I own the five burner stove that you are considering. I bought it about a month ago. Like you I was wondering if the 5th burner would be useful or not. Well, I have discovered that it is nice having more options. Also, note that the 5 burner has a 16.000 BTU burner and that is great when you have a large pot of water to bring to a boil! It is so much quicker! That right there is a huge plus to me. I don't use that burner too often because it is overkill when I am using a small pot, but I am very glad to have it. Also, I find that it is nice that I can very easily move a pot over to another burner without having to lift it up. Much easier to slide it, especially if it is a heavy pot. I don't know if the 4 burner stove has this, but the 5 burner stove has a convection oven (speed bake feature) and this is handy when I 'm baking and need to get dinner on the table in a hurry. It does save some time. Hope that helps.

Oh Man, this input rocks ; -) I can't tell you all how much I appreciate it!! We are sitting right now brainstorming on this knotty subject. It's good to hear that the bridge burner is making you all somewhat happy. I am seeing that the 8000 btu is an issue and I can see why. When I sear on my griddle/grill I crank up the two burners and even if it is a bit uneven on the heat distribution I am burning around 19,000 btu (two 9,500) so yeah 8000. That is something to think about. I mentioned I have been in this kitchen for a long time, I didn't mention the heavy use it gets. We have 4 full time adult residents, and most weeks we have at least one more person for 1 or 2 nights. When college is on break extra children and their room mates put us to 6 or 7. Over holidays the count climbs right up to 12. It isn't unusual for us to seat 16 for a holiday meal and I have done buffets for up to 30. For all that it is small it is pretty functional. That long run of counter allows me and my favorite sous' (the Spouse ; -) to really rock and roll in there. We call it the kitchenette two step. I run the DW almost everyday. That stays. I don't see the trade off for a 24" range giving me much advantage. The 6" cabinet gain would not be worth it, for me at least. We are looking hard at the undercounter wall oven and the countertop stove, but wall ovens have some issues; size mostly. You pay alot for SQ footage in those things, for what you get!! The spouse is looking at the Wolf M and saying it would fit. I know about the chipping issues. ARRRGH, The input about the replacement griddles is great to have. I had wondered about the lightweight alum with the non stick... Not surprised to hear it gives up pretty fast. The only non stick I really use is egg and omelet pans. If I could find cast iron with nice slopey sides for sliding omelets out I would prolly ditch all the non stick. Anyone have a bridge burner with enough BTUs to make them really happy? I have read about replacing burners, is that an option for the bridge (I would guess not, but you never know) How about countertop stoves with the 5th burner? anyone have a model they like? Again, can't tell you how much I appreciate all this!!

Thanks Joe, Hoping I can pick your brain a bit more; The 4 burner with all 18k btu sums up to 72k. The 5 burner sums up to only 42k. This makes NO sense to me and just seems like a lame marketing decision. The 36" has 6 18k burners and a total load of 108k. The 48" has 8 burners all 18k. All of these are the pro harmony build, essentially the same stove body just stretched or not. Visual inspection showed that the burners on all of these stoves were the same size, with the same number of gas ports in each burner. I think the BTU must be controlled by a valve under the actual burner element. Because of the uniformity I got the idea to explore finding and changing the part that determines the btu. Any additional thoughts? I know, no guarantees and do it at your own risk, but maybe possible?

Thank John for additional data point on BlueStar. 3min 40sec seems to be consistent with Trevor's test on Capital 3min 36sec with 25k BTU burner. For my AEG induction wok hob @ 3.2kW, it takes just 2min 52sec to evaporate 80ml of water. It is best however to see in pictures how this behaves. This is a 14" wok that fits the curvature rather well. It sits with bottom half or third touching the recess area. This is somewhere around where the water edge is. It is also around the area where induction coil locates. You can see the darker seasoned area. That's where the main heating zone and my main cooking zone is. At a few seconds in after the induction unit starts on P, we can see bubbles forming. That makes sense as it is the area where induction coil is. At 11sec, steam starts to form. Bubbles now form a solid ring around the edge. At 16sec, steam starts to fill up my cooking area. At 41sec, this is smoking hot wok. Water is boiling vigorously though out. It is a bit difficult to see with this amount of steam, but you know what it is. This show the amount of steam from a different angle. At around 2min mark, the huge heat from induction is dying down. This is mainly because the water level drops below the area of the induction coil. So it is entering the much cooler spot. The heat that keeps evaporating the water now is from conduction, which is not the best thing for thin carbon steel. You can see that it takes quite a long time to evaporate this very small amount of remaining water. The slight red glow clearly shows where the induction coil is. At last, we get there by 2min 52sec. Cheers to induction wok hob. You're the best.