To do real wok cooking as done in a Chinese take-out place, you would need gas burners at least as powerful as 60,000 BTU's, if not 120,000 BTU's. No gas rangetop (cooktop) has anything close to that. Most gas cooktops have at maximum between 15,000 - 18,000 BTU's. Most people doing wok cooking on those are generally steaming their food rather than stir frying it. I have a Kalamazoo outdoors grill with a 60,000 BTU side burner. I use that for my wok cooking. I used to have an Elan gas cooktop with an 18,500 BTU maximum burner. I could wok cook in fairly small quantities successfully, but anything larger I would end up steaming the food. I have a 36" Thermador induction cooktop with 5 burners and it has the largest burner available (13" diameter) and the most powerful (4,600 watts, which is equivalent to about 45,000-50,000 BTU's). I use a 14" diameter perfectly flat pan to approximate wok cooking quite successfully, as one can't cook on induction with anything but a perfectly flat pan or saucepot, as the cookware has to be in constant contact with the burner surface to be heated by the magnetic waves. Nothing beats induction for low level simmering and melting chocolate, etc. And nothing beats induction for high speed boiling. Some of the outstanding characteristics of the 36" Thermador induction cooktop are as follows: Sensor Dome: Retractable sensor measures the heat of the pot and keeps the temperature consistent. Cooksmart: 9 pre-programmed cooking modes. Anti-Overflow System: Exclusive feature prevents spills by automatically shutting off and sounding alarm when liquids are detected on surface. Safer Operation: 2-Step Digital Control Panel indicates when elements are hot or very hot. As only the pot gets hot with induction cooking, it is very rare that any part of the cooktop gets hot, except from the reflected heat directly under the pan. Panel Lock-out: Child safety lock-out for protection. Six Timers: Auto Shut Off Timer available for all the separate burner elements enables user to set desired cooking times before shut-off. A Separate kitchen timer is also available for general timing and shut-off. Blue Light Illumination: Touch control panel with blue light illumination offers 17 power settings. Industry Exclusive Triple Zone: On the largest 13" burner it can also accommodate multiple size pans with 3 diameter sizes. Speed heating: Induction cooktops heat 50% faster than traditional gas cooktops. Since induction heating can change temperature immediately since only the pan gets hot, you can be ultra-precise with no lag time in heating. Gas, on the other hand, heats the grates besides the pan and isn't anywhere near as immediate in adjusting temperature. Plus, there is no cooktop as easy to clean as an induction cooktop. Since the cooktop doesn't get hot, there is no burn-on of any spills. A simple wipe down of any accidents takes care of everything pronto. To prevent scratching of the cooktop I like using Silicone pads, such as Merle's SilPat octagonal pad. Others use paper towels or cloth. The inductions magnetic waves only heat the pan, hence there is no danger of burning the SilPat or towel. Also, there is no "greener" way of cooking than induction, as between 85-90% of all electricity is used to heat the pan. With gas less than 50% of the gas is used to heat the pan, the rest is used to heat the kitchen and the grates. The kitchen stays cool with induction cooking. To chefs in the know, particularly in Europe and and at the Culinary Institutes, induction is the professional way to go. Gas is considered old-school--and not in a good way. Greg

This wouldn't work for a lot of you, but it's a near-ideal setup for our household of two: I have a 30" gas cooktop, with a Max Burton portable induction unit sitting on an aluminum cookie sheet over the rear left burner (which was a rarely used and unreliable small 'simmer burner'). The induction top is where all boiling operations happen, from daily water boiling for the coffee press to pasta to blanching veg to (frequent) pressure cooking. A big advantage of this setup is that the placement at the back corner of the stove, directly under the under-powered vent hood and slightly elevated, ensures that steam is carried right up and away. Before, we had to use the front right burner, the most powerful, for boiling, and it's too far forward for the vent hood to capture the steam efficiently. In the heat of summer, the combination of dramatically less heat from the burner itself plus the steam removal makes a huge difference in kitchen comfort. A second big advantage of the induction rig here is for long, low cooking -- simmering down apple butter, or ketchup, or making carnitas. Our cheapo gas stove has real problems with the flame guttering out at low settings, particularly if another burner is in use; the induction unit makes a long simmer worry-free. Likewise, some pressure cooker operations, like chicken stock, spend 45 minutes to an hour at pressure, and it's a blessing to be able to regulate the burner precisely and with no worry about the effect of using any of the gas burners while it's going. This arrangement frees up the powerful front right burner for the more hands-on kinds of tasks it's suited to: searing, stir-frying, browning meat & veg before braising, crepe-making, etc. There are a lot of reasons I'd be very reluctant to give up gas: I've cooked for forty years on nothing but, I have some wonderful copper and aluminum pans that take maximum advantage of the flame, it works when the power goes out (several times a year in our rural area), I regularly toast tortillas directly on the burner, and (for me, at least) skillet operations are induction's weak point. But the 'hillbilly hybrid', while not a thing of beauty, gives us the best of both worlds, seriously increasing the usability of the existing cooktop at an extremely low cost. If I were to get a completely new kitchen, I'd probably go with an induction cooktop: Full induction cooktops have much finer-grained power levels than the portable, with the lowest settings much more usefully low. But I'd add a big gas burner for all the reasons in the paragraph above.

