The only thing the Thermador didn't have was a convection fan. It was self clean, broil, timed bake, bake, micro, broil/micro, bake/micro with a low, medium or high setting for the microwave. I personally rarely used the microwave only setting since I had a stand alone microwave. From what I understand that is why it went out of favor with consumers - it was a poor micro-only oven. Now as to the design flaws of the built-in Jenn-Air convection/microwave, I'm going to be adding to this so I don't make any mistakes and misrepresent it. I rarely use the Jenn-Air convection/microwave any more. My biggest complaint is that it turns itself off. I'll preheat it, hear the bell that it reached temperature and when I'm finished prepping find the oven has turned off. It will only preheat for a certain amount of time and after that time has been reached, it will exhaust the heat from the oven. A second complaint is the temperature fluctuation - more frequently lower than higher. The temperature is displayed on the digital readout. Heaven forbid that you open the door to check on your food, it takes forever to re-reach the set temperature. The oven was half programmed correctly. The oven does permit one to set the convection/roast/microwave to any combination one would desire. It's the convection/bake/microwave that can't be set other than the reprogrammed settings. So the capability is there - just incomplete. There is one thing that we do use the oven for regularly and that is reheating pizza, pancakes and waffles on the crisper pan. If you are into convenience foods then this oven is for you. There are just two of us and we both cook so normally we would use the smaller convection/microwave oven more - we don't because of our frustration with the product. As I had said we did use the GE convection/microwave more than our full-sized oven. I will be adding to this post. There are more complaints. I just want to document them correctly.

This is tough because it is going into my 90 year old's mother's house, where she will not be able to understand any bells and whistles, BUT I own the house, and ultimately will be living in it. We probably won't be baking everyday, but I will be retired in a few years, and I'm sure we will use our kitchen more often. I don't need top of the line, but I don't want low end either. I looked at the GE Profile as one of my options with the Advantium 120. People were critical of the Advantium, but I think that may be older models? Well, the Miele with a Masterchef on top would be too cool, but I think that tops $6k. I was probably looking at around $3k, unless you convince me otherwise. ;-)

In order of best to worst taste: 1. pizza cooked in an Advantium using convection 2. pizza cooked in an Advantium 240 using speed cook 3. pizza cooked in an Advantium 120 using speed oook 4. pizza cooked in an Advantium using microwave only Option 1 is slow, but yields real-oven results. After all it's oooking like a conventional electric oven does except that a fan is helping to move the heated air around. Option 2 tastes almost as good. The conventional heating elements combine with heat emitted by halogen bulbs above and below the food, adding some microwaves to speed things further. But with 2900 watts of halogen lamps and ceramic heaters above and below the food, and 1500 watts of convection heat, only a small percentage of the cooking needs to be handled by up to 975 watts of microwaves. The result is foot that is cooked, according to GE, 8 times as fast as with a conventional oven, whilst retaining a crisp real-oven taste and texture. It comes very close for something cooked in just a few minutes, thanks to being able to combine several high-powered cooking methods at the same time. Option 3 is speedcooking in an Advantium 120. Here things get problematic - GE claims the A120 can cook 8 times faster than a conventional oven, vs. 4 times faster than the A240. What they don't make clear is that the A120 is not only constricted by having access to only half the wattage as the A240, it also has to get by with half the amperage too - 15 amps rather than 30. And since watts = amps x volts, the A240 has access to four times the cooking power than the A120 - a powerful 7,200 watts (240v x 30a) rather than the measily 1,800 watts (120v x 15a) that the A120 must get by with. The result is that in order to deliver food twice as fast as the A240 as promised, it makes much higher use of microwave cooking in the speed-cooking modes than the A240 does. So not only does your food take twice as long to cook, it still has a hint of that soggy microwaved texture that is largely filtered out by the A240. After all, the 240 can have the halogen bulbs and the convection element on at the same time, whereas the 120 must cycle between the two, or mix a moderate amount of halogen or convection heat with more microwaves than would be ideal. Option 4 - you already know how pizza cooked heated up in a microwave oven tastes. One last note - the over-the-cooktop Advantiums are rather shallow front-to-back, a result made necessary to squeeze between 12" deep wall cabinets. The round plate in an OTR Advantium is 13" wide. The built-in wall-oven Advantiums (with the drop-down door) fit into 24" deep cabinets and thus have a much deeper oven cavity - 16" round trays are included. A large pizza won't fit into an over-the-range Advantium.

We're getting the Wolf Combi Steam + Wall Oven. Haven't used them yet (a broken granite slab is pushing the install dates back), but our plan is that we'll probably use the steam oven most of the time, and the big oven just for holidays, or when we need a second oven or the broiler. Again, not speaking from experience just yet, but my understanding is that we'll probably use the steam oven for a lot of things that we currently do in the microwave (like reheating leftovers). My wife has never been a big microwave fan anyway, so we'll probably just continue with our small countertop model. I would personally rather leave out the drawer microwave and invest that money in a full-size traditional oven. I don't think Wolf ever said that their steam oven has broiler like capabilities. They do say that they can somehow brown the outside of meat with a combination of heat and steam. As long as you'll have at least one oven with a broiler though, I don't see that the lack of a broiler on the Wolf should sway your purchase decision. Finally, keep in mind that the Wolf 30" steam oven is really a 24" oven with a bigger faceplate that matches their traditional ovens. It only goes up to 450 degrees as well, so I'm not sure that your pizza stone will do you much good.