I have an American made dirt cheap entry level induction range. It is nearly a decade old. It gets used for wok cooking almost daily. During holidays I run all 4 burners non stop for hours on end.

Plenty of commercial kitchens are switching to induction as well, it dramatically reduces ventilation costs, and it provides better temperature control. For smaller kitchens, or when a lower cost build out is needed, induction is a huge win.

The technology is reliable, even if you unfortunately got stuck with bad implementations in the past.

The largest burner has an output of 3.5 kW (12K BTU).

Did a general pass before sending my previous comment anyhow, found much the same across the board. What you say reliably checks out with the unit corrected to BTU on the gas side, but not otherwise.

Are you sure you're not mixing BTU and watts?

> If all you cook is ramen or oatmeal, induction is fine, yes.

No, I cook full on meals. Stews, soups, what have you. Power never even remotely came up as a concern. Quite the contrary in fact.

I indeed never used a wok or cooked any steaks though, and probably never will either, so I can't say much about that stuff.