My rankings

1)Gaggenau BX 280/281
2)Miele H4892BP2SS
3)Wolf DO30FS

Dacor is more a design/marketing driven operation than an engineering one. Looks not cooks.

Thermador is the red headed American step child in the Bosch Empire. They have been neglected and their product has suffered.

Bad ratings in Consumer Reports is not the end all be all but consistently bad reliability ratings has to make you sit up and take notice.

JennAir? Really? REALLY?!

lol.

I agree with Deeageaux's rankings.

Another way to do upper end ovens is to stack a Gaggenau Combi Steam oven over a Gaggenau convection oven. Mega versatility. The steam oven capacity is smaller than a conventional oven, but it will preheat faster & allow reheating & steam assisted convection as well as steaming.

gizmo - agreed but that set up is about double the cost of anything on jk's list.

I realize that, but the subject is upper end & 2 wall ovens.

I'm using KA double steam assist. They had some bad ratings earlier but seem to have worked theirselves out. The rest of my kitchen is meile. I do cakes for people. And I'm married to a chef. Don't discount the KA.

If good enough is good enough then the KA is OK.

If you want BEST and Most Reliable discount the Whirlpool/KA.

Not sure it's been on the market long enough to judge reliability but from a performance and menu-drive standpoint I'd add a Turbochef double to the bottom of that high-end short list.

you see that antss?

deeageaux and gizmonike

Can you say more about why you ranked the Miele ahead of the Wolf? Our dealer is quoting a price for the Miele that is about 10% less than the Wolf and we like the styling of the Miele better. I've seen some reviews of the Miele and Wolfe (Smart Money) where the Miele was rated very highly, but the Wolf was rated higher.

John

1) Gaggenau (love the side-opening doors - much easier to insert or remove your food since you can walk right up to it), plus very space-efficient and loads of cooking options - but note that 70cm width probably won't fit in a 27"w cabinet.

2) Electrolux Icon - very nicely made, huge all-glass doors easy to keep clean, ball-bearing rollout shelves, good lighting, lots of cooking options, good controls, looks cool. Too new to know long-term reliability, although in general Electrolux has been reliable.

Avoid anything made by Whirlpool (Kitchenaid, Jenn-Air, etc.) Most of the same internals regardless of which of their brand names they slap on the outside, and they're noisy and their broilers are useless. The gaskets they use quickly become ugly and don't insulate well.

Bosch and Thermador made by same company (BSH) and are similar - reasonably good but neither as good as older ovens by those companies (Gaggenau also owned by same company, but their ovens use a completely different design).

John,

1)Did Smart money talk about resale value of the home? Real estate agents/money lenders love Wolf. It is the brand de rigueur for the nouveau riche poseur elite. If you are building your Kitchen to impress real estate agents,potential buyers,and friends then yes Wolf is best.

2)The previous generation Wolf oven had some reliabilty issues. To its credit Wolf hired an outside consultancy to do extreme testing of it's ovens to find weak spots. It completely redesigned some parts while leaving others alone. It has been about 3 years or so since the current generation came out and so far so good.

However, both Gaggenau and Miele have long established records of excellent oven reliability. Wolf will "probably" be very good.Gaggenau and Miele you can take to the bank. Having said that there is always some chance you get a lemon,that is why they have warranties.

3)Before I purchsed my Gaggenau I sought friends and friends of friends who had high end kitchens. I live in West LA. My best friend lives in Yorba Linda in Orange County.I have one sister who lives in Anaheim Hills in Orange County and one sister who lives in the Palos Verdes section of LA County. I offered to cook a meal including beef wellington and chocolate souffle if they let me test their oven and monkey around in their kitchen. Checking things out like ranges and such.

I found takers that had Thermador,Wolf,Miele, and Gaggenau. Could not find anyone with a Kuppersbusch.

I got good results with them all.I eliminated Thermador when I researched and found reliability problems but I like the results in the order of my rankings. 1) Gaggenau 2) Miele 3) Wolf. All are on my recomment list because they are much better than the GE/Whirlpool/Viking ovens that I have previously used. And I really like the side-opening doors. It lets you get real close without fear of burning yourself.

