Deciding Between Gas and Electric Cooking Ranges

GAS vs. ELECTRIC

With all of the recent developments with ranges, choosing a new oven and cooktop has never been so complicated. You have to decide between electric and gas, freestanding or separate cooktop and oven units, and on top of all of those decisions, you must pick and choose your additional features. While it is great to have so many options to choose from, you want to be careful not to get bogged down by the complexities of this decision process. Here are just some helpful hints that try to make the decision between buying electric or gas a little easier for you.

First, when you first begin searching for a new range you should understand that the choice you make between gas and electric ranges will primarily affect your cooktop, whereas capacity and flexibility differences will be more likely to influence your oven. Going along with this idea, we will primarily focus our discussion on electric versus gas ranges as relating to what this means in terms of range cooktops.

ELECTRIC

Electric cooktops tend to be more popular than gas for two primary reasons: these models are cheaper and their gas counterparts and electricity is generally more widely available than gas as a reliable power source. Electric models also provide an assortment of flexible features along with consistent, even heating to satisfy all of your cooking requirements. However, before you think this decision is over, you still have another choice to make. If you choose electric, you need to decide between two main types of cooktops: the standard coil burners and the smooth-top ceramic glass cooktops.
Electric Coil-Element Cooktop

White-on-white Frigidaire 36 in. Electric Cooktop with Coil Elements