For what it's worth, Swanstone/Corian can be easily sanded by the homeowner. They are NOT inexpensive materials though. (And I abused the heck out of my Corian and it refused to scorch or crack or show the scratches it must have had.) Most ceramic and porcelain tiles are pretty much heat proof, and I'll put my stainless steel counters up against soapstone for kitchen heat any day. Soapstone traditionally used for fireplaces and lab counters doesn't have the veins that make typical kitchen soapstones so pretty. There is always a possibility that the impurities providing the pretty will expand differently that the surrounding material. I sure wouldn't worry about it though. Soapstone will scratch easier than Swanstone/Corian too. Obviously they are different materials with very different properties, and neither is bad. There is quite a bit of faulty information to be had about the plastic counters, so I'm glad you're doing your research!

Every choice has pluses and minuses, in the end you have to choose which plus and which minus matters the most to you and/or which have an easy fix (like using a cutting board under the crockpot; at work we have an extra piece under the big coffeemaker). budget mattered a lot to me (and I hated formica) so, I ended up with a lesser expensive granite and am very happy, no sealing or extra work for the stone I chose. I had formica previously which looked like h#*! from the day I moved in and didn't get better (except that I could use bleach to remove stains) so those of you whose formica looks like new after 30 years must be taking appropriate care -- using cutting boards (mine had little cuts all over) and so forth -- where my previous owners did not. But, I read that formica now is much better quality than what was installed 30 or 40 years ago. I looked at Burled Beach and liked it. It looked a warm sand-ish color on my samples in my house, but I saw a demo kitchen of it at a big box store and it was a warm greenish tone (I still liked it) under their fluorescent lights. You always have to ability to STOP and make changes unless the cabinets are all already made. If he is just now starting it might not be too late -- call him now! PS do you have an IKEA near to you? Most counter materials are less expensive there.

"All of those people who bought what they thought was stone only to find out the plastic particles became marred and damaged. How sad is that. I'm sure they spent a lot of hard earned money thinking they were buying REAL stone." I have quartz counters. I don't have PLASTIC counters. I have no "marring". No staining either - there is nothing that I have not been able to easily remove. I bought my slabs knowing full well that this was engineered stone. I cannot imagine ANYONE that would come to the conclusion that estone is a natural stone. All you have to do is LOOK at samples in a store and you can see that this is a manufactured material. No stone yards orf fabricators, that I know of, try to pass off quartz as natural stone - it's simply a no-brainer to see that it is a manufactured stab. You WILL find lots of stone yards, however, that will attempt to pass off marbles as quartzites and granites. Perhaps that is what you are referring to. There are LOTS of threads here on HOUZZ about that exact issue, and how to avoid it.

>>>"What do you do to protect the countertop, backsplash and underside of the wall cabinet from the heat?""<< Read the owner's guide/manual and observe the directions for spacing. The exterior casing can get hot enough to burn bare skin but that heat falls off pretty radically with a modicum of spacing. You protect countertop and walls by not removing the feet from the bottom or the stand-offs from the back, (Would it have even occurred to you to do that?) The manual/user guide will advise keeping several of inches of space between the oven's top and the bottom of the cabinets above it. So don't shoehorn the oven into a tight shelf space and try to run it there. After all, they are called countertop ovens because they are meant to be used on countertops with a bit of space around them. Now, FWIW regarding glass cutting boards --- I've used a glass cutting board under my toasters and toaster ovens for years. Never singed or discolored formica counterptops nor the wooden countertop that my current countertop oven currently sits on. I use the glass because it is easier to clean than the wood not because I'm fearful of igniting or melting the countertops. In the interests of science --- and maybe for another appliance-geek merit badge :>) --- I cranked my countetop oven to 450°F for an hour with a temperature probe under the center of the glass board under my largish countertop oven. Temperature rise under the center of the glass was from room temperature to about 100°F. That was the extent of the heat transfer to a combustible (wood) surface. Hardly a combustion risk, eh?