Contact Bosch. They had an issue with knobs for a short time but fixed it. You may have one of the ranges before the new knobs were replaced. Call Bosch and they will send you the new knobs.

I thought it might be a renter expectation/marketing issue...even if a $300 craigslist coil-top and a brand new GE cafe are functionally identical, most potential renters will still be influenced to be more likely to rent the place with the newer/prettier/seemingly more expensive (and therefore, in their minds, better) range. And, to be fair...its not really true to say "no electric range really works any better than any of the rest, except for induction." Even if that is mostly true of the cooktop portions (and even there, there are issues of burner size, flexible burners, bridge burners, hot surface indicators, etc etc), the ovens on electric ranges clearly differ in quality just as much as on dual-fuel ranges, as they are the identical ovens...and even a brief familiarity with this board will show you that people have strong opinions about the relative quality of the ovens in ranges. One other thought...you say you don't want to buy induction now because it might be a problem with renters (cookware). I get that, and you may have other reasons for rejecting induction now - you know best for your situation, I am sure - but...you could always just provide a set of Ikea cookware or similar with the condo rental, to avoid the issue. Having induction would potentially be a selling point in and of itself, on both quality of experience and eco/green grounds, if you educate potential renters appropriately. Just a thought.

I'm not sure I followed the explanation you received from the GE rep. Or maybe the rep was giving you an engineer's explanation of "Pulse Width Modulation." PWM is a way of using power in bursts to effect energy transfer equivalent to turning a traditional electric or gas burner up or down. It is kind of like averaging. You cycle the power on and off slowly to simulate lower energy transfer. Cycle it faster and with longer pulses, you get more energy transfer and the effect of turning up the power or gas on a traditional hob. That's how most microwaves work, btw. What we're talking about is how much energy gets transmitted into the cooking vessel. The PWM is just a way of governing the amount of energy being applied to the pan. The net effect is the same as turning power or gas up and down. Maybe somebody else can better explain the theory of the what the rep suggested? On your question about cookware to buy, let me suggest try a new post with links to the cooking and cookware forums here where you can get more direct responses. Also, rather than have me give a cookware 101 lecture (pontificate?), I suggest you try a site like Serious Eats which already has a pretty good discussion of "essential cookware." (Click on the highlght to go to the article.) I think Cook's Illustrated also may have one if you have access to their site. My responses to your specific cookware questions are: 1. I certainly would and do mix pan from different brands and lines. Most folks here would advise you to do so. Nothing necessarily wrong with buying sets, of course, but you may do better by picking and choosing. 2. I have only two Demeyere pans, both labeled as "Demeyere 7 TripleInduc.." Bought them on clearance from the Zwilling website you noted above for the plancha. One of my pans is a ten-inch frying pan. The other is the 21"x13" big brother of the plancha/teppanyaki/griddle you linked above. 3. I have both a roasting pan and a dutch oven. Frankly, if I had neither one, I'd look at the recommendations on Cook's Illustrated and Serious eats for decent dutch ovens and then I would also get a good , sturdy half sheet pan (it is a baking sheet with a short raised rim around the outside.) I'd use the baking sheet to impersonate a roasting pan by plonking in a cooling rack and setting the food on that. Also, if you get that plancha/griddle/teppanyaki, it can do a bang-up job as a shallow roasting pan, too. These days, I use my big roasting pan mainly for very big and juicy birds. YMMV. 4. Re "straight-sided" versus slope-side skillets, there is no "must" for induction. Get the slope-sided pan that you think you will like using better.

Since folks occasionally come across this thread, perhaps it's time for a 2023 update. Bosch Bosch has released a new "Pro" model in their 800 series line. The 800 Series Induction freestanding range (model number HIS8055U has front control knobs, but a rather small oven at 3.9 CuFt. While it does check my boxes for individual burner controls, preferably knobs, there's a few things to note: Oven size is rather small No bridge burner While Bosch themselves don't list out the wattage of each burner, it is a 40A circuit, so it may be a little less power than the Miele, Wolf or Fulgor Milano And this is a rumor and something I heard on a few appliance review videos, but unable to confirm: This product is the Smeg cooktop. If so, the burner power would be two burners at 3,000 W and two at 1,400 W. Which is indeed quite a bit less than the other top choices I had listed in the original post So overall it may look great, has front control knobs for each individual burner, but it may not have the power and/or reliability of the Bosch Benchmark slide-in induction range. Thermador They have been known for their "Freedom Induction Cooktop", especially in the 36" version. There are no truly dedicated burners, but a large "flex zone" on both the left and right side that are each powered by two separate inductors. You can use each zone as two individual burners or as one large cooking zone. You can slide pots and pans around over the entire zone and with several different programming options, it will remember your setting and transfer it to wherever you move the pan. Or you can set it to be in incrementally lower power settings front to back. So it can be on 9 at the front, 7 in the middle, 5 further back, etc.... Sear and just slide it back to lower the power setting. Extremely high tech and super impressive. So now Thermador has released this in a 30" induction range. The Thermador Liberty® Induction Professional Range 30'' Pro Harmony® (that's a mouthful) with model number PRI30LBHU is a sleek looking cooking range, with an impressively capable induction cooktop. What stood out to me: The Liberty or Freedom cooktop is phenomenally flexible, powerful and high tech. A little overwhelmingly high-tech even However, in a 30" range, it seems a little small. While the entire glass cooktop is 22 1/2" deep, a large section in the front is taken up by the controls. Based on some initial measurements, that means the flex zone cooking surface is only about 15 1/2" to 16" deep. I have to find one in person to confirm that, but based on images and scale, that's it came out to. Sounds awfully small to me And, for me, the biggest sticking point is the lack of individual burner control. On the 36" version there is a very sleek looking control panel that is very intuitive with a slider control. On the 30" version, it looks very much like the Bosch controls and hence not my personal favorite. But it may work for you All that being said, it's probably been the most exciting release in the 30" induction range world for the last year. The images attached are the size of the Thermador cooktop and the comparison the controls of the 30" Liberty range vs the 36" Freedom cooktop Other updates Dacor Has completely abandoned and discontinued the 30" induction range Fisher & Paykel Someone did point out that DCS sold the household appliance brand F&P to Haier. Which is a Chinese conglomerate that owns GE Appliances, Hoover, Hotpoint, Sanyo and a few other brands. I have not necessarily heard anything bad about F&P and know several folks have purchased F&P 9 series Classic models since they come in different colors to match your desired interior Fulgor Milano They seem to be more prevalent now than they were when I wrote the original article. And many people are quite impressed and happy with the quality. One re-occurring comment I see is that the oven seems to indicate that the preheat is complete, while the temperature is not fully distributed throughout the oven cavity yet. Especially in simple bake mode. The workaround seems to be to preheat with a convection mode to ensure the entire oven cavity is heated through and then switch back to the preferred baking mode. A bit of a workaround, but it that's the only complaint, I think it remains a strong top contender GE Cafe and Profile No major updates Miele Likewise no significant updates. The induction range is still on version 3 and remains equally impressive as it was when I posted the original article. Wolf Only has released a style update with a different oven door handle. Wait times seem to have gone down, but no feature or other technical updates As far as I know those are the updates I was able to find, so I hope this helps those continuing to shop around