I can tell you that Wolf has been excellent. I hesitate to post because my kitchen and I are problem magnets and I now have a third set (yes third) of double ovens. The first had a manufacturing defect and was repaired when we had an overheating smell and thought we were about to have a fire. Wolf didn't even send out a repairman -- they just sent the installers with a replacement. Second set was working great -- until it developed crackling and flaking enamel. It had a couple of problems or they would have just replaced the liners. The new ones better work -- they look great and are the quietest of the three. They heated to 500 degrees (for the burnoff to clean and prep them for use) in 20-25 minutes. I wasn't timing, but it seemed like about 10 minutes to 350 today. I told Wolf I had delayed in calling because I really didn't know if I wanted to try again, but the gal I talked to was so nice and so reassuring that they wanted me to be happy and it was no problem to have a repair tech come out and check it out. I hope to do a lot of baking this week to put them through the tests.

Prompted by the latest posts here, we paid a visit to our local distributor who in the past, has been super helpful and nice to deal with. They did not have the new columns yet. But did show me some of the capabilities in their freezer bottom unit. Note that I am just passing on what we were told :). The Mastercool controls look both cool and not so cool :). On the positive front, you get to set the temp and humidity of each bit electronically. I seem to recall on the Bosch, etc it is those plastic sliders. Those sliders donÂt seem all the functional to me as they are easy to bang into/change. On the down side, she had to touch the controls multiple times to get the system to detect. A real switch to control them would have been better than a touch control that is fussy. The main thing my wife liked, and someone should verify that Bosch series donÂt do, is that you there is a bucket where the ice falls into that can be slid left and right. In doing so, you can then use the entire larger slider under it to fill with ice for parties and such. On doors being easier to mount, she said that once the panels are mounted to the door grid, they are hung and then can be adjusted in that way using some mechanism on the door. She said the time to do this is 75 minutes (!). With the other units, she said the panel needs to be taken on and off to adjust the panels and that is what takes a lot of time. The door panels had heavy stainless rails into which the glass buckets hung. You could push the glass bucket up and remove them without removing the slides which hold not. Seemed nice to have them be this way. On wifi connection, in our case, it is a useful thing in that it can detect unit failure or door being left open. We will be having the unit in our vacation house and hate to come to it after a month of being gone, just to find everything gone bad due to unit failure. Not a huge deal mind you, but useful. I asked if there is a charge and she said "not currently." Not sure what that means as far as them charging in the future. I asked her the cost and she gave me an MSRP of $12,000 for dual 30 inch units. I seem to recall that the Gagg was less than $10K so this is quite a premium for the few features. Availability apparently is pretty poor for the freezer. She said someone just ordered a set and the freezer is scheduled for October! Yikes. Overall, it seems that they have done some homework on refining everything around the core of the unit. I donÂt feel that they have created enough value to go beyond the Gagg unit. But for people where price is no object, I think they should seriously consider Miele. We are not quite in that category although close when it comes to our kitchen remodel :).

We've had our Advantium 240 for a year, and we're pleased with it. It does have a microwave function, separate from the speed oven function--there are two sets of button controls. The microwave mode has programs of food cooking settings built in, an express button that will give you 30 seconds of High for every button push, or you can set time and amount of power manually. The oven comes with a white ceramic tray that sits on the turntable for microwave mode. For speed oven mode, you remove the white ceramic tray & either place food on either the smooth or "grill" metal tray provided or in a glass baking dish--the tray or the dish then go directly on the turntable. For a recipe, you then set the power level for the Upper halogen, Lower halogen, and Microwave, plus time. The Advantium comes with a recipe book that gives these settings. Some recipes include some microwave power & some don't. Or, you can press the automatic speed cook button, which lets you choose from a variety of preprogrammed options, which include most packaged frozen foods.

I have a Thermador (although it's a 30" - stainless steel with black glass). I believe it comes in a 27". It has a micro on top, warming drawer in the middle (which I love) and oven on the bottom. The microwave works great, but the oven is so darn noisy, it makes me crazy. I had a Thermador in our last home and I don't remember it being this noisy. It would be interesting to find out if all ovens are like this nowadays. After all the money we spent on this remodel, I can't justify swapping it, but it sure is tempting.