We are planning to replace our under counter Miele oven and solid plate cooktop. We want to use an induction cooktop with an under-counter oven. We have a granite counter and a 24" nominal width cooktop, so we can only practically fit a 24" wide replacement induction cooktop. We are looking at a 3 burner Diva DDP3 and a new 3 burner Miele KM5947(supposed to be available in Canada early next year). Any advice on choosing between these two would be appreciated. We don't know the price of the Miele but suspect it may be more expensive than the Diva. For the oven, we are looking at the straight convection Miele H4682B or the Gaggenau BO250/251. We know that the Gaggenau is more expensive but it does come with a standard 5 year warranty. We would have liked to consider the Gaggenau steam oven but the complications of providing water supplies and drains in an existing condominium and the fact that it is an under counter installation has discouraged us. Any experience or advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks for the links. Those are interesting. The Wolf burner is a different design from those videos, but I don't know if it is now better or worse (although it does seem to address some of the complaints). I also don't know how different the cooktop burner on the bluestar is from the range burner shown in the video, but my hunch is they are the same. The idea of an open burner being more even has always made sense to me and appealed and the videos seem to confirm one's intuition on this. As for the Capital on the website mentioned above, they do have a rangetop, but I don't think they have a high end cooktop in gas which would work better for our current kitchen (although their rangetops would look better here than the rivals rangetops from what I can tell because it seems to be a little more slim). In any event, we don't have a Capital vendor here and so even if it were the best product (and it sounds like many feel it is) and it matched, service would be enough to scare me off probably based on where I live. Thanks again to everyone for your input! ps for Miele reliability, it is only one datapoint, but my mother in law's works hard and is like new. She is going to be appalled that we bought something else. (And given how nice hers is, I thought that would be the direction we'd go, but my wife surprised me by picking the Wolf and I felt like given that each one had strengths and weaknesses I felt like this was a good choice, but I also felt any of the three she'd picked I'd have been able to say that about).

So, time to chime in here. I went with the Blue Star 36" induction cook top 2 years ago. Looks great, LOVED the knobs, worked fantastic... for about 18 months. I'll note that unlike their other products it only has a 1 year warranty. First, the two rightmost burners started indicating they were overheating when the central burner was in use (and the rightmost were not). I reset the system at the breaker per the manual and it rand great for three weeks with a hitch, then the central and right top burner cut out entirely. Three days later they came back, but wouldn't heat above level 7 (out of 10). I had (or so I thought) the good sense to get an extended warranty, but after getting a service guy out here the warranty company informs me it will cost more to fix than I paid in the first place, so they're going to cash me out. Blue Star may be good in other areas (no experience here), but based on my experience with this one, I don't think they have enough time making this product to reach their usual degree of reliability. Addendum: looks like Blue Star (when I bought it) had a narrower cut out (18") than anything currently on the market, including their own product. At least it looks like they're learning from past mistakes...

I have a Miele and am very happy with it. It doesn't seem to mind my wet fingers on the controls either. I have a Vent-a-Hood insert for ventilation. I bought the Miele because it had the features that I was looking for at the time. I can't speak to the Blue Star, as I've never cooked on it, but if you have done your research and like the features of the Blue Star, I'd go with it. $600 amortized over 5 or 10 years isn't enough for me to give up the main reason I picked something in the first place!