Duxtop 9610LS Portable Induction Cooktop Review (2026): 6

Why you should trust this review

I have written about kitchen gear for seven years, and for the past fourteen months I have lived in a 380-square-foot studio while I wait on apartment construction. The Duxtop 9610LS has been my primary burner since November. I bought it at retail with my own money, Duxtop did not provide a sample, did not sponsor this, and did not see the draft. Across six months it has logged roughly 110 hours of cooking, everything from daily morning eggs to weekly stews, which is the kind of mileage that surfaces the difference between a unit that demos well and one that actually lives in your kitchen.

To put its performance in context I cooked the same recipes on a friend’s True Induction MD-2B over a long weekend, on a Vollrath Mirage Pro rented from a kitchen rental, and on a generic budget 1800-watt unit. Same quart-of-water boil, same twenty-minute tomato sauce simmer, same one-inch ribeye seared in cast iron. That gave me real reference points rather than impressions.

How we evaluated

My induction protocol normally runs at least thirty days, and I stretched this one to a full 180 because it was my everyday burner anyway. For boil speed I timed a quart of cold water in a 1.5-quart stainless saucepan on max power across multiple trials. For simmer control I set a target temperature and read the surface with an infrared thermometer every five minutes for a full hour to see how tightly it held. For heat distribution I laid thermal paper at four zones under a cast iron pan and photographed the hot-spot pattern. For the long haul I tracked daily on-off cycles, the cooling fan, and the glass surface for scratches. And I put a Kill A Watt meter on it at sustained max power to find out what it really pulls from the wall, which turned out to matter a lot in a small kitchen.

Boil speed that beats gas

In my quart boil from cold water, the Duxtop averaged just over four minutes across repeated trials. For context, the premium True Induction and Vollrath units came in only about half a minute quicker, the generic budget unit was well over a minute slower, and a typical home gas burner was slower still. So the headline is that this budget cooktop delivers genuine induction speed. The premium machines are faster on paper, but in everyday cooking that thirty-to-forty-second gap is academic, and you will not stand there feeling like you are waiting. Boiling pasta water or getting a pot up to temperature happens noticeably faster than the gas range I grew up with, and that immediacy is one of the things that makes induction hard to give up once you are used to it.

Simmer control is the real highlight

This is where the Duxtop genuinely surprised me and where it punches above its price. Set to a 180-degree target, the surface temperature stayed within about five degrees of target across a full hour of monitoring, and gentler reduction targets held even tighter. That is the kind of stability you fight a gas range to achieve, constantly nudging the flame up and down, and that an electric coil simply cannot match because it lags by most of a minute on every adjustment. The induction electronic feedback loop holds the line for you. For stews, delicate sauces, melting chocolate, or a pot of rice you do not want to scorch, this is the right tool, and it is the single feature that would make me recommend this unit even to someone who could spend more. The simmer accuracy alone is better than most full ranges I have cooked on.

Heat distribution and the coil caveat

Honesty time. The induction coil is roughly seven inches across, so it heats a pan from the center out. On a ten-inch cast iron skillet, the thermal paper showed a meaningful temperature drop in the outer ring, on the order of thirty-some degrees from center to edge, because that outer band sits beyond the coil. Drop down to a seven or eight-inch pan and the variance tightened up considerably. For the vast majority of cooking this is a non-issue, since you are stirring, moving food, or using appropriately sized pans anyway. But if you cook big pancakes or large omelets where edge-to-edge evenness is the whole game, you will want to use a smaller pan or step up to a unit with a larger coil. It is a real limitation, just a narrow one.

Cookware, cleaning, and the magnet test

Induction only works with ferromagnetic cookware, so before you buy anything, hold a fridge magnet to the bottom of your pans. If it snaps on firmly, you are set. In my testing, Lodge cast iron, All-Clad D3, Misen carbon steel, and an OXO ceramic-coated saute pan all worked cleanly, while older hard-anodized aluminum and a copper saute pan did not register at all. If your kitchen is all aluminum or non-stick, factor in at least one compatible pan, and a basic cast iron skillet is the cheapest way to cover that. The flip side is the easiest part of the whole review, cleaning. The polished glass top wipes down with a damp cloth in seconds, and even the occasional burnt-on spill needs only a glass cleaner and a soft pad. There are no grates, burner heads, or residue traps, and after six months of daily use the surface still looks new.

Build, fan noise, and power draw over six months

The glass top has taken daily use without scratches, I have set hot cast iron on it with no thermal cracking, and the plastic body has held together fine. The touch controls read cleanly with dry hands but occasionally miss the first tap with wet fingers and want a second press, which is a minor daily annoyance worth knowing about. The cooling fan kicks on whenever the unit is heating and runs a minute or two after shutdown, audible but no louder than a quiet fridge, and since the vent pulls air from underneath I always set it on a hard surface so nothing blocks it. The power story is the one to plan around. My meter showed close to a full 15 amps at max, which fits a standard household circuit but leaves no room for a kettle or microwave on the same line. In my studio the Duxtop gets its own outlet and everything else gets another, and that arrangement has kept me from ever tripping a breaker.

Who should buy the Duxtop 9610LS?

Buy it if you cook in a small apartment, studio, or RV, you need a reliable backup burner for when the range is full on a holiday, or you simply want real induction efficiency without spending several times as much. If you already cook with cast iron or stainless and own at least one induction-compatible piece, you are ready to go. The simmer control, the fast boil, and the trivial cleanup make this an easy recommendation for anyone whose cooking happens in a tight space or who wants induction without committing to a built-in.

Skip it if your cookware is all aluminum or non-stick and you are not willing to add a compatible pan, since the unit will not heat what does not stick to a magnet. Skip it too if you cook for four or more people every day as your primary range, where a dual-burner or built-in makes more sense, if you need direct-flame work like blistering peppers, where gas wins, or if you only have one shared 15-amp circuit that the 1800-watt draw will repeatedly trip.

The verdict

Six months and 110 hours in, the Duxtop 9610LS has earned its place as my everyday burner. The simmer control is genuinely better than most full ranges, the boil speed beats gas and trails premium induction only on paper, cleanup is effortless, and the build has held up without a single glitch from the touch controls. The real-world catches are honest and manageable, you need magnetic cookware, a smaller pan helps with edge-to-edge evenness, and the 1800-watt draw wants a circuit to itself. None of that changes the conclusion. For renters, RVers, and small-kitchen cooks, this is the budget induction cooktop I would buy again.