>The pans are specially designed to contain a heating coil in them which implicitly is closer to your food.

Just to note, you don’t need special pans to use an inductive stove. Any magnetic cookware will do, which includes cast iron and most stainless steel. As an intuitive rule of thumb, if a magnet will stick to the bottom, then it’s compatible.

Induction compatible cookware doesn't have a heating coil. They just need ferrous metal in them. They can be clad in aluminum, with a ferrous core etc. A cast iron pan works fine, and most stainless steel cookware is fine. It's just the cheap teflon stuff that's out of luck.

> It's just the cheap teflon stuff that's out of luck.

And copper and aluminium. Some stoneware too as well as glass when needed.

Copper and aluminum can be used as a cladding around the ferrous metal core just fine. I guess you could do the same with some of the ceramics/stoneware as well.

It really isn't just fine. You lose the entire purpose of the pans and might as well be cooking on an electric stove at that point.

>The pans are specially designed to contain a heating coil in them which implicitly is closer to your food.

This is not correct. Any ferric-metal pan/pot will work. If a magnet can stick to your pot it will work.

I wonder did anyone did a comparision between ones sold as "induction" vs plain old steel pan.

Like, do the induction ones do something to make the heat distribution more equal compared to slab of steel ?

The pan doesn't have a heating coil in it - it's just a solid slab of metal. However, that acts like a single turn of wire in a "coil" shorted out.