I don't think you can mount the Gaggenau under counter because of the plumbing, though maybe the tank version could work. I'm pretty sure the Gagg (which I have but haven't used (kitchen is still being finished)) clears the steam before you open the door. If under counter steam would be bad, just think what face level would be like! I think the Miele is the same. Oh, but I guess if the Sharp opens down you could lean right into the rising steam. OTOH, if you have to be filling the tank and don't have a drain, you could as easily fill a pan of water and steam in a regular oven. A lot of speed ovens (MW + convection) don't want to be mounted under the counter either. It's hard for me to figure out what your purpose is here, so I think you probably need to do some more research and analysis of the way you want to cook. If you go to the manufacturers' websites you can read through the installation and usage instructions and see which ones suit you best.

Fortunately, I have a relatively large pantry (vs. a much smaller kitchen). So when I got the Miele Speed oven, I just moved my old Sharp microwave and my ancient, beloved, toaster oven into the pantry. Now, about 8 months after the remodel, I still use the toaster oven for toast, having never even tried to toast in the Miele. And the pantry's microwave gets used to do something quick (like melt butter) while the Miele is pre-heating, or baking, or whatever. Though these things only happen occasionally, its been often enough that I haven't seen my way to tossing out either old oven. The drawback, of course, is that there are 5 ovens in my little kitchen/pantry area, which seems excessive. And I suppose the pantry has less counter space for canned beans or whatever... As for the Miele's combination mode, I've only begun to explore this by using it to reheat things like casseroles -- Alton Brown's "Cauliflower Say Cheese", last night. Master Chef expects me to know how much these things weigh, which is a struggle, but last night's guess turned out just fine. Oh yeah, if you select Defrost mode, the Miele speed oven will heat in the range of 75 to 125 degrees. This setting is useful for cooking "raw" foods at 104. I did think about a steam oven as well, but there really was no way to fit it in there.

