UK cooking appliances are a little different to US ones in that often people have 2 seperate parts:
Both ways are available in the US, either separate oven and cooktop (hob) or combined in one unit.
Combined is popular because it tracks back to old wood stoves that had hot plates on top and a baking chamber next to the burner. Combined can be inconvenient because of the maximum of 50 amps, or in some cases 60 amps, of available current (at 240 volts). So this limits the size if the tops are all electric.
Separate is ultimately more convenient if you have the kitchen space to separate them. And the circuit requirements, being split, or more modest.
I personally do not like glass tops because of the difficult of getting quick high heat. Spiral elements are somewhat better, but not a whole lot. Gas has traditionally worked best for cooking, but electric is still useful for low simmering after fast heating.
The latest thing I found is the induction cooktop. It works with traditional steel woks when the induction surface is made rounded to match (these are called "induction woks"). Combined with high wattage (2.4kW to 3.8kW) this appears to do as well as a gas fired wok. It would need a 15 to 20 amp circuit at 240V, or 10 amps at 400V.
So my future kitchen is probably going to be a real mixup. But things should be on separate circuits not greater than 30A each at 240V (they frown on people getting 480/277V or 416/240V at home here).