I had the non-stainless version of the Bosch 36" installed about a month ago. It looks pretty cool; except for the lines that delineate the hobs, the cooktop appears almost completely black. Those tiny lines that appear to be grey filling the background aren't as light as they look on their web site. For performance, boost is the bomb; boiling water for pasta takes only 3.5 minutes now! The number of settings (.5-10 in half stops) is great and response is good (going from high directly to low or vice versa). The two flex zones work well. Some have complained that they come up in 'combined' setting by default, but I like that. The only reason why you wouldn't want that is if you regularly put something on the front and back of the same side with different settings. Since I almost always only have two things going on the entire cooktop, that isn't an issue. What it means is that I can slap my 2nd pan anywhere I want on the side and I'm good to go (and move it around too). At xmas I had 4 things going at different settings and I didn't have any problems. My most used pans are a dutch oven with a 12" base (my pasta pot) and a 12" omelet pan. When I got the cooktop installed, I was concerned when I found that those 12" bases overlap the side burners. It has turned out to not be a problem. I like having timers that turn off the hobs. I've used that a lot. You can set the cooktop to default to child lock when you turn it off. That's a godsend for someone who has a cat that walks around on the cooktop when its off. (Ahh...for anyone who has that situation...not me...just sayin'). Previously I had a 36" gas on glass 5-burner cooktop. I greatly prefer this cooktop over my old one. A lot of that may be using nice stainless cookware with that I can put in the dishwasher (with watch-it-cook lids!) instead of non-stick. Luckily I learned how to use the stainless properly before getting the cooktop. I think it would have been a mighty frustrating experience had I not. What don't I like? When you want to do something fast, it may not happen so much. To change the temp on a burner, you touch the burner's icon, then touch the setting. After it acknowledges which the burner, acknowledging the setting is fast; what is slow is acknowledging the burner. I don't know if it doesn't respond fast on purpose, if I'm not pressing in exactly the right place, or what. Those burner icons are the only ones I have an issue with responsiveness. That's why I think it may be a personal problem. I would probably prefer a cooktop that has separate power controls for each hob (like the Wolf). Those controls are tinier though, so I might not. You know darned well what you've chosen with this one since the scale is so long (what, 1/2 the length of the cooktop?) and each setting is the size of your finger. You also have to touch the hob icon to see the time left on the timer for that hob. That's annoying. I'd rather have to do that than not have the timer at all or have the timer not shut off the hob.

Well I obviously had a DUH moment - jwvideo thanks for pointing out this one is a radiant - I completely missed that. My last range was a KitchenAid slide in with the lip you refer to and it eventually collected gunk at that lip line. I assume a lip-less model will collect gunk in the crack between it and the counter eventually - to-ma-toes to-mah-toes. bruce you are so right about the Elux website. If they can't keep discontinued model off there then what is the consumer to do? The nearest showroom to me that has any Elux models on the floor is 45 minutes away, I've been there 2x to look at everything and will obviously have to do more research. We can recess our refrig so don't need the counter depth and thought we'd go all Elux, too. BUT..... that Frigidaire smudge proof stainless really is amazing. I spoke at length with the maintenance person at the appliance showroom - he was walking the floor removing fingerprints which he says is a full time job there. He highly recommended the Frigidaire finish - knows nothing about features of course so we checked out the Frigidaire refrig and dishwashers while there. The Elux refrig is certainly prettier on the inside but I didn't see a big functional difference and dishwashers were very comparable in my mind so we may have a split kitchen which is fine with our layout. I promised myself I would NOT over analyze building this house - it's not easy.