Nice photos. Much appreciated.
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I concur, great photos and so quickly posted! Kind of amazing to see the gradient, I was expecting better. Interesting that the Atlantis was best. Thank you for saving me the money.
I thought the G5 review I posted was a little more detailed than marketing speak. They attempted to measure the graphite and gave history that also listed in this thread — regarding the prior Viking attempts. And then in the section on thermal testing they relayed results of cooking various items. They said that there was thermal crashing when searing a steak but eggs and fish were OK.
Each of these pans is optimized for different things. The Demeyere Atlantis pans are optimized for spreading heat fairly evenly around the bottom while still having reasonable thermal mass (to soften thermal crashing).
The Falk Copper Coeur pans are also quite good at spreading heat evenly (as they’re 75% copper by volume) and also at carrying that gradient of heat up the sides. They too have reasonable thermal mass (to soften thermal crashing).
The All-Clad G5 pans seem to be optimized for weight. Like a lot of lightweight clad pans, they heat up quickly (as they don’t have a lot of thermal mass). The star application is, in theory, an even spreading of heat. I’m not seeing that here, but it may be something that happens more on gas or on electric coils versus induction. I would need to see more data to come to a more complete conclusion. I wouldn’t count the G5 pans out quite yet.
I should probably also test the All-Clad G5 pans with the Vollrath HPI-3800 induction stove I have here (3300-3800W, large coil) and see how the thermal picture comes out in that scenario. I’m guessing that thermal crashing is at least somewhat softened by a sufficiently-real-time and sufficiently-powerful energy source.
It would also be interesting to test out a 3L Fissler Original Profi saute pan to see how it compares to the All-Clad G5. It has a disc-bottom construction, but it’s heavier and has more thermal mass. Another project for another day. [If you’d like to see that comparison, let me know.]
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I don’t think so. It was “optimized” for conductivity, IMO, but the graphite is so thin (and discount 25% effective conductivity for the perforations), the pan’s eveness suffers because that layer still can’t push enough heat outward before it’s lost. In Sam Kinsey’s vernacular, the “pipe” isn’t big enough. To be fair, it’s the same problem with CC, d5 and even d3.
I think low weight was simply incidental.
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