Or buy an induction cooktop, which costs more, works more poorly and has a 5 year expected lifespan.
- potential incompatibility with existing cookware
- many induction stoves achieve lower levels of heat through TDM (turning on and off at max heat) which is horrible
- incompatibility with curved bottom cookware like a wok
- lack of knobs
- annoying beeping
Probably more so than average where I live (Baltimore), since a lot of the housing here is row homes instead of detached.
Just tangentially we've had a couple big gas explosions in the last half decade, too.
We'll have a hood regardless of fuel source. Enough stuff comes off the top as a direct result of cooking, that I'd rather not breathe.
Poor ventilation contributes To lots of other problems more acutely relevant than the low risks associated with your kitchen.
Most of what I see isn’t necessarily cost prohibitive, but looks like it’s built to fail. What products are people using where the experience has been pleasant?
Retail prices do also seem to be somewhat more expensive at similar feature/"trim" levels, too. Unless that's changed since the last time I was thinking about this (maybe a year ago).
Also, I've never met a flat-top stove that wasn't a terror to keep clean. Maybe induction's different, but that's another worry.
To me, a flat-top stove is a lot easier to clean than a gas stove with lots of grates and uneven surfaces.
Just compare these two stove tops:
https://www.geappliances.com/appliance/GE-Profile-30-Built-I...
https://www.geappliances.com/appliance/GE-Profile-30-Built-I...
Same size stove, similar number of heat elements. One has a bunch of grates to move, potentially wash elsewhere. Then there's knobs to remove to clean under them, the knobs themselves having various curves and flat sides to clean. The whole thing is a bit of a pan itself, so there's stuff to clean around that. The burner heads are round protrusions from that pan so you need to clean around them and then clean them as well.
Compared to the other stove, which is just a flat piece of glass. No protrusions. No edges. Just a single flat surface. To me, that single flat glass surface is way easier to clean. I don't even get how one could argue the other is easier to clean, there's far more parts with their own geometries involved.
On top of that, the glass cook top is more or less flush with the rest of the counter, does not have any grates or any other uneven surfaces, so its useful even as just additional counter top. I can easily put other small kitchen appliances on top of it and those appliances have a flat, solid bottom to them instead of trying to get the feet just right on a grate and then have them be inches above the rest of the counter top.
We have an older GE Profile glass cooktop with touch buttons on the right side. I was originally planning on tearing it out and putting in a gas stove when we moved in, which wouldn't have been too difficult as there's a gas line in the wall capped off as I guess a previous owner had a gas stove before they redid the kitchen with electric appliances. The benefits of it being a completely flat nearly counter flush surface and being far easier to clean in my opinion make up for the loss of more instant heat from a gas stove, so we're going to keep it for a while.
And I consider removability a benefit. It's much easier to scrub something at the sink than on the stove itself.
My mid range portable and expensive built in both do this. I get they want to let you know you've nudge a pan out of effect, but give me three seconds! That's all I want, three seconds before you fire the most annoying piezo buzzer on the planet.
not that i would want to do that with an expensive built in range. but it removes a major source of annoyance when using the little ones.
I'm happy about improving air quality, but not happy that it's gonna be significantly more expensive than getting another gas stove :-/
I'm glad I can afford it but every time I see one of those "electric's not god-awful anymore, induction's amazing!" posts on Twitter or Reddit or whatever it's like... yeah, great solution for us folks with plenty of disposable income, I guess.
Not sure how I'm going to make certain kinds of flatbread that I heat directly on the flame. I'll figure something out I suppose.
Reports of the tops being easy to crack worry me, too. I don't like having to baby kitchen equipment.
[EDIT] Hrm. Reading about cooking technique on them, I'm not sure I'd be able to make scrambled eggs (that didn't suck). My technique relies heavily on being able to move the pan on and off the burner. I guess... I could live with just not making scrambled eggs.