In addition to cost, the Main thing preventing me from switching to induction is knobs. I just know up front that digital/touch controls will be a headache (for me).
Oh shit, I forgot about that part. The one time I've gotten to cook with induction, that indisputably sucked. They all want to put touch controls on something that gets water drops on it, or is operated with wet hands, with some regularity. What a terrible idea.
Also, I've never met a flat-top stove that wasn't a terror to keep clean. Maybe induction's different, but that's another worry.
Same size stove, similar number of heat elements. One has a bunch of grates to move, potentially wash elsewhere. Then there's knobs to remove to clean under them, the knobs themselves having various curves and flat sides to clean. The whole thing is a bit of a pan itself, so there's stuff to clean around that. The burner heads are round protrusions from that pan so you need to clean around them and then clean them as well.
Compared to the other stove, which is just a flat piece of glass. No protrusions. No edges. Just a single flat surface. To me, that single flat glass surface is way easier to clean. I don't even get how one could argue the other is easier to clean, there's far more parts with their own geometries involved.
On top of that, the glass cook top is more or less flush with the rest of the counter, does not have any grates or any other uneven surfaces, so its useful even as just additional counter top. I can easily put other small kitchen appliances on top of it and those appliances have a flat, solid bottom to them instead of trying to get the feet just right on a grate and then have them be inches above the rest of the counter top.
We have an older GE Profile glass cooktop with touch buttons on the right side. I was originally planning on tearing it out and putting in a gas stove when we moved in, which wouldn't have been too difficult as there's a gas line in the wall capped off as I guess a previous owner had a gas stove before they redid the kitchen with electric appliances. The benefits of it being a completely flat nearly counter flush surface and being far easier to clean in my opinion make up for the loss of more instant heat from a gas stove, so we're going to keep it for a while.
I guess I'm used to the flat-tops that have some kind of weird plastic coating. Over time (and not that long) they get crap stuck to them that just won't come off, and various scratches and gouges make them impossible to ever get totally clean. [EDIT] Which is to say, yeah, maybe all-glass ones don't have that problem (brittleness issues aside)
And I consider removability a benefit. It's much easier to scrub something at the sink than on the stove itself.
Voice from experience: See the model you are looking at will beep annoyingly every time you pick up a pan to flip something.
My mid range portable and expensive built in both do this. I get they want to let you know you've nudge a pan out of effect, but give me three seconds! That's all I want, three seconds before you fire the most annoying piezo buzzer on the planet.
i remove the metal disk from the pezio element. you can still hear it, but just barely. you dont actually have to unsolder it, just pop the plastic top off.
not that i would want to do that with an expensive built in range. but it removes a major source of annoyance when using the little ones.
