es, and not just with spe­cial ones. By the way, this mod­el from Whirlpool is also dis­tin­guished by the increased strength of glass ceram­ics — some users note that even a fall of a pan can­not dam­age the sur­face.

Pros and cons

11. Beko HII 64400 ATBR

A four-burn­er hob that dif­fers from its com­peti­tors in not the most com­mon col­or — beige. We will not talk about the prac­ti­cal­i­ty of such a solu­tion, but some buy­ers will def­i­nite­ly like it. The stove is able to rec­og­nize the pres­ence of dish­es on it, and the burn­ers are turned off if there is noth­ing on them. Sur­face con­trol is quite sim­ple — there are touch but­tons. As a lia­bil­i­ty, you can only write down the fact that com­peti­tors have mod­els sim­i­lar in func­tion­al­i­ty at a more pleas­ant price.

Pros and cons

12. Hotpoint-Ariston IKID 641 BF

This induc­tion hob has an increased pow­er of 7.2 kW. The increase in pow­er came from one burn­er, which is made accord­ing to a two-cir­cuit scheme and can almost instant­ly heat up the con­tents of a pot or pan. An advanced timer will pre­vent soup or milk from “run­ning away”.

The glass-ceram­ic coat­ing here is very strong and can with­stand the fall of even a large pan. How­ev­er, it is sub­ject to rub­bing and scratch­ing, which must be tak­en into account when car­ing for this pan­el.

Pros and cons

How to choose an induction hob

The supe­ri­or­i­ty of induc­tion pan­els over gas and clas­sic elec­tric stoves is so obvi­ous that every year more and more of them are sold on the Russ­ian house­hold appli­ances mar­ket. Cold, pow­er­ful, eco­nom­i­cal and eas­i­ly inte­grat­ed into any kitchen set. In stores you can find dozens and hun­dreds of mod­els of induc­tion hobs. So which one to choose for your needs?

Design

The use of induc­tion coils, which them­selves prac­ti­cal­ly do not heat up, has opened up a huge field for man­u­fac­tur­ers to rethink the design of the stove. For exam­ple, if the glass-ceram­ic coat­ing of a con­ven­tion­al elec­tric stove could often be made only in dark and light col­ors (cus­tomers did not par­tic­u­lar­ly like this — after sev­er­al years of wash­ing, the stove in white looked worse than black), then the appear­ance of a cold induc­tion pan­el (which should be kept clean eas­i­er) is lim­it­ed only by the imag­i­na­tion of design­ers. In addi­tion to very exot­ic col­ors, there are often an unusu­al arrange­ment of burn­ers, which are even com­bined into cook­ing zones.

Burners and heating zones

Two- and four-burn­er induc­tion pan­els are now com­mon on the mar­ket. But there are some nuances. For exam­ple, advanced mod­els have com­bined cook­ing zones, and smart sen­sors deter­mine the exact loca­tion of the dish­es, direct­ing induc­tion there. Large areas have anoth­er plus — they can cook in bulk dish­es, for exam­ple, in a caul­dron. But if the bot­tom of the pot does not cov­er 70% of the area of ​​the cook­ing zone, the stove will not turn on. By the way, the stan­dard diam­e­ter of burn­ers for induc­tion cook­ers is 14–21 cm. The bound­aries of the heat­ing zone are usu­al­ly marked on the sur­face. For the sake of style, they can be any shape, but the heat­ing zone is still round.

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IT IS INTERESTING

“KP” presents a rat­ing of the 10 best elec­tric ovens

Power and energy efficiency

In terms of ener­gy effi­cien­cy, induc­tion is much more eco­nom­i­cal than a con­ven­tion­al elec­tric stove. So, the effi­cien­cy of the sur­face can reach 90%. But this has a down­side — induc­tion cook­ers are some­what more pow­er­ful than their tra­di­tion­al coun­ter­parts and they con­sume more ener­gy per unit of time. So what are their eco­nom­ics? Here is a sim­ple exam­ple. In order to boil 2 liters of water on a clas­sic elec­tric stove, it may take up to 15 min­utes, and induc­tion will do it in 5, and in Boost mode in 1.5 min­utes. This is how elec­tric­i­ty is saved.

Control

Prob­lems with smooth con­trol of the degree of heat­ing of induc­tion got from con­ven­tion­al elec­tric stoves. But this dis­ad­van­tage is some­what smoothed out by a large num­ber of tem­per­a­ture regimes. On some pan­els, their num­ber can reach 20.

Sen­sors are now used in con­trol. Such but­tons, for all their futur­is­tic appear­ance, have one sig­nif­i­cant draw­back — their sen­si­tiv­i­ty is great­ly reduced due to liq­uid or dirt.

About dishes

When think­ing about choos­ing the best induc­tion cook­top 2022, one should not miss the ques­tion of cook­ware. The fact is that the “physics” of these pan­els is fun­da­men­tal­ly dif­fer­ent from gas or con­ven­tion­al elec­tric ones. Not every pot or pan is suit­able for an induc­tion cook­er. Cook­ware must be made of mate­r­i­al with fer­ro­mag­net­ic prop­er­ties — steel, cast iron and oth­er iron alloys. Rough­ly speak­ing, kitchen uten­sils should be mag­ne­tized. But this does not mean that you have to go broke on buy­ing a com­plete set of new dish­es. By the way, induc­tion cook­ers are so “smart” that they sim­ply won’t work with an unsuit­able fry­ing pan, which means that the risk of break­ing the stove is min­i­mal.

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