All gas and electric ovens have passive-vented (via thermal convection) baking cavities to dissipate moisture emanating from the cooking food. There may be a poof of steam/moisture come out when the door is opened, but passive venting is still occurring when the door is closed. In some cases the exterior location of the cavity vent may not be apparent. The house my parents built in 1964 had an electric wall oven, the vent outlet was hidden at the top behind a chrome frame that surrounded the unit. Venting the oven cavity and cooling electronic controls are not the same thing. Ovens that don't have electronic controls do still have passive venting for the cooking cavity. Electronic controls are often power-cooled by way of a fan, but oven cavities are not ... it would be counterproductive to attempt heating the cooking cavity and at the same time be actively blowing/exhausting room air through it. Convecting baking is not the same thing -- the fan circulates air *within* the oven cavity, it doesn't exhaust/vent the cavity. Ovens, wall ovens in particular, that garner complaints about a noisy fan blowing hot air into the kitchen are not venting the cooking cavity via that fan ... the air flow is exhausting accumulated heat from *inside* the unit's exterior shell where the control boards are located, but *outside* the baking cavity. Stooxie, yes absolutely, my GE Profile range has the oven vent located toward the right side beneath the control panel. The control panel rises 11-inches high from the cooktop surface with 4-inches of it being a "toe-kick" space. Cooktop controls are rotary switches but the oven controls/timer are a flat electronic panel. There is NO cooling fan for the panel, and it does get VERY warm during self cleaning ... to the point that last time I ran a cleaning cycle, I set a small fan to blow across the panel (helped a lot).

Buying appliances can wear you out sifting through so many features and benefits, claims and counterclaims and the "you have to have_____" or it is "no good", "a toy", "you're not a real cook". A real cook can cook on anything of course but there are a few things that make it easier. My take. I've been cooking for 50 years and have baked in many ovens gas and electric, and more recently(the last 4 years) started using convection, which I love for many but not all things. It is very hard to compare the feature of "third element" convection from oven to oven and how it contributes to heat. How much power does the element draw? How much does it come on? Wolf has 2 elements others one. How much air do the fan(s) move? And most important, how does this relate to what you bake? Does it make any real difference? When I first remodeled, I had a certain make of oven with the 3rd element and it over browned on the side towards the fan. I attributed this to the fan moving super heated air toward the food. Those ovens never worked right and were replaced with an Electrolux regular oven and a Wolf range, both having the 3rd element, which according all appliance salespeople(most of whom don't cook) is "essential". Both bake great and keep a very tight temp range but the Electrolux does not have a pure convection mode. The 3rd element is incorporated into the other modes but doesn't come on very often. The Electrolux has little lights that indicate what element is on while the oven is working. This caused me to question what exactly does the 3rd element do? On the Wolf and you can't tell how much the third element contributes to heating on the conv bake and roast modes. I haven't quite figured what the pure convection mode would do. They say it allows for even heating in multilevel baking but I get that with just the convection bake mode. My BIL is a baker and they use big gas ovens with a fan. He doesn't see the value of the third element. I personally think the idea of a third element is a lot of hype or maybe at best makes a minimal benefit and in some cases produces a hot spot on the side towards the fan. A feature with an electric oven I do like is the the roast mode. I like being able to manipulate the direction of the heat. The roast mode allows the upper element to come on and contributing to browning. Of course you can always turn the broiler on at the end of roasting time and add a little more browning. Some electric ovens may also keep a more narrow range of temp, but this may not be all that significant either for most people. I agree with Gary. I love my Electrolux oven and I bet it has one of the fastest preheats, which is a feature that is important to me, also the fact that it changes temp quickly when bumped up. Both of these features seem to be missing on many higher end ovens. Some ovens need 45 min to fully come to temp and have to be turned on and off to increase temp or take a long time to change.

