The quality of your cookware has a major impact on how your food turns out—and if you’ve ever tried to sear a steak in a flimsy, uncladded stainless steel pan or braise a pork shoulder in a pot with poor heat circulation, you know this first-hand. And while luxury brands like Le Creuset and Mauviel have their place in the cookware world, you no longer have to pay premium prices for cookware that performs well and lasts a lifetime.
This is where brands like Made In and HexClad come in: both of these direct-to-consumer cookware brands lean heavy on design and supply chain transparency, and market their products to both home and professional cooks. As such, they’re often viewed as competitors to one another. We wanted to offer a side-by-side comparison of these two brands to show you why Made In is the better pick in terms of quality, value, and customer service.
Company Backgrounds
How both of these brands—and their founders—got their start.
Made In
Since Made In’s founding in 2017 by childhood friends Chip Malt and Jake Kalick, the brand has established itself as a reliable source of design-forward, professional-quality cookware at an affordable price point. While relatively new to the cookware scene, Made In draws on nearly a century of cookware craftsmanship: Kalick, whose family founded the Boston company Harbour Food Service Equipment in 1929, spent his summers learning how to design and manufacture high-performing cookware for restaurants.
When Made In launched their first piece of cookware—the award-winning 5-Ply Stainless Clad Frying Pan—it quickly became one of the brand’s signature products, earning them recognition in professional kitchens around the world. The brand has since launched a full range of restaurant-quality cookware, expanding into product categories like chef knives, tableware, and utensils.
HexClad
Founded in 2013 by CEO Danny Winer and his co-founder, Cole Mecray, HexClad is famous for its celebrity partnerships—most notably Gordon Ramsey—and signature hexagonal design, which combines stainless steel with a laser-etched non stick coating.
Winer first discovered the innovative hybrid design technology at a trade show in China, and decided to build an entire cookware brand around it in the hopes of reinventing the cookware space. This technology became HexClad’s major selling point, and the brand now offers a full range of hybrid pots and pans that combine the convenience of non stick with the durability of stainless steel. Like Made In, HexClad has since expanded their offerings to include kitchen tools and accessories such as stainless steel knives, cutting boards, and aprons.
Material and Construction
Cookware performs better and lasts longer when it’s made of quality materials.
Made In
Made In products come in a wide range of shapes, sizes, and materials to cater to different cooking styles and needs. Aside from their award-winning Stainless Clad, the brand also offers seasoned and unseasoned Carbon Steel, Non Stick, Copper, and Enameled Cast Iron cookware, each of which is designed for optimal precision, durability, and user-friendliness.
Each piece of Stainless Clad cookware, for example, features 5 “ply” or layers of aluminum, stainless steel, and high grade ferritic, ensuring even heat distribution, responsiveness, and a rust- and stain-resistant surface. In addition to providing an excellent cooking performance, each piece of cookware is also built to last for years or even lifetimes.
HexClad
HexClad’s hybrid stainless steel and non stick design makes up the core of their product offerings, which consists of both everyday cookware items—like a saucepan, sauté pan, and frying pan—and more specialized ones, such as a griddle pan and pizza steel. Each product features the brand’s hexagonal laser-etched design, which, the brand claims, provides both excellent searing power and a slick, easy-to-clean surface. Because of the stainless steel base, the products are also intended to last longer and take less of a beating than traditional non stick cookware.
Design and Aesthetics
Your cookware shouldn’t just perform well: it should also look and feel great to use.
Made In
All of Made In’s products feature a streamlined, ergonomic design that seamlessly integrates looks with practicality. From the stay-cool handle on their Stainless Clad and Non Stick Frying Pans to the rolled rim on their Stainless Clad Saucier, each piece of cookware is designed with user experience in mind. Rather than relying on gimmicky design features, the brand sticks to a minimalistic, less-is-more philosophy.
HexClad
While HexClad’s cookware comes in a range of different shapes and sizes, each piece (other than their knives and kitchen accessories) features the same composition: an aluminum and magnetic steel base, with a stainless steel and non stick cooking surface. Because of the laser-etched surface, each piece features a unique stainless steel honeycomb-like pattern over a smooth, black non stick background.
