Induction Cooking:
Berghoff Induction Hobs

Important notes on these data:

1. We have spent a lot of time hunting these data--often in several places for each individual unit--but we cannot and do not guarantee any datum to be correct (indeed, we often found conflicting data at different sources). Caveat emptor!

2. For those units we offer for sale, the prices shown are never over an hour old. For other items, the prices shown are the lowest we found with moderate but not fanatic searching; moreover, they are not updated very often and are only intended as a rough guide to comparative unit values in cost/power terms.

3. Most "Features" are not terribly important, and are nearly standard among roughly similar units, regardless of brand name. If some "feature"--shown or omitted--is especially important to you, check on it, because we did not take great pains over the "Features" data.

4. Dimensions given here are, as the makers themselves warn, only to be used as guidelines in planning--never do anything till you have your actual unit to hand.

5. A very important datum is the "MaxPower" value. Many units show individual-element powers that add up to impressive totals that the unit cannot really supply. For example, a unit with 4 elements each listed as "2.4 kW" might have a true unit maximum power of 7.2 kW: that means that you could, in this example, run up to three elements at their full power, but if you tried to run all four at full power, each would only be putting out 75% of its nominal maximum (7.2 kW divided 4 ways is 1.8 kW per element, which is 75% of that nominal "2.4 kW"). That is not necessarily a flaw or defect or misrepresentation--there are good reasons for that approach--but you should be well aware of just what you are paying for in actual cost/power terms for the unit as a whole.

6. Many units nowadays offer a "power boost" feature for some or all of their elements; that feature allows a "boosted" element to temporarily, for some short period (rarely specified, but typically 10 minutes or so), run at well over its nominal power, to help--for example--get large pots of water to boiling. There are no free lunches: if the unit as a whole is running at its maximum, "boost" works by diverting power from the other elements. In the example above, if you were to "boost" one element to, for example, 3.2 kW, there would be a maximum of 4.0 kW left (7.2 kW total maximum minus the 3.2 kW being used by the boosted element) for all the three other elements to use; you could run one other at full power, or two others at 83% of nominal, or all three others each at 75% of nominal during the "boost" period--be aware, though, that different makers arrange their "thefts" differently. (This, too, has valid reasons behind it, but--again--you need to know how much true, steady-state power you are really buying with your money.)

(For much fuller information on power, read our page Kitchen Electricity 101.)