Just so we're clear on the design flaws: 1. The surface is slanted, encouraging effluent to bounce off and proceed to the ceiling. 2. There is no canopy at all (i.e. not merely not "effectively trapping," but not even trying to trap) 3. The thing only hangs 18.5" over the stove. 4. Worse than that, the part that sucks in air only hangs about a foot over the stove. You would have to carefully position a pan in the back middle of your stove to get any direct benefit at all.

So this thing is not really a "hood" at all. It's much closer to an old-fashioned wall-mounted Nutone kitchen exhaust fan, albeit blingier and more powerful. But the greater power is simply going to exhaust the kitchen as a whole faster -- it is not going to deal with a wok on the front burner. And to really get that 940 cfm you will need a short duct run, plus make-up air.

If you're just boiling stuff and doing light suateing, this may be enough. But if you're doing anything with high heat heat and oil, you're going to be wiping grease off the ceiling of your sleek new kitchen.

Thank you for the informative feedback. I'm a bit more convinced that even though I like the look of this hood, it seems it's more about looks than power. You bring up a very good point about the size of the part that sucks in air. My cooking tends to include a lot of sauces, spices, and so on - not too much frying but a lot of odors - so I do need something that will work. It's unfortunate that this is the case, but I'll keep looking around.

I don't have one, but Vent-A-Hood is not a bad place to start a search, because they offer a nice variety of designs that don't sacrifice effectiveness.

A good canopy will let you use the blower on a lower setting.

We do a lot of spices too, and without ventilation cooking up a few chili peppers can send everyone in the house running outside weeping and coughing. By contrast, the next time you're in a restaurant with an open kitchen, marvel at what a pro hood can do -- a cook can be searing and blackening six feet away from you, and you smell nothing.

"Blingier" -- gotta remember that word.

This topic was addressed in another fairly recent thread that can be found by searching. My view is consistent with colin3's view.

If you don't find what you want using the site's search engine, use google and plant the URL ths.gardenweb.com/forums into the advanced search site block.

kas

What about the Quest Black model instead of the Black Diamond? It has a larger area where it sucks in the air. This style would work perfect in my kitchen because we are installing black glass cabinet doors and we are getting a table also with black glass. Anyone have experience with the Black Quest by Futuro?

The thread -- or at least one of them -- that Kas referred to was this one.

The thread was entertaining and a bit spirited but with good humor. Condensed, I maintain that you can get away with a less than optimal hood if you are willing to sacrifice performance. I do not think that the mere fact that a hood is angled (or slanted -- or diagonal) makes it necessarily the worst possible design, either. But it certainly is not the optimal design for entrainment of cooking exhaust.

If performance is important to you, meaning, the thought of a whiff of smoke escaping into your house mortifies you, then get a big Modernaire hood with a lot of capture volume and a big exhaust duct and a makeup air system.

If you can sacrifice some performance in order to complete a stylistic vision of a modernist kitchen then I think there are worse alternatives to slanted hoods. The flat plate style and precious "globe" and all of the downdraft options do not strike me as offering any inherent performance advantage over a well-designed diagonal style. I do not have any personal experience with this, however, and address it only from a theoretical viewpoint, and a stylistic one.

In short, if you really like it, get it. Just know that it will not be the best design when it comes to trapping cooking effluvia.