The Induction Site suggests that many of the induction coils are the same across brands -- which explains Choc-Mool's point that all the brands seem to be about equally reliable. Differences show up in areas such as these: sizes and placement of hobs wattage of hobs (and overall) power sharing (which only seems to be an issue when using the boost feature) types of controls (e.g., Gaggenau's magnetic knob, Bosch's touch on the stainless strip) timers and types of timers We have a Bosch 36" (800 model). The touch controls are not terribly "touchy" -- since most of them are on the stainless strip. You directly select the power level instead of tapping from one level to another. The more important factors were hob placement & sizes. The arrangement on the Bosch worked best for the way we cook and the sizes of pans we use. Well, the Gaggenau has the same sizes and layout, but it was more than twice as expensive! As to the buzzing. We do hear it for a brief while when first using either the highest power level or boost, but it doesn't last long. You also asked about searing. We made lamb chops the other night. We seared them in a skillet and finished them in the oven. The searing worked just fine. You don't get the same sear as on a grill, but the chops were very tasty. And, yes, for keeping a pot on a low (or even medium) simmer, our induction is far superior to the radiant cooktop we had before. It was a nice one; a Thermador. At low temperatures, it cycled the temp up and down, so we had to constantly watch whatever we were cooking. In short, we are very happy with the choice of induction. But I echo other posters' advice about finding a way to try it for yourself.

I suspect some concepts are getting mixed. So, first thing, you should have no trouble using all four induction burners at once for normal cooking on any currently available induction range that I know about. What may be confusing is the people who say you can't cook on all four burners at once often do not understand the difference between normal cooking and "boost" functions. "Boost" functions are something you get with induction but mostly not other kinds of electrical stoves. It basically lets you run a burner at a higher than high setting for a time so you can get large kettles and stockpots to boil even more quickly than they otherwise would. If you had an 8 - inch coil burner rated at 2500 watts, which will boil large amounts of water pdq, you could make that come to a boil more quickly if you could run the burner at 3700 watts, right? Well, you can't do that with radiant and coil burners but you can with induction. Basically, most induction ranges and cooktops have burners paired together into zones. A zone will typically have two burners paired on a power supply. (Some of the 36" induction cooktops may have three zones with the largest burner in a zone by itself. From what I've read, I think the GE PHB920 and PHS925 also have the largest burner in its own zone.) Let's say one zone has two 8" burners each of which is rated at, say, 1800 watts. (That, by the way, is a pretty fair amount of heat for most cooking.) So, let's say you've got a big stockpot for pasta water on the back burner and a frying pan on the front burner. You decide that you want to get that pasta water boiling as fast as possible. The boost function basically allows you to "borrow" 700 watts from the front burner to run the back burner at a much hotter 2500 watts. The front burner can only go up to 60% power while you are doing this. Now some folks hear this and think, "OMG, I've got no more power on the front burner." Not so. Most induction cooking (and frying in particular) is going to be done less than 60% power, Often much less than that. Think about it this way. If you were using a gas stove or a regular electric stove, how often do you cook things with all the the gas burners full open or the burners all dialed to absolute max? Now. to make it even more confusing, some manufacturers don't use the term boost. Some just call it "high" or "speed boil" or some such thing. But it amounts to the same thing. What you are doing with a boost (or whatever) function is borrowing some of the power from another burner in order to run a lot hotter for a period of time. This is no big deal unless you are trying to boil four large canning kettles of pasta water all at one time, or want to run four woks at lead-melting temperatures all at once, or maybe trying to help save Alamo by melting many pounds of lead as fast you can to make bullets for the defenders. :>) FWIW, you can do gonzo activities with commercial induction ranges but you need industrial strength three-phase power supplies plus an $8k check for the range. :>) Now, that said, there are a some induction ranges with a zone that pairs a very large burner with a very small burner (say, an 11 inch or 12inch hob with a 6 inch or 5 inch hob.) The front hob might be rated at 2500 watts and the back one at 1300 watts, and allow you to boost the front one to 3700 watts. When you "borrow" 1200 watts for the big burner, there isn't enough left to do much with the 1300 watt burner. You have to read the product manuals to find out if that is how it works with the stove in which you are interested. It isn't as though you can't boil water with the front burner running at "only" 2500 watts. That's still plenty of power. Think about this: a 2500 watt induction burner will be about 20% faster than 2500 watt coil burner and, for the better part of a century, millions of folks have found 2500 watt coil burners perfectly satisfactory way to run 5 gallon water-bath canning kettles. If you like automotive analogies, try this one: boost would be like having a nitro-injection in your family car -- how often do you think you need to mash the throttle and switch on the nitro when pulling away from a stop sign in you neighborhood? My recollection is that the PHB920 has the big burner in its own zone and capable of 3700 watts with a boost of some kind (Power Boil, IIRC), the two 8 inch burners on the left at 2500 watts apiece with no boost function and the back 6" diameter 1800 watt burner in its own zone, as well. Does this clarify things for you? Or, maybe it is more info than you wanted? ;>) This post was edited by JWVideo on Sat, Aug 23, 14 at 12:58

