I'm pretty sure they all have pan size recognition. Without it, induction wouldn't work. Whether or not they bother to mention it is another matter. Mine is over 20 years old and the manual doesn't mention anything like that but of course it's there. I should mention that on my old cooktop, my 5" cast iron skillet is recognized on all burners, but my 5" triply only on the "special" burner. And they all recognize anything bigger (although I've only gone up to 15").

I have an entirely different reaction. I do not see why GE's response should be surprising. The manual for the induction ranges clearly says that minimum pan size for the six-inch burner is 4.75" and the minimum pan size for the two 8 inch burners is 5.75." If they put that in the manual, why should a customer service rep say something different in what will be a public posting on their web-site? And look at it from the perspective of the GE customer service reps. My4thGarden is looking at spending $2900 for a GE Profile slide-in induction range or $2600 for the freestanding one. A decent and serviceable smoothop electric range can be had for half of that from GE or, for that matter, from LG which is the subject of My4thGarden's other thread. No issues with using small pans on those stoves, although there certainly will be waste heat around the edges of the small pans. When someone says that they cannot afford to replace the present battery of small diameter cookware and doesn't want to, it makes a lot of sense to say to them: "why don't you consider a different stove that seems better suited to what and how you like to cook?" Plus, you may buy the induction stove and find that your particular small pans don't work. That leads to hassles with returns and refunds. If you work for a company, would you want to start that process? Now, it may very well be possible to use pans with slightly smaller diameters if they have enough ferrous mass in the base. Induction burners have sensors to identify pan size and ferrous mass -- too little of either and the burner will not activate. Trouble is, there is no way to find out how GE engineers programmed the sensors. All we know is that GE engineers have identified minimum pan sizes that can reasonably be expected to work. GE customer services reps are is not going to tell you, "don't pay any attention to the manual, you can do X____ instead." berner43's post shows that pans with diameters 10% less than minimum specified diameters work, at least on the mid and large burners and assuming that My4thGarden's pans have similar ferrous bases. Timdeb's post shows about the same for the 6-inch burner. If that relationship holds for the smallest diameter burner, as well, then even My4thGarden's 4.25" pans might work on the GE's smallest (6") burner. Or might not. Again, we do not know how GE programmed the sensors for the burner. Maybe the bases of My4thGarden's smallest pans won't have sufficient ferrous material in the base to be recognized. Also , bear in mind that a smaller pan is using smaller amounts of energy. If you cover, say, 70% of the burner, you will be only getting 70% of the power. (That is not exact but it will do for this dicussion.) Depending on what you are cooking in those little pans, that may or may no be considered optimum. If I'm manufacturing and selling stoves, and I'm training customer representatives, m I going to have them telling customers that they should use my stove for less than optimum conditions and then want to deal with warranty complaints from customers who may or may not understand what "less than optimum" means? What if the customer is using pans with "less than optimum" ferrous content and the pans don't work? Do I really want to have my engineers testing every possible line of cookware and then publish advice on less than optimum use? If I have to manage that kind of situation, I will be thinking I don't want that expense or headache. The unfortunate reality is that the only way to know is to run a test with the particular pans on an actual GE induction stove as berner43 and timdeb did. Can't find a GE to test your pans on? Then, it seems to me to make a good deal of sense for GE to recommend options other than induction for My4thGarden. "Buying and trying" is an option, of course, but only if you can buy from a vendor like Costco which has an absolute satisfaction guarantee: "I don't like it" is enough for Costco to take it back after a month or so. No restocking fee, either. Those kinds of guarantees are hard to find these days. The only induction range that Costco sells is the Maytag freestanding range and it only carries them in the online sales department. The Maytag is far less costly than the GE (about $1500, delivered). It has twin 6" burners in front with a 9" and an 11" burner in the back. Maytag/Whirlpool has not published minimum recommended pan sizes but apparently have marked them on the cooktop. My recollection from the one I saw last fall when I was stove shopping was that the six inch burners would take pans down to at least 4.75" and the nine-inch burner would handle a 7" pan. (But that was months ago and the memory is faulty on such details.) Virtually every brand of induction on the market will operate pans slightly smaller than the minimum recommended diameter. (Heck, I recall a post from a year ago where somebody here reported using a 5.5" diamter pan on the 11" burner of a Samsung induction range.) Anyway, the Maytag/Whirlpool burner arrangement, with twin 6" burners in front, seems well suited to My4thGarden's cooking preferences. Of course, there is the apparently lame "Aqualift" oven self-cleaning method which may be an issue. (This issue will not matter if you are somebody who avoids running self-cleaning cycles and, if you do, at least you don't need to worry about the self cleaning cycle toasting the control boards.) I noticed a Maytag on display recently when helping a friend shop for a stove. Might have been our local Lowe's or Home Depot that had one on display and mIght have been the identical Whirlpool model. I live in a very rural state, so maybe one of the big box stores in My4thGarden's area might have one, too. Worth looking at. This post was edited by JWVideo on Thu, May 23, 13 at 16:06

I saw this only after I responded to a similar question at the end of the other thread on "Induction Question." http://ths.gardenweb.com/forums/load/appl/msg0708501023840.html?24613 I'll just summarize. You can move large pans onto small hobs just as you can on any other kind of stove. And, you will have the same kinds of considerations that you have when putting a large pan on a small burner or any other kind of stove. Obviously, a small burner puts out less heat that a large one, so performance drops off in that sense. You should be able to avoid one problem that occurs with oversize pans on radiant smoothtops, Oversize pans on smoothtop radiant burners can confuse the sensors that regulate heat cycling and result in large pans not being able to boil water or result in taking an extremely long time to bring water to a boil. Induction does not use those kinds of sensors. See this link for a more detailed recent disucssion of this subject: http://ths.gardenweb.com/forums/load/appl/msg0708501023840.html?24613

TorontoVeterinarian and wdccruise both have posted here about their LG induction ranges. TV recently moved to a new house and just bought another LG induction range. They are frequent posters here and should be along shortly to respond to your questions. In the meantime, if you haven't already checked the owner's guides, minimum pan base sizes are listed on page 25. Both the "60%" figure and the manual's minimum sizes are rules of thumb more than they are a specific prescription. The actual key is the amount of "detectable magnetic mass" that is within the induction field. This sometimes get confused with misguided notions that pans' bases must be perfectly flat and that only the parts in actual physical contact with the glasstop will heat on induction stoves. Burners' induction fields have a bit of height to them. Depending on the model, that can be roughly ¼-inch, more or less, above the glass before the field strength falls off to unusable levels, IME. That's how pans can still work on induction when a burner is covered with with paper towels, silicon disks or sheets, or a kitchen towel (as they are when used to catch fry spatter and sometimes for peace of mind by those who worry about metal pans scratching their cooktops' shiny smoothtop surfaces.) So, FWIW, when I saw an LG model SE4617 demonstrated, and the presenter was using a 12" All Clad skillet on the largest burner, it seemed to work well even though the A-C skillet's flat part of exterior base is about 9¼" inches. (Well, at least that's the diameter on mine.) So slightly less than than the 9.5" minimum listed in the LG Owner's Guide, but it still worked, nonetheless. Seems, the 12-inch AC fry pans had sufficient magnetic mass within the range of the induction field to work on that LG's largest burner. Hopefully, T-V and wdccruise will be along shortly with first hand user/owner info for you.