Most and Least Reliable Cooktop Brands
CR reliability ratings cover LG, Frigidaire, Bosch, and many other brands. The data comes from over 21,000 gas, electric, and induction cooktops bought in the past 10 years.
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Each year, CR’s engineers test dozens of new cooktops, measuring how quickly the burners heat up and how well they maintain low heat to melt chocolate or simmer tomato sauce.
We also look into how cooktops hold up outside the lab, in the real world of our members’ homes. And we use that data to make projections about how new models from a given brand will hold up over time, which are reflected in our predicted reliability ratings.
To pick the best cooktop for your kitchen, you can start with our cooktop buying guide, and then refer to our model-specific cooktop ratings. The ratings combine the cooking performance we see in our labs with survey results.
CR members can read on for more on the findings from our surveys, along with a list of high-performing cooktop models from brands that rate well for predicted reliability and owner satisfaction.
Common Cooktop Problems
Serious problems are few and far between when it comes to cooktops, with only 3 percent of the appliances breaking down to the point where they don’t cook at all, and only 12 percent suffering any breakdown
A scratched or chipped electric smoothtop or induction cooking surface was the most commonly reported problem in our survey, affecting 10 percent of cooktops reported on by CR members. Only 2 percent of cooktops with a glass top cracked or shattered.
Moving to gas cooktops, 7 percent of respondents reported a problem with the ignition mechanism. Other problems, from broken knobs to faulty burners, were reported by 5 percent or fewer of the respondents. (See CR’s guidance on whether to repair or replace a broken cooktop.)
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