Ah, forgive me. I was going off memory and thought you meant during the heat testing portion which only used water for the test.

It seems you take issue with calling it non-stick when oil is involved? To that end, sure, Teflon-like pans beat everything. But I don’t know many people cooking without oil even in Teflon-like pans.

When people say that properly heating a stainless steel pan will allow non-stick cooking there is certainly an implied asterisk involved re: oil. That’s because it is in direct contrast to a cold stainless steel pan which will cause foods to stick even with oil.