Most and Least Reliable Cooktop Brands
With data on more than 15,000 gas, electric, and induction cooktops, Consumer Reports’ member surveys reveal the brands that last
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Each year, CR’s engineers test dozens of new cooktops, capturing data on everything, including how fast the burners heat up, how well they melt chocolate, and how steadily they simmer tomato sauce.
We also look into how the appliances hold up outside the lab, in the real world of our members’ homes. We survey them every year about the products they own, with a particular focus on problems that arise, whether repairs require payment, and if so, how much. Then we use that data to make projections about how new models from a given brand will hold up over time, which is how we calculate a predicted reliability rating.
Common Cooktop Problems
On the whole, serious problems for cooktops are few and far between, with only 3 percent of appliances breaking down to the point where they don’t cook at all. Electric and induction cooktops appear more problem-prone than gas, but those problems tend to be just surface-level, according to our survey. Getting a scratch or chip on the cooking surface of these cooktops was the most commonly reported problem, affecting 11 percent of CR members. But only 2 percent reported that their glass top actually cracked or shattered.
For gas cooktops, ignition problems were the most prevalent, with 8 percent of respondents reporting a broken ignition. Broken knobs and faulty burners (on gas cooktops) or elements (on electric and induction cooktops) round out our list of most common problems; each issue was reported by 6 percent and 5 percent of those we surveyed, respectively. (To learn about which problems can be easily fixed, read our article on whether to repair or replace a broken cooktop.)
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