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ekb9u

Which of these ranges would you buy (or avoid!)?

ekb9u
9 years ago

I've been reading this and the kitchen forum for years in anticipation of a new kitchen. The information on here is incredibly helpful. Finally the time has come and I have to make decisions - thus my first post. Decisions are not my strong suit.

Please save me from myself and tell me which of these ranges you would buy or if you would definitely avoid any of them. It seems like there are negative reviews for every range.

Looking for an all-gas range with convection oven and pro styling. My budget maxes out at $3,000. Reliability is important to me - I've had JennAir and Kenmore gas ranges in the past...never needed a service call. I cook multiple meals a day, but am not a professional chef by any means. I have a young child, so the safety features I read in a review of the GE Cafe (locking out the control panel and the knobs) were appealing, but maybe these are standard features among ranges with the front control panel? I don't care about 4 versus 5 burners. I'm not convinced that the fridge and stove need to come from the same line, but they will be very close to each other in the kitchen, so that it is a consideration. If these are all junk, I would probably give up the pro styling...

So I've narrowed it down to:

Frigidaire Professional 36'' Freestanding Gas Range
FPGF3685LS - $2499 MSRP

KitchenAid 30-Inch 4-Burner Gas Slide-In Range, Pro Line
KGSS907XSP - $2349 MSRP

BOSCH 30" Gas Slide-in Range Benchmark� Series
HGIP054UC - $2699 MSRP

GE Cafe Series 30" Free-Standing Range with Baking Drawer
CGS985SETSS - $3099 MSRP

Thanks in advance for any advice anyone can offer.

Comments (5)

  • renegadecd
    9 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    I want to follow this thread because I am shopping appliances now too. My weekend trial with induction single burner has resulted in my decision to stick with the original plan to go to a dual fuel range. On my short list are the
    Electrolux with baking drawer (dual fuel slide in)
    GE Cafe with baking drawer (Dual fuel technically a free standing but looks like a slide in)

    Overall I like the electrolux but I wish it had the long fifth center burner.

    I wish the GE cafe had the sliding racks.

    I wish both had the ceramic top instead of stainless steel.

    I wish I could fit an enormous turkey in a real double oven version of these, but a supplemental baking drawer will have to suffice.

    I want the best of all worlds apparently and cannot have it all in an affordable dual fuel slide in.

  • jwvideo
    9 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Since nobody else has responded, I'll give you my 2 cents worth. Sometimes having a couple of responses showing up in your listing will get others to chime in. Hopefully they will know more than I do.

    1. Frigidiare FPGF3685LS: saw one of these when I was stove shopping back in 2012. Has a very small oven. About 3.7 cu. ft. IIRC --- which is about the capacity of ovens on a 24" range. I recall noticing that the oven-door's hinges seemed a little flimsy to me. Might want to search on that to see if that is a problem. Hinges can be a pain to replace. Also, the stovetop had a standard-freestanding stove's thick backsplash at the back so you don't get the spacing needed to run four or five large pots together, if that was something you were looking for with a pro-style range.

    On the other hand, this stove struck me as maybe an acceptable replacement range for someone who had an old, major-brand 36" or 40" range from fifty years ago. There are very few mainstream models that fit those spaces these days. Finally, this Frigidaire also seemed better made than some of the competing cheap 36" brands such as Premier Pro.

    Are you a Costco member? If so, Costco.com has an Italian-made 36" range for about $1500. I think the brand is Ancona. Might be worth looking into if you haven't already done so.

    2. Kitchenaid KGSS907XSP: I know nothing about this specific model, but offer some some considerations about Kitchenaid gas ranges in general. The membership surveys at Consumer Reports have been showing KA as the least reliable brand of gas ranges by a significant margin for the last four or five years. I'm talking about CR's surveys of actual owners not it's lab testing. (FWIW, I just checked and it seems CR has not lab-tested or rated the specific model you are looking at.) For a number of years, the KA wall-ovens and ovens in its ranges had problems with self-cleaning cycles causing the ovens to shut down. Sometimes, self cleaning toasted the stove's electronics, sometimes it tripped an overheat circuit breaker (which only could be reset after disassembling the oven). The reports here were that KA fixed this problem by installing stronger fans for cooling the electronics. (Same idea as the fan in your computer.) Some users have found the new fans too loud and offensive. Might be worth checking out if you haven't already searched on this issue.

    3. Bosch HGIP054UC: this is one of Bosch's new "Benchmark" series ranges. I recall a couple of recent threads here discussing the new line and they might have some discussion of this range. If you haven't already done so, you might try googling "Bosch + Benchmark + gardenweb" to see what has been posted.

    4. GE Cafe: The GE Cafe was one of the stoves I looked at when I was stove shopping, but it was the dual fuel model, not the all-gas model. GE is one of the most reliable brands of gas ranges according to CR's annual membership surveys. Also, if you haven't already seen these threads on on the Cafe ranges, you might find them helpdul.

    http://ths.gardenweb.com/forums/load/appl/msg0123491328448.html

    http://ths.gardenweb.com/forums/load/appl/msg022240567971.html

    5. Elrctrolux Slide-in (mentioned by renegadecd) -- I don't know which model he/she is referring to, but that's unimportant because I don't know much of anything about them, anyway. :>) . One consideration, though, is to check to be sure you can light stove-top burners with a match. Discussions here after Hurricane Sandy, listed several models of some major-brand gas ranges that ran everything through the electronic controllers which meant that the burners could not be lit during power outages. The brands I recall were Maytage and Electrolux, but I cannot recall which specific models were the affected ones. Best way to tell is by downloading and checking the owner's manuals.

    This post was edited by JWVideo on Sun, Sep 28, 14 at 16:04

  • ekb9u
    Original Author
    9 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    JWVideo - Lots of good points and links to helpful information. Thank you!

  • janitor53
    9 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    I've been waiting for the Bosch to come in to ABT here in Chicago. It's now listed as backordered with no ETA, not sure what's going on. Been waiting for 6 months since I saw this announced at a consumer show....I'll be following this thread to see what you choose.

  • speedlever
    9 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    We have recently tried a portable induction cooktop as we ponder our options to replace our gas range. While I am enamored of the induction technology, my wife does not warm to it. She (and the kids) can hear a high pitched ringing when using the cooktop with the new Circulon cookware I bought. I can't hear it. Oh well.

    So it appears we are going to shop for a dual fuel range and the Bosch Benchmark is high on our list of slide - ins. I haven't seen a lot of Bosch love, but we have A Bosch DW that we have been very pleased with.