General comments are possible but the "better" question cannot be answered with just the information provided. With the caveat that metallurgy isn't my field: 300 series corrosion resistant steels (CRES) include nickel and chromium with the iron and are non-magnetic. They may take a better surface finish as seen on stainless flatware. 400 series CRES do not have nickel. They are more corrosion resistant under some conditions, not normally applicable to a kitchen hood. They may allow better (less brittle) welds. They are magnetic. Color may differ due to the nickel, which by itself is yellower than chromium due to lower reflectivity in the blue end of the spectrum. My Wolf branded, made by Independent, Pro Island hood is non magnetic and presumably a 300 series stainless steel. Welds look good to me, but the cost was high enough to pay for quality work. I have a decades old magnetic Revere Ware pan that works on my induction cooktop. It is presumably made with a 400 series steel. The steel is less shiny inside than similarly old Farber Ware pans that are non-magnetic, presumably 300 series stainless, and not usable with induction. (Note that stainless steels are not truly stainless, just stain resistant. I had to use phosphoric acid to clean the hood extension of factory supplied fingerprints. Brushed stainless is harder to clean with polishes than smooth stainless.) kas

So glad to come across this post. I am in nearly the same position. A 30" gas Kenmore Elite is supposed to show up next week and I am not excited! Nearly all my research on the Kenmore was positive and price wise it was good. I wanted a 30" gas burner, convection oven, slide in. Reading not so good reviews on the GE Cafe or any others such as KA or Electrolux (and and a significant up in price from the Kenmore) - sent me to the Kenmore. But honestly I don't trust the back control panel to last long & really don't like the look or need the features. I just want to turn the stove and burners on and off. We seriously considered the Bertazzoni but the oven was way too small (it is very pretty and basic functioning) and next thing we know are looking at Wolf for more than 3x the price of the Kenmore! It is amazing how you can mentally upgrade. We love to cook but spent the last 4 years with an ancient hotpoint that only had three functioning burners and was fine (my husband not so much :) I am glad to hear good things about the Cafe & others. Any more input on those 30" slide in "mid range" stoves - KA, Electrolux, GE - would be wonderful. And I am going to check out the NXR. Thanks.

I don't think you will notice after a while. Mine is off by about 1" on the left, because the *&^&%$ range hood is a full inch less wide than the rangetop (I swear I bought a 48" range hood, not 47"!). But then again, we are DIY so I wasn't about to make my poor DH uninstall then reinstall all of the lower cabinets after it took him a full day in the first place; if we were paying someone for it, it might be a different story. If you choose to keep it, just make sure you don't do a stacked tile BS - you would probably definitely notice it then. Example of what not to do: http://www.peeltile.com/img/media/backsplash/layout.jpg

You can strive for affordability, performance, and aesthetics, but you can have only two. Performance includes both hood capture and containment, and hood system noise level; affordability includes the costs of both the ventilation system and any other changes or systems that make-up air requirements impose. For background, I suggest you review the myriad hood and MUA topics on this forum. There are also some good papers on kitchen ventilation out there, mainly commercial cooking oriented, but one can extrapolate. Greenheck is one manufacturer with a good paper on the subject. Various air quality boards have also produced them. Combining the search terms "kitchen ventilation" and "schlieren" will be productive. I don't have time right now to go over all the requirements and desirements that affect performance, so I'll limit myself to noting what I have installed because it or something like it would work for you. The hood is a Wolf Pro Island hood, 66 inches wide. (See Wolf Design Guide.) It adequately overlaps a 36-inch induction cooktop and a nearby Cooktek induction wok hob. Ducting is 10-inch, with a Fantech silencer in the path. A Wolf roof-top blower (actually made by Broan) terminates the ducting. It is rated at 1500 cfm at zero static pressure (which you won't have, so derate all cfm claims). The internal aperture of this hood is about 10 square feet and I achieve on high blower setting probably 90 cfm/square foot as desired for full capture with baffles (and probably meshes). One can converse along or across this hood at full power mainly limited by wok cooking sizzle. My last comment for now is: Ventilation power cost is at or near the top of all commercial kitchen expenses. The industry has spent a lot of effort attempting to have good cooking plume capture and containment for the least operating cost. From this you might deduce that commercial hoods are going to be fairly optimal for their purpose. Commercial plume capture and containment is not that different from our residential cooking plume capture and containment. Hence, the more a residential hood diverges in configuration from a commercial counterpart, the closer one must investigate to decide whether the trade-offs that were made for aesthetics do not impair the hood function more than you will tolerate. Once installed and your nose and ears make the final decision, it is too late. kas