About the servicing, I live in a medium-sized city (my hometown) about 1 hour from the closest major city (Syracuse, NY). There are several small to medium sized local appliance stores in my immediate area which will order anything and service what they sell, as well as the major big box stores L...s, HD, BB, and also a smaller sears in a local shopping mall. So, I have always gotten my appliances serviced in this way (through the stores or local appliance repair shops) in the past w/ no problems. I will, however, be sure to ask specifically about servicing Bosch when I make the purchase. About the induction-I have heard of induction, read up on it a little to at least know how it works, read rave reviews (especially on GW) but do not know anyone personally that has one, and frankly have had my hands full researching all of the other modern features common on ranges today. I make a heck of a lot of cookies at the holidays and am told put on a terrific Thanksgiving spread, too! I am really looking forward to using all of the bells and whistles that come on the new ranges. I am not really a trailblazer, and I would be making a huge step up with the purchase of this Bosch range (or Cafe) as my current stove is a 27 year old Hardwick "Classic 100" electric coil top (one of the best in the day, never had a service call except a burnt out baking coil which we replaced ourselves in about 2 minutes for $40 about 3 years ago). It is still going strong otherwise but looks the worse for wear and does not have any of the newer modern features such as convection, smoothtop, probes, baking drawers, instant buttons, self cleaning, etc.,etc., so getting this Bosch model would be a big step for me, which I am really looking foward to. I actually am hesitant about even going with convection, but at least know people who have this, including relatives, and it seems tried and true and very helpful. Not to say that induction is not tried and true and would not be helpful--I am sure it is a wonderful advancement in cooking and probably will be the way of the average cooking world in the not so distant future. It makes sense and I sort of equate it to the new "microwave oven of the 2000's" in cooking advancement, but at this point I am not willing to take that leap just yet. (Actually the saleswoman at sears threw the idea past me, stating that it would be her next dream stove.) But for one thing, I am not willing to give up my old pots and pans which I know will work on the smoothtop just fine. I guess you could say I am just a good old home-cookin gal and I don't want to overwhelm myself with all of that at this point, especially at the price it comes at. I am not new to change as I was brought up with gas cooking with my mother (and grandmother) and would prefer gas, but gas was not available to us until about 10 years after we built our house, so had no choice then. I also have run into a sticking point with my husband on that issue as well. He is used to electric and fears fumes from the gas since we do not have the ability to vent to outside w/o a huge renovation project bigger than we are planning at this point, even though we do have other gas appliances, including a gas furnace, hw weater and dryer, and I realize that gas stoves today do not have pilot lights anymore (like Mom's did). It is just something he cannot get his head around, and since I am used to electric now and has done me well, I will continue down that road and not have to deal with his ultra-sensitive sense of smell! I actually do like the baking part of electric ovens better, and I am sure that the advancement in electric cooktops has been great compared to 25+ years ago, so I think I will be very satisfied with this. So there, I have now bared my soul on why I have chosen electric over gas or induction! All I ask is for a good quality stove with a good track record and some nice features to make my life a little easier. Hope you can understand my reasoning, but thank you for bringing it to my attention :)!! Oh, and also about the knobs, yes I agree, it is not a deal-breaker and I'm sure I could live with not having solid metal knobs, just don't want to have to keep replacing them, tho.

Another take on the induction question with a little sprinkle of humor. https://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/induction-cooking-emf-magnitude-vs-other-things-missus-is-a-bit-concerned/  Tim says, Ugh... If she's worried about cancer... dump her now? There's no convincing someone like that, to understand statistics and significance. At least that I've heard of. If you're looking for the opinion of an EE, I would gladly give you my opinion on the subject -- if you'd like it in writing, I can even sell your wife a certificate saying as much! Maybe that wouldn't help. I don't know. What are we talking about, anyway? Cooktops aren't always-on. They're either off until turned on, or pulsing infrequently to check if a pot is present. The RMS EMF at the surface is not very large either way, when not actively heating something. When heating, it's only large under the work being heated. EMF drops off rapidly with distance. If your wife is so strange that she finds it enjoyable to read books while laying over the cooktop, I might be concerned, but only for mental health reasons, not for EMF reasons. Or if shoving her head towards a pot that's being heated, I would be more concerned for safety reasons, and then mental health reasons... There are biological effects of EMF, but not at these field strengths. Not by orders of magnitude. The primary effect is simply dumb old heating. Diathermy machines, microwave ovens, and the military's ADS, operate on this mechanism. There is no biological effect beyond heating (obviously, too much heat and you cause burns, but that's not unique to EMF). Strong pulsed fields can induce voltages in neural tissue (transcranial magnetic stimulation), which do have direct neural effects, but these are temporary. Anything that produces fields with too little energy to cause noticeable heating, or pulse peaks strong enough to cause noticeable induction, is completely and utterly inconsequential. Example: ESD can have quite large (peak) EMF, but is over very quickly, and delivers very little energy (on a human scale). (Anyway, sparks are well known to cause people to involuntarily jump or twitch. But again, that's just a neural stimulation thing, nothing more.)