Expanding on both Hattiecarrol's and Jerry's responses to what you said about being nervous you might hate induction as much as the radiant electric you've been suffering with, let me offer the following. One concern you mentioned is that you find it tough to get a good simmer with your current range which is a radiant electric glasstop model. Getting a good simmer should not be a problem with either the Bosch 800 or the GE Profile ranges. Both offer pretty fine control in the lower heat settings. That makes it easy to get any kind of simmer from still water poaching temps to barely bubbling stock-making temps to a near boil simmer. And, as cpartist points out, induction burners are very responsive and can very quickly take a pot between a full boil and any of those steps. Not possible with radiant electric except by moving the pot from the boiling burner to another one which is already set to your chosen simmer level. Another aspect of getting a good simmer with radiant stoves can be that some of them make it hard to know where to set the knob/dial for the simmer you want. Both the Bosch and GE have digital controls which makes it easy to return to a particular power step once you've figured out that it is the power step that works for the task at hand.. At the other end of the heat settings, you want to remedy your current radiant electric taking a very long time to bring a large pasta pot to boil. Many radiant electric burners top out around 2500 watts although some newer models have burners going up to 3000 watts. That is a lot less power that is applied less efficiently than with the induction ranges. Both the Bosch and GE offer stronger power for boiling a "large pasta pot" with their 3700 watts on the large burners. Also, I do not know how old your current radiant electric is or how big your large pasta pot is, but many of the older radiant ranges had difficulties with boiling larger diameter pots. Bigger diameter pots could reflect too much heat back to the sensors that regulate the power cycling on those radiant burners and so kept the power level too reduced to get to a full boil quickly if at all. Haven't seen much about that since this thread started back in 2012, but I can say that no similar problems have been reported here for either the Bosch induction burners or the previous generations of GE induction ranges. As for choosing between the Bosch 800 induction slide-in and the GE Profile slide-in induction, it is pretty much a choice between mixes of feature trade-offs. Different tradeoffs and mixes of tradeoffs matter differently to different folks. There is no right answer for everybody. Some of these may matter a lot to you, others may matter only a little, and still others could be a matter of complete indifference to you. One example that comes quickly to my mind is the burner arrangements. The GE puts the largest burner at the front right with its smallest burner behind in the back right corner and places two medium sized burners on the left. The Bosch 800 puts the largest burner more or less in the middle with two small burners in the front corners and a medium-size burner in the back left corner. Hard to think about how those designs work for your own cooking without taking some of your regularly used combinations of pot sizes to a store (as hattiecarroll suggested) where you can see how the pot combinations and sizes fit with burner positions and whether those positions work or don't work for the way you like to cook. BTW, the stove does not have to be powered on for this test and it might be a deciding factor for you. Another reason to try to see one in person. Of course the brands' looks are different and maybe it matters to you that the GE may look more harmonious with the other GE appliances you have or are installing. Are you buying other Profile apliances? Ifso, maybe you get a discount for buying the GE range as part of an appliance package, too? That could be a pretty good financial incentive. OTOH, if you meant you already have the other appliances and are just hoping for a better appearance match, then this consideration is irrelevant for you. The Bosch offers timer control for each burner, the GE does not. Some here (cpartist and me, included) have found timer controlled induction burners to be a useful convenience in their cooking. Others here could not care less about that feature. Likewise, the Bosch offers linear burner controls in the front middle of the cooktop surface with the oven controls in a spearate panel on the flat front face of the range while the GE puts the burner "dials" and oven controls in a separated, upward-angled panel at the front face of the range. There, you are less likely to get spills and boilovers on them and maybe makes the oven controls easier to see. The tradeoff there is that the GE arrangement leaves a little less usable depth to the cooktop surface. More important would be whether you prefer the ergonomics of one brand's controls to the other. Again, hard to tell without seeing an actual stove and being able to put your hands on it. The Bosch has a warming drawer under the oven but no surface warming burner while the GE has a storage drawer under the oven and a low-power radiant electric warming burner up top. Warming drawers and warming burners are very much a YMMV thing. Some of us have had them and hardly, if ever, used them while others here swear by theirs. If you want more detail, other examples of design and feature tradeoffs that you might consider include the following: * The GE Profile is designed as a freestanding range with finished sides (overhangs and edging are extra cost options) while the Bosch 800 is the more traditional style of slide-in with unfinished sides and a cooktop with flanges that overhang the countertops for a more "built-in" look (Bosch only offers trim kits for the rear of the range); * As hattiecarroll mentioned, the GE Profile's oven is a bit larger at 5.3 cu. ft. (same size as your GE smoothtop) vs the Bosch 800's 4.6 cu. ft., Both are plenty big enough for many cooks. Does the differnce in oven size matter to your cooking? How big an oven do you need? (If it matters to you, the ovens in LG's knob-controlled induction ranges are rated at over 6 cu. ft.) * The GE has some WiFi and bluetooth connectivity with the advantage of some kind of remote diagnostics. (Check out the manual to see what it actually does.) The Bosch does not. * The GE Profile has two medium sized burners on the left which can be linked (or "synched") to work from a single control. That makes it easier to heat large burner-straddling griddle pans or large roasting pans. The Bosch 800 has a small and medium burner there which are not linkable but the Bosch 800 has a bit more room to fit a longer burner-straddling griddle. (FWIW, Bosch also offers an extra cost option for rectangular griddle pans that are specifically tailored to the depth of the Bosch's induction cooking surface.) I'm sure there are other differences that can be listed, but the point is that none of these design choices and trade-offs are intrinsically better for everybody. Each stove is a mix of design tradeoffs and the mix that works best for me might not be the mix that appeals most to you.

I have a Miele and am very happy with it. It doesn't seem to mind my wet fingers on the controls either. I have a Vent-a-Hood insert for ventilation. I bought the Miele because it had the features that I was looking for at the time. I can't speak to the Blue Star, as I've never cooked on it, but if you have done your research and like the features of the Blue Star, I'd go with it. $600 amortized over 5 or 10 years isn't enough for me to give up the main reason I picked something in the first place!