Thanks to all who have responded. This search for an oven has been very challenging since there are no independent comparative reviews of most of the upper end ovens and all ovens seem to have similar features. At this point, I think we are leaning toward the Miele Masterchef over the Wolf or Dacor. Thermador we're probably excluding due to reliability issues even though CR gave the oven a good rating recently. Jenn Air is hard to rate since its likely mostly the same oven as its lower priced brand mates, but it does have two convection fans and a nice user interface. We just looked at Electrolux Icon yesterday, and it also appeared to be a nice oven. The price span between the ovens is about $3000 and that is what makes the purchase so maddening since its so hard to tell what we're getting for the extra money.

Any last minute advice before we make our decision?

John

What you're getting for the extra money is about the performance aspects of the oven which are impossible to judge unless you go around and use various brands as one poster described. You're making a best guess based on perceived and advised quality, conventional wisdom and cost.

The other factor to consider IMO is the difference between the way the Miele/Gaggenau and Wolf ovens actually work in terms of settings and whether you are willing to accept a learning curve with European convection.

dee- re: the WOlf redesign. Are you refering to the E series?

It's not really a new oven except for looks and price. I personally know two of the members of that outside design team and the are not engineers or manufacturers. They are tastemakers. The E series was brought out to integrate with Euro style cabinetry better. It also has a few less features so that the price point can be a bit lower. The guts are pretty much the same as the original L series.

I'm sure you did a search here for folks that posted about the actual performance of their ovens?
You will see at least 3 posts where the temps are off (Substantially Low) on the Miele ovens, and in fact you have to use a special "IR" type thermometer if you want any kind of agreement between what the oven says it's at and what you have it set for, Hopefully what ever you cook undertands that it hasta be "IR" degrees. Interesting that the Wolf did read correctly on a more conventional thermometer.Our Elux Icon, like the Wolf is perfectly calibrated using a conventional thermometer--if it wasn't You can calibrate it yourself from the wavetouch controls(Miele takes a service call but even then it can't be calibrated so you just learn to use a "Fudge Factor").
Compare the way the door opens,The thickness of the door, the size of the door window
How cool the door stays. Look for smooth fully gliding out shelves, a large easy to read display.
You may also note and you did, it is about half the price of the Miele and about one-forth the price of the Gag.
Now if we use Antss "Logic" the Gag is of course, "Just a Tarted up Bosch-so we can skip over that one.

So, if you do all these things, I just mentioned along with reading reviews of its actual baking abilities One suspects your choices will be "Similar to Mine"

1 Electrolux
2 Electrolux
3 Electrolux

Good Luck with you decisions!!

Gary

Throwing a new dog into the fight...Does anyone know anything about the Capital Maestro oven? It's priced up there with the big boys (Just under $5K on US-Appliance.com, MSRP above $6K), has rotisserie, infrared broiler, and 'moist-assist.' (Uses a reservoir, not plumbed.) I did not even know Capital had an electric wall oven until yesterday. The description sounds WONderful...But don't they all?

Here is a link that might be useful: Capital oven

Dacor oven(with the discovery controller) for me all show- no go. Had it replaced with a regular Electrolux oven and could not be happier. Had some problems initially with blue flaking, but they replaced it with no quibbles and it heats quickly, stays on temp and can be manipulated to do almost anything. I've had it for 2 years. I've also had good experience with Wolf, but is a DF range.

Looking at single in wall oven- 30".
Noted the same problems finding objective head to head comparisons as consumer reports did not test Gag, Miele or Wolf.

An important caveat is to read the user reviews (on-line version), when available, for consumer reports tested units. The vast majority of Consumer Reports tested wall ovens had very negative overall scores from the members. This was especially true for most of their top rated units.
Recurring themes were heat induced failure of sensitive electronic components, multiple service calls for recurring problems, inability to fix the problem and overall poor customer service.