The Best Portable Induction Cooktop

Portable induction cooktops allow you to cook almost anywhere you can find an outlet—from your back porch to a dorm room to an RV. They don’t emit heat but instead make your pan hot using electromagnetic induction, so they work quickly yet are cooler and safer than other portable burners. Our pick, the Duxtop 9600LS , is reliable and precise, and it offers a wide range of temperatures to tackle everyday cooking. You might find yourself choosing to use it even when you don’t need to.

For this update, we also reviewed several specialty burners (all priced over $120) designed for precision cooking, cooking along with recipe apps, or working with larger pots and pans. We also tested one double burner and two entry-level commercial burners just for kicks. For our recommendations from those tests, see Other good induction cooktops.

An important note: If you have a pacemaker, most manufacturers recommend consulting your doctor before operating an induction burner. (According to one 2006 study, having a pacemaker doesn’t preclude you from using one, just that people with certain kinds of pacemakers might want to be more careful about how they use the appliance.)

The Duxtop 9600LS has the best combination of settings, consistency, features, and usability in its category. It costs a bit more than our former main pick, the Duxtop 9100MC, but the extra money buys you a slicker control panel, as well as the ability to cook everything with more precision and less frustration. The 9600LS has 20 power settings and 20 temperature settings, the largest range of any burner we tested, and it maintains lower temperatures better than our previous pick. Of all the induction cooktops we tested, this one was also the smoothest at maintaining a target heat or temperature level, so there’s less scorching or spattering and less need to hover over a simmering pot. It has an all-glass interface and a bright LCD screen that’s easier to clean and to read than that of our previous pick, and it takes just a little less room on a counter. It also has several useful features, including a rare 10-hour timer, as well as lock, boil, and warm buttons, which we found were extremely useful for everyday cooking.

Our previous top pick, the Duxtop 9100MC, has 15 power settings and 15 temperature settings. However, during testing this burner didn’t maintain a set heat or temperature as smoothly as the Duxtop 9600LS, which means you have to pay more attention to cooking and change the temperature more often with the 9100MC. In addition, the old-school control panel is as plain as it gets: The panel is not glass, and it uses buttons instead of sensor touch controls. It also omits lock, warm, and boil buttons, and it’s a little bigger and beeps a little louder than our top two picks, too. (Unlike the Duxtop 9100MC, the 9600LS has rounded edges, which make that model just a bit more space efficient.) None of these flaws are total dealbreakers at this model’s lower price tag—and in fact, the 9100MC might be especially good for the tech-averse, the occasional user, or an Airbnb space where a constant stream of guests have to figure out how to use it.