This design is intended for both aesthetic and functional appeal: according to HexClad’s website, the hexagon pattern is made up of a network of stainless steel “ridges” separated by “nonstick valleys,” which is what provides the brand’s signature hybrid cooking experience.
Performance and Versatility
See how Made In and HexClad compare in terms of their heat distribution, responsiveness, and versatility.
Made In
Made In cookware offers an excellent user experience across the board: while each piece performs slightly differently based on material composition, shape, and size, each one is designed for optimal heat distribution, retention, and responsiveness. Most of the brand’s cookware lines (even Non Stick) are heat-safe up to at least 500F, making them compatible with both stovetop and oven use. Nearly all of the pieces are also induction compatible.
HexClad
HexClad claims that their hybrid cookware offers both excellent searing power and easy cleanup, making it suitable for cooking everything from steaks to frittatas to fish. According to the HexClad website, the pans’ aluminum core also offers fast and even heating, while a magnetic steel base offers great heat retention—all of which are great qualities to have in a piece of cookware.
Customer Reviews and Satisfaction
Here’s how these two brands stack up in terms of customer feedback.
Made In
Since launching in 2017, Made In products have garnered over 100,000 5-star reviews from satisfied customers. One reviewer described Made In’s Stainless Clad Frying Pan as “the best pan on the market” while another wrote that the Carbon Steel Frying Pan has become their “pan of choice for almost everything.” The brand has also received a number of endorsements from world-famous chefs like Grant Achatz, Tom Colicchio, and Nancy Silverton, all of whom use Made In cookware in their restaurants, and has received positive reviews from websites like Serious Eats and Good Housekeeping.
The brand also prioritizes community engagement by offering extensive use and care guides on their website, as well as regularly featuring recipes and cooking advice on their blog. By remaining transparent about the manufacturing process behind their cookware and the raw materials used, Made In also works hard to build and maintain customer trust and loyalty.
HexClad
Overall, HexClad customers speak highly of the brand’s products: reviewers write that the hybrid pans are “durable”; “worth every penny”; and “perform flawlessly.” However, a number of users complained that the pans were insufficiently non stick from day one, difficult to clean, and overhyped.
While the brand advertises 24/7 customer support and a lifetime warranty on all of its products, many reviewers complained about “frustrating” customer service and difficulty returning items for a refund.
Price and Value Proposition
When it comes to cookware, more expensive does not always equal a better product.
Made In
Made In prides itself on offering restaurant-quality cookware at an affordable price point by selling their products directly to the consumer, avoiding retail markups and distributor costs.
Despite the cheaper price point, however, all of Made In’s products offer an excellent value: every piece is painstakingly designed using input from the brand’s restaurant customers, ensuring the perfect balance of durability and performance.
The brand is often compared with other high-end, but more expensive, cookware brands like All Clad, offering a similarly high-quality product for a significantly lower price: for example, the brand offers their standard 10” Stainless Clad Frying Pan for $119—slightly more than half the price of a similarly-sized All Clad pan.
HexClad
HexClad’s pricing structure starts slightly higher than Made In’s: while some of their products—such as their 1 QT Hybrid Saucepan—are priced similarly to Made In’s, none of their offerings cost less than $100. While HexClad claims that their products are worth the investment, many customers write that the pans are needlessly expensive and don’t perform any better than a cheaper non stick pan. Cookware review sites like Serious Eats and Reviewed also found them a bit pricey considering the fact that most non stick-coated pans need to be replaced after a few years, regardless of the brand.
Which Company Makes the Better Cookware?
While HexClad’s hybrid design is certainly intriguing, their relatively limited product range, higher price points, and mixed customer feedback regarding the durability and performance of their pots and pans makes us hesitate to recommend them over other cookware brands.
In contrast, Made In’s diverse range of carefully engineered, versatile cookware products, high value-to-cost ratio, and excellent customer satisfaction rate make them more than worth the investment.
Conclusion
The cookware market is difficult to navigate: not only do you have to wade through dozens of similar-looking brands, but it can also be tough to know which companies’ marketing claims hold water. Made In’s affordable, user-friendly cookware products place them above HexClad in our book, offering a perfect balance of design, value, and versatility.
While we support any and all innovation in the cookware space, we’ll always prioritize trustworthiness and transparency over novelty—and we hope our customers will, too.
