Hi Piglet,

If you're not using high heat why are you installing that big boy? Just kidding, if I remember correctly, some if not all of those burners, must simmer down to something like 350btu for you more delicate sauces and so forth.
Range hood choice is indeed very overwhelming, and long ago when I was building a kitchen it was the only thing that the contracter said don't worry, just trust me and it didn't work out well.
Techically what you're buying is referred to as a hood liner or power pack. The decorative part is the hood itself. I would strongly suggest you consult your custom wood hood fabricator about what they would recommend. I'm assuming this cooktop is against a wall, as opposed to on an island or peninsula. The hoods (to stay with what you're calling them and to avoid confusion)you've selected appear to be the wall type although they may be universal and good for either application.
Not to say anything bad about Zephyr but Best is a highly regarded, and very well established product (I am in no way connected to the company). I do like that it is deeper - that is important to avoid what I believe is called enveloping - smoke, steam, etc will fan out and miss or go around the hood and end up on your beautiful custom hood, rather than be drawn into the hood if your hood is insufficiently deep (congratulations on going on a 42 inch hood with a 36 inch cooking surface by the way, good choice). The 430 stainless they use is the best quality, so your hood will stay beautiful for years to come. Baffle filters look cool, are easy to clean (take them out and put them in the dishwasher) but some people say the mesh type filters actually are more effective in trapping grease. You want the grease to be trapped and not get up into the ductwork. Mesh filters can go in the dishwasher too, and if they get too yucky you can always get new ones.
A note about the blowers. They're loud. Nothing you can do about it, think of it as having a jet engine in your kitchen. One thing you can do to minimize it is make sure you follow the manufacturs recomendations for duct work, make sure the run is as straight as possible, with no more than 3 elbows (turns) and at least 12 to 24 inches between turns (in other words you don't want it to look like something a hamster might run through). Use hard metal duct work only, never the flexible clothes dryer type. Make sure whomever is installing the duct work is comfortable and extremely familiar with it. You want everything to fit nice and tight so the duct work has no tendency to rattle when the blower is on. If its a poor job it will be noisy and/or ineffective. If its available from the manufacturer and if possible you also might want to look into an external blower which mounts on an external wall or on the roof, thus taking the blower out of your kitchen. If not, I definiely think you'll be better off with Bests 1200 cfm blower, you'll be better able to run it at low - medium setting and cut down on the noise.
Ask lots and lots of questions, especially of your installers.
Good luck, hope this was helpful.

Hi applianceguypa,

Thanks for the information, and correcting my terminology. I think of it as a hood (the wood part), a blower (the fan), the insert (the part you see), and the liner. I'm not sure that's the right terminology either though, but I hope you understand what I mean.

About cooking on high heat, I should have said that we don't expect to cook on high heat on many of the burners all at the same time (which would require more CFMs). I can see us using 1 or 2 burners on high, with others on lower settings, not that we won't use high heat at all. We cook a lot of pasta, and I hope to learn how to use a real wok, both of which use high heat.

Our blower will be vented up, and then straight out the wall so I think we are going with an internal blower. Our current "blower" (and I can barely call it that!) is a total of 163 CFM's (really), I can see the (very small) fan, and I can see the outside when the fan runs. And it's LOUD on low! So I imagine anything will be better than that.

The Best has BOTH baffles and mesh filters that you use at the same time, and it sounds like that is a good thing.

Our kitchen designer recommended the Best I listed, but our appliance person recommended either a Best or the Zephyr, and the KD said either would work fine. So I was just wondering if there was some other element to them that I should consider to help us decide. We probably can't go wrong with either.

Thanks for your reply. It was very helpful!

Piglet

Hi,
Don't worry too much about the terminology, what is essentially the same product goes by several different names at different manufacturs. I actually used to work for SubZero - Wolf and they called this type of item a hood liner or at least that's what it was referred to when I was there. If you like wokking did you take a look at Wolf's Multi function gas integrated module? It's specifically for wokking. You could create a second cooks area and pick out still another hood to vent that LOL.