Duxtop 9600LS review: twenty steps of induction power for holding a temperature

A power level on the Duxtop 9600LS, like on any consumer induction hob, is a percentage of maximum wattage, not a temperature. Setting it to 50 percent does not mean the pan will settle at some fixed number of degrees; it means the element is delivering roughly half of its 1800 watt maximum. Most consumer hobs achieve the intermediate levels between fully on and fully off by duty cycling: running at full power for a fraction of a second, then cutting off, repeatedly, so the average power over time matches the selected percentage. That is why a low power setting can still scorch a delicate sauce: during each on pulse, the pan bottom briefly sees full power, and a thin layer of sauce touching the pan surface at that instant can burn even though the average power looks gentle.

Induction heats the pan itself through an induced electrical current, not the cooktop surface, so how hot a pan gets at a given power setting depends on that pan's material, thickness and how well it couples with the induction coil. A thin steel pan and a thick clad stainless pan set to the same 50 percent power level on the Duxtop 9600LS will reach different temperatures, because the thinner pan has less mass to spread the same duty cycled pulses across. This is not a flaw specific to the Duxtop; it is true of every induction hob, and it is the reason a recipe that says medium heat on an induction hob is giving you a starting point, not a guarantee, and the induction power setting to temperature calculator is built around that same caveat rather than pretending one setting maps to one number for every pan.

Yes, in the specific case of holding a delicate temperature rather than boiling or searing. A budget hob like the Duxtop 9100MC at $84.99 offers only 10 power and 10 temperature steps, which means each step represents a bigger jump in average power delivered. For rapid boiling or a hard sear, that coarseness barely matters, since you are running near maximum anyway. For something like tempering chocolate, holding a custard just under a simmer, or melting butter without breaking it, the gap between step 3 and step 4 on a 10 step hob can be the difference between holding steady and slowly creeping past the target, where the same gap split across 20 steps on the 9600LS gives you a finer in between option to land on.

The 9600LS offers both a power mode, set as a percentage of maximum wattage, and a temperature mode, where the unit uses its own sensor to estimate pan surface temperature and cycles power to try to hold that number. The manual states the temperature mode is an estimate based on the cooktop's own sensor, not a probe inside the food, so it reads the pan, not the sauce or the oil in it. For genuinely precise control of the food itself rather than the pan, pairing the cooktop with an instant read thermometer like the Thermapen ONE to spot check the actual contents remains the more reliable approach, with the cooktop's temperature mode used as a rough autopilot between checks.

If you only need a portable burner for boiling pasta water or searing a steak and never hold a delicate temperature, buy the Duxtop 9100MC instead and save over thirty dollars, since its coarser 10 step control costs you nothing in that use case. If you regularly cook two things that need different heat levels at once, the Duxtop double induction cooktop gives you two zones on one body, though its total 1800 watts is shared between them, so running both zones hard at once is slower than running either alone. If single degree resolution across a wide range matters more than price, the Nuwave Pro Chef offers control down to a single degree across 100 F to 575 F, at a similar price to the Duxtop. The 9600LS sits as the value pick among the finer grained options rather than the absolute cheapest induction hob on the market.