M, It is two separate statements. My first statement is taken out of context and is a comment on this. It is talking just about transfer of flavor. "You can cook the fish vegetables and a starch, like couscous or bulgur, all at the same time in the CSO without any flavor transfers, This is because of convection and the catalyzer rather than the steam. ____________ The second statement is this. For someone making this decision, they need to isolate what the steam capability truly adds to the combi oven and how they might use it. I agree that using steam has certain unique capabilities and that is my point. Because a CSO can also function as a regular or convection oven many people attribute things that are functions of standard or conv ovens as benefits of the CSO. I'm saying isolate the benefits of steam to see if a CSO is a worthwhile investment for that person. Someone might say I can bake great cookies in a CSO. You can but there is not an exclusive benefit or use of the steam capabilities for that. "In this particular example, dry air actually has really poor heat conductivity and really poor heat capacity. If it wasn't for natural or forced convection, it would in fact be a really good insulator." Heat transfer is a pretty complex subject. A standard/conv oven has so many variables. A CSO adds steam but might take away something else. Cold air would be an insulator to cold chicken but hot air would still transfer heat. Fan assisted convection is one way to increase the rate of transfer because it moves that slightly cooled hot air away and replaces it with hot air. You also have heat transfer by conduction and radiation. Radiation can be 50% of the heat. How does the radiant heat vary in an oven with stainless walls vs enameled steel? With a hidden bake element? What is the bulk of a CSO vs regular ovens and how much heat does it hold. How does a Pyrex dish increase the rate of heat transfer in the different types of ovens vs aluminum or stainless steel pans? If you think about what happens in cooking, it raises a lot of questions. I have actually read that steam can be cooling. It slows the setting and browning of a crust on a loaf of bread. How can that be if it increases the rate of heat transfer? I guess the question would be if water vapor is condensing on the surface of meat, releasing heat and then evaporating taking away heat, what is the net loss or gain of heat? How does conductive and radiant heat figure in? How does the presence of water figure in besides increasing the rate of heat transfer? What is the level of humidity in a regular oven in different situations? How does it compare to a CSO? The Gaggenau use and care manual gives some insight into this. See the chart above. https://media3.gaggenau.com/Documents/9000880517_J.pdf Unless you have some way to measure humidity in the oven and adjust the amount of steam injected, the percentages are just names of settings for how much steam is released. I think it is more of a convenience than control. Control is some more and a lot. I don't believe there is any feedback mechanism to add control like you have for temperature. 80% setting may really be close to 100% of saturation, so is there a real functional difference between 80 and 100? They say that the 30% setting is the amount of humidity a cake releases while baking with the vent closed, no additional steam is released by the oven. How much more vapor is released while cooking something like a chicken, especially if it has drippings underneath evaporating? O% setting is whatever intrinsic humidity is provided by the food cooking minus what is vented out with the vent open. I don't know if it is actively ventilated. I'm sure these actual percentages vary pretty significantly. How would humidity vary in an electric oven (very small vent) vs a gas oven (big vent)? "With conventional oven, you can't start heating the surface until it has started drying out. That probably explains why everybody raves about juicy crispy roast chicken from a CSO" Juiciness of the chicken is determined by the end temperature of the meat rather than a little superficial dryness. The temperature probe is what is responsible for that. You can submerge a chicken in a pot of water and boil it dry. This is a pretty good article that talks about this. "The higher the internal temp the meat achieves, the more water it squeezes out and the drier it gets. In general, most meats are juiciest and most tender when cooked to medium rare, 130 to 135°F internal temperature." https://amazingribs.com/more-technique-and-science/more-cooking-science/basic-meat-science-cooks Whatever drying you have initially is very superficial and you will need to have it in cooking a chicken one way or another to get crispiness and browning. There are techniques to blow fans on chickens to dry the skin out before cooking so it will be crispy. Check out this technique using a hair dryer. http://mytartare.com/tip-blow-dry-chicken/ When a chicken cooks, the steam or hot air only affects the outside as far as drying. The inside of the chicken is cooked by heat transfer from the outer layer of chicken next to it. Almost every convection oven advertises juicy chicken with a crispy skin as a selling point. Cooking chicken is a balance in heat transfer and drying to get the perfect 165F end temp internally along with browning and crispiness no matter how heat is applied. Sous vide brings the meat up to the perfect temperature by cooking with a very low gradient of heat, and then super intense heat to brown. With a combi oven, the chicken is cooked by steaming but to get browning, you have to get drying. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=f3qQh3DHDGA Baked goods are different from meat as far as the way they react to heat and steam. Sort of a side issue I noticed is that foods that have more fat seem to brown even in the presence of steam. Plllog here has talked about how chicken browns, being steamed at the end of roasting. Pie crust creates steam and it browns while baking. I think with the chicken, you have a layer of fat on the outside of the chicken skin from basting or fat being released during cooking. As the skin heats, moisture reaches the boiling point and turns into steam. As it rapidly expands, it goes through the fat but the fat acts as a barrier to it coming back onto the skin. You have drying that way. There the are probably a hundred more effects that are not being considered. Another interesting comparison is a steam assist like Thermador/KA vs moisture assist like Capital vs the CSO.

We have a 30" all-gas Bluestar range. It's an amazing range, and comes with an awesome (and huge!) oven. The downside is that the oven takes a long time to preheat. That's generally an issue with larger oven cavities. But when it is preheated, it is super reliable and regulates temperature very precisely. In looking for gas ranges, please do take a close look at Bluestar's open-burner product line. I suggest the RNB series. It has a cult following here on Houzz -- and for a good reason. We also have a 24" Miele CSO and a Miele SpeedOven. For the vast majority of oven needs, I fall back on the CSO. The fact that it is plumbed means that there is no barrier to using steam even for quick one-off uses. And other than the addition of precise control for both steam and temperature (makes a great sous-vide cooker!), it is a full oven in its own right. It's really nice to have two additional ovens besides the one in the range; and I do use all of them for larger meals. But if I only need a single oven for a given meal, I use the CSO. I agree with you that a SpeedOven is of more limited use. We bought the SpeedOven, because we couldn't quite get rid of the microwave. And I didn't want to dedicate so much space to a single-purpose appliance. Sacrificing the space became more palatable, when the microwave can do double-duty as a third oven. In hindsight, I am quite happy with my decision; but the extra cost might not be acceptable to many home owners.