Comes down to what you cook as stated above. We lived with a 30" all gas range and found it fine other than having to do a suffle when making larger meals. Take one thing off to cook another and then pop that pan back on to warm up whatever etc. as we had all burners going. The range had four burners on it. For us, a 5 burner 30 was just too crowded for what we wanted. What started our whole remodel process is that hubby wanted a second oven. Hubby loves to cook and really hated having a rib roast in at 200 slow cooking and then having to suffle things and wait on yorkshires at 400-450 to get done or roast potatoes or bread. So, we redid the kitchen and bought a 36" DCS AG with 6 burners to replace our range and a 30" wall oven that we mounted under counter. We were the same as you on the burner/griddle/grill issue. Love the 6 burners. Can have multiple pots and pans on cooking the whole meal and simmering all at the same time. Nice to have the realestate as it were. Great for starting roast potatoes and gravys in large roasting pans without crowding out the rest of the burners and then pop them in the oven to finish. Really like the extra room in the oven as well. Yes, does take longer to warm up the large capacity, but then we also have the 30" wall oven that we use if we are just doing a small pie or something. Very wise advise to take your pans and cooking sheets into the store. Yes you can buy new pans to work on whatever range you buy, but you are used to cooking certain things on certain pans and so it will give you an idea of capacity and useability for you. We were surprised when we did this as it illustrated to us the difference in some manufacturer ratings for cubic feet oven space. Put our half sheet pans in two ovens that were supposedly identical size. Fit with tonnes of room in one (in fact it would fit a full sheet pan per level) and had to put the pans sideways to get them in the other (only one half sheet pan per level). Good luck with your search! Cheers

We bought a KA slide in about 4 years ago for about $2,000. I really love it

I love our 48" Viking. There is plenty of room when dh and I are cooking at the same time and the extra space also comes in handy when I'm cooking alone. I love having unused burners to slide hot pots onto for cooling off or as landing space for hot items from the oven. It contains all the hot items to one space instead having them scattered across the counter on trivets. And there are times when all of our burners are used at once (we have 6 + a griddle.) I use the small oven most of the time for our family of 4. The large oven is handy when I cook mulitiple items at the same temp or when I use large cookie sheets. Having 2 ovens comes in handy for different oven temps and for when one oven is tied up by something baking for an hour that shouldn't be disturbed. Take your favorite baking dishes to the showroom to make sure they fit into the small oven. The dishes I brought were a 9" Pyrex pie pan and a 9x13 pan. They fit fine in our Viking but didn't in some other brands. The brand I was leaning toward got eliminated because the oven rack brackets decreased the usable space so much that I couldn't fit either of the 2 dishes I brought. Just reading the oven specs wouldn't have been good enough since it seemed the oven was plenty big. Dh was happy we ended up with his top choice by default. I would definitely buy another 48" range if I had to do over again. Getting a range with 2 ovens and plenty of burner/elbow space was a splurge that made a lot of sense to us.

I wanted to contribute my experience- we got the capital culinarian all gas 48" w/ the griddle (so we have 6 burners) within the past year and I have been using it for a few months. I LOVE LOVE LOVE our decision!! I too did a lot of research and did not read many negative reviews about it- and they are very well built, pretty, and simple design-wise (my husband is a contractor and thought they were most similar to the commercial ranges he has worked on, i.e. if something breaks it would be easy to fix). I probably wouldn't need 6 burners just for cooking- but it is nice to have. I also do a lot of canning/preserving, and do use 6 burners at the same time (simmer for warming lids, canning pot, pot for extra hot water, pot w/ stuff to be canned, pot w/ syrup for the stuff to be canned, one pot w/ dinner cooking). My husband loves the griddle- very easy to make breakfasts, hot sandwiches, etc. You could always do 4 burners and a grill/griddle as an option if you don't can/need 6 burners. Also, I really enjoy the big oven on the 48" (not sure how this compares in size to the 36" since the 48" has a large and small oven and the 36" one large oven). It can fit 9x13" pans side by side, and cookie sheets. The roll out racks aren't as smooth as some of the other brands we looked at (we liked the thermador racks the best- very smooth) but they work pretty well. Also, I haven't had any problems w/ the baking heat/evenness, and our oven is gas (which I think is typically worse than electric ovens?). I haven't baked bread yet- but have done a lot of other foods (cookies, casseroles, etc.). So if it were me I would definitely do the 36" over the 30" :-) It sounds like you would use it w/ all the cooking that you do. If you have any questions about mine please let me know :-)