I understand the concern it is a feature that cannot be turned off. From cold it simply will not apply max power it slowly ramps the power up. Once running it will apply the power needed to hold the element face at exactly the correct temp. It is proportional, it does not turn on and off it either cycles on/off many times a second (pulse) or it changes the amount of power (dimming) to hold the probe at the same temp. It sounds like you do not grasp the nature of proportional. The soft heat system you have describes is only from cold where the other proportional units apply max power until the probe warms up. The herpstats does not. Reducing a cool probe spike.