Westinghouse portable induction cooktop review

After deciding to do a lithium battery upgrade on our camper trailer, I realised we’d be mad to not get a big inverter and an induction cooktop, for when the sun was shining, and we had energy to burn. The question soon became what induction cooktop should we get?

We’ve ended up with a Westinghouse WHIC01K portable, single induction cooktop that we’ve been using for nearly two years full time now, in our Hybrid Caravan.

EDIT – This unit started to smell and make some strange noises, so we threw it in the bin (knowing it had lived a long, hard life) and replaced it with a Tefal portable induction cooktop, which is better in some ways, and worse in others.

Yes, it runs off our 12V lithium batteries, and really doesn’t have much of an issue doing so. If we have cloudy days, we can run out of charge, and then we just revert back to the normal gas cooker, which is still fully functioning and ready to go at a moments notice.

To date, this has hardly ever happened and we have plenty of power and solar.

What have we used the induction cooktop for?

In order to give you a decent review, you need to know how its been used. We’ve had the induction cooktop now for about 16 months, and its probably done around 300 days of full time use so far.

An average day is boiling hot water in the morning for 4 hot drinks, then warming water for dishes, then it gets put away and used sometime in the afternoon for lunch and hot drinks again, and then we’ll use it at dinner time too for cooking on, and for hot water, unless we have the Weber out.

On an average day, it probably gets used about 6 times, for anywhere from 2 – 25 minutes, depending on what we are doing. 

The Westinghouse unit gets carried around in our toddlers bed, tucked under the blankets and zipped up so it can’t bounce around or get damaged in transit.

During the day, it sits on our outdoor kitchen bench, and is subject to the elements, and plenty of fine sand blowing around. If its really raining or windy we will shut the hatch, but it spends a lot of time sitting in the open.

How does it perform?

We’re blown away by the Westinghouse Portable Induction unit. It has full adjustability in 200W segments from 200W all the way to 2000W. It’s insanely fast, easily controllable, and easy to use.

It’s also fairly light, small and easy to use. It works well, and we’re really happy with it. Cleaning it is an absolute breeze, and its so much nicer than using the factory Reconn R2 gas cooker.

What don’t we like about the Westinghouse Induction Cooktop?

I don’t like the beeping noise that it makes when you change settings, or turn it on, but its a small niggle in the scheme of things.

Early on I noticed the unit smelt a bit, a bit like you’ve let the electrical smoke out when its running at 2000W, but we did have it in the outdoor kitchen that copped a fair amount of fine dust from the wind at Shark Bay, and maybe it was just that getting hot.

I don’t know, but its stopped and has been fine for several months since.

Are they any good?

Yep, and we’d happily get one again. To be fair, I’ve not used anything else, but I have no need to; this does exactly what we need it to, and its been flawless so far.

If anything changes, we’ll update this, but know that we are travelling Australia with this as our primary cooker, and loving every minute of it!

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