I just wanted to report on my first use of this year's Bosch 800 series 30" induction cooktop. It was delivered on June 23rd, while I was out of town. I returned home just yesterday and DH and I removed the old countertop, installed the new one and the cooktop. It was after 6pm, so I cooked up some frozen ravioli and heated sauce for a quick dinner and it performed beautifully. It took just minutes for the sauce to heat through. The huge pot of water came to a boil much faster than on my radiant cooktop. Dinner was a snap, and I needed that tonight! I haven't put it through it's paces but so far I'm smitten. I'm very glad I went with the 800 and direct select. I appreciate fast and the selection tool, along with the responsiveness, is just that. I'm not one who loves cooking, but I love good food so I cook! I'm looking forward to putting it through it's paces. Oh, and I didn't get hot! I have no ventilation, a 7 ft kitchen ceiling and live in a hot and humid climate. I'm always overheated after fixing dinner and that was not the case this evening.

We bought the 800 (36" wide). The biggest difference in the 800 compared to both the 300 and 500 is a larger central burner (18,000 btu on the 800 vs 16,000 on the 500 and 14,000 on the 300) and brushed metal knobs (vs black plastic on the 300/500). We've been very happy with our cooktop so far. Ed

Bosch, and pretty much all appliance manufacturers, design their different "tiers" to be mixed and matched while still having a uniform look, so you spend more on areas that are more important to you and cut back in others to meet your budget. So the answer is yes, you can absolutely mix between the different tiers. Stainless steel matching should not be a concern, they do not use different grades of stainless in the different tiers. Further, the stainless will never match between all your appliances, even if they are from the same manufacturer, because these products are manufactured in different factories all over the world and come off of different rolls of stainless. TL;DR no matter what appliances you buy, the stainless will be similar enough for you to not notice a difference unless you look VERY closely. The other thing you can (and should!) do besides mix/match tiers is mix/match brands. No one manufacturer is good at everything. Microwaves all come from the same small set of Asian factories, are very cheaply made and often last only 2-3 years. This includes the Bosch microwave. You are not paying for German engineering or manufacturing expertise here, you are paying for the look and the name. The best bang for your buck in microwaves is to either find a place for a microwave, either on the countertop, in a pantry, or a cabinet alcove, where you can just drop in another $100 microwave from Walmart if yours fails. OR if it must have the "built in" look, get a Sharp or Panasonic with the proper trim kit. This post was edited by hvtech42 on Mon, Jan 19, 15 at 10:11

I have a Bosch 500 that is about 3 years old, and it's just fine on drying -- there's still water in the crevices or concave areas. No problem drying plates, glasses, pots, or pans.....Plastics dry better if there are fewer of them in the load (i.e. a lot of plastics in the load will still have some water on them, but with only a few pieces of plastic in the load, they'll be properly dry)......that's because of the way the drying cycle works, without additional heat. I actually like that better - not only is it more energy efficient, it means I can put plastics in the bottom rack, because it is no hotter than the top rack (traditionally, plastics were meant to be in the top rack only, because the heat element was in the bottom). I've also found that not opening the machine right away when it stops actually helps the plastics dry better (I suppose because there's still enough heat in the machine to dry them).