I cannot recall seeing anything but positive comments from owners regarding the Meile gas cooktops on GW. We are having a Meile double oven, warming drawer and Wolf gas cooktop installed this week in our home. Only choose the Wolf over Meile because of their simmer feature and their matching downdraft.

I do not care for consumer reports either, they seem to be very slanted in their opinions. That said the Meile cooktop is adequate at best, not great. Better drop in style cooktops would be the PGM series Dacor, the DCS, the Windcrest and now the Bluestar. I bring up the Bluestar only because you mentioned WOK cooking and that burner is amazing.

I like CR, but there is a caveat to their reviews.

They are geared towards the middle... they very often underrate high-end appliances / stereos / wines / cars / etc. Why is that?

1. They have a set of criteria to use when rating. Time to boil, ease of cleanup, etc. Design, durability, "feel"... these don't really enter into it as much.

2. Reliability ratings come from customer feedback. High-end items are made in smaller production volumes, and consequently don't have as much "real-world" usage, so there may be more reliability issues. But, feedback more often comes from people who are upset with a product rather than satisfied with it, so a smaller pool of possible reviews can greatly skew actual findings. (See CRs obvious dislike of Sub Zero, Viking, etc due to reliability reports).

I do think their reviews are useful on high-production items (Toasters, Blenders, Common Cars, etc), but wherever "style and feel" are involved, I tend to ignore what they have to say.

It is either Miele or Gaggenau that uses Wolf burners. I would have to look at them in person to see - believe it's the Wolf.

CR is a measurement - that's all. They standardize tests and put a number of products through the same tests. Some do better than others. I don't like where my products fall, but I can't bash CR because I don't like what they say (ie, 'shoot the messenger'). Geared towards products 'in the middle'? I don't think so, top cooktop as of this morning is Viking Designer series, GE, Maytag are down the pecking level (our Thermador is in the middle). Top wall oven - Thermador (our Wolf doesn't appear).

A lot of what we (GW community) use are luxuries - extravagance. We shouldn't pretend they are vastly superior products in every respect. Bashing anyone who has negative information just suggests an ax to grind.

I used to never buy anything CR reviewed without checking with them. Then I had two very disappointing purchases, based on their advice, a vacuum cleaner and a dishwasher. For my new kitchen, I am relying on this forum and pretty much ignoring CR.

I've subscribed to CR for years and it's good as ONE piece of input but it's not the be all and end all. And yes, it definitely does cater to the middle. They do review some high end products but their criteria are geared to the middle of the road. For example, when evaluating ranges they don't give points for a range which has all high power/low simmer burners - if there's one high power burner and one simmer burner that's good enough. They give more points for how many burgers you can cook under the broiler at one time, no how well the broiler cooks steaks for example.

It's worthwhile seeing what CR says, but you need to decide what features matter to you, not to CR.

"It is either Miele or Gaggenau that uses Wolf burners"

Pugger - what are you talking about???

I understand the reasons for the skepticism over CR evaluations. On the other hand, a good friend spent a bundle on a Subzero fridge a few years ago. In a short time it failed. The price to repair it was so high that she decided to replace it with a top of the line GE unit for the price of the repair.

So, if you have money to burn and you like the "feel" of the high end products, don't even bother to check CR. After all, if you're in the market for a Rolls Royce, you don't go to CR.

If you want panache, image, feel, or whatever you want to call that special something, you need to pay disproportionately for it and suffer the consequences when things go wrong. Like the lady who returned her Gucci bag and asked that its clasp be repaired. She was told, "My dear, when your Gucci bag breaks, you don't fix it. You throw it away and buy a new one."

antss, Factory Builders has a lot of Wolf, Miele, and many others on display. They pointed that out to me. The stacked burner on the Miele certainly looks just like the one on the Wolf, albeit a different color.

It's not really that unusual with other products, where one company licenses technology to another. Think hybrid autos work that way after Honda came out with the first one.

I have Meile Gas Cooktop. Originally, my husband and I are happy about it, and we do a lot of WOK cooking.
However, every time when we had a party, and we needed to use more than 2 burners for a period time longer than an hour, then the cooktop showed problems. After an hour of cooking, and we need to turn on the 3rd one or 4th burner, there is no ignition respond at all, gas is coming out, but the auto ignition is not working.
We have asked their repair service more than 3 times, their mechanic still do not know what the problem is. We got frustrated.

Miele makes good products but I don't think any company makes everything good. In planning my kitchen I chose different brands of appliances just to keep things mixed and so that I would not be too dependant on any one company.

I have to correct myself. Today, we asked the repair man to come again. Before the appointment, we purposely cooked for 2 hrs, hoping that we could reproduce the problem again before the technician showed up.

However, we could not duplicate the problem again. Finally, we noticed one thing, we had a habit to cover the knobs area with a damp towel, to avoid oil spill into the know area. We suspect that may be the problem, moisture build up at the knob area.

Anyway, although we could not reproduce our problem, but the technician was very patient this time. He did a lot of checking and testing.

From now on, we will not cover the Knob area with wet towel; hopefully, the problem will not happen again. Then I may need to apologize to MIELE.