I am not sure about either of those kitchen ranges but before you choose I would recommend that you check out our range hoods here on Houzz. We provide a wide variety of high quality range hoods in both style and function. Our hoods have been featured on Pottery Barn, and Houzz beautiful and more. What type of hood are you looking for? I would be happy to help you with any questions you many have. Feel free to reach out to us! We wish you the best of luck finding a range for your kitchen!

We purchased a 36" Capital Precision back in 2008 when we did our kitchen remodel and have been happy with it, absolutely no regrets!

I can't say the same for my inlaws who spent $7000 on a Viking induction pretty piece of junk:( I know you're not considering Viking..this is just a caution to other readers out there...

I have a 36" Capital Culinarian.

In your price range hands down get

American Range Performer Series ARROB430

Any idea how a bluestar compares to a capital? Their RCS line is very affordable.

I can't comment about how BS compares to Capital. I liked the look of the BS better than both Capital and American (for my kitchen) and I bought a six burner 36" BS RCS. I've had it since February and I love it! It cooks incredibly well, the burners are very powerful, I'm not sure what I'd do with higher btu's :-) I've mentioned this in another thread about the BS RCS, I don't sear meat. I could see having higher btu's for that could be helpful (I think both Capital and American have higher btu's than the RCS line), though fish sears great on the RCS. And the btu's on the RCS have plenty of power for stir frys. You won't feel lacking in power imo for either of those. The oven heats up fairly quickly for a 36" oven imo and bakes very evenly. Cookies, bread, pizza, roasted veggies, broiled fish all come out perfectly. I saw a comment on your other thread about 30" vs 36" range that a larger range requires a larger hood which costs more. Tis true! If you do decide to go with the 36" (or 30" for that matter) you might want to look at either a Prizer or a BS hood b/c you'll get a discount b/c you bought a range and hood together from the same manufacturer (or you should-ask if they don't offer it to you). Prizer is BS's parent company btw. Depending on your hood choice (model, cfm's you want) it might be less expensive to get one of these brands, saving you some money. Worth looking into anyway, not pushing you towards either :-)

Thank you for your positive comments on the RCS. Do you know how many cfm's and a hood I would need for a 36 inch RCS Bluestar range?

With six burners you'd probably want 900 cfm's. The rule of thumb I've read on various threads is add up the # of btu's total (leave off the zeros) and multiply by 10. So my RCS has 75K btu's with the 5 15K burners. Add in the simmer burner which I think is 9K btu's (not sure) so I needed 840 cfm's. So 900 cfm's should be sufficient. Although many recommend a hood larger than your range, ie... going with a 42" vs 36" hood over a 36" range, many people put the same size hood over their range and don't seem to have a problem. I'll let others chime in who know more about this than I do.

I'm getting the 36 RCS soon. Rules of thumb are just that, and getting the right hood depend on a number of factors (height from range, duct distance, duct turns, apperture area, CFMs, etc). Generally speaking, I'd argue 600CFM is acceptable, but 900+ would be better. 30" hood would be acceptable, but 42" would be better. 6" duct for lower CFM would be acceptable, but 8-10" would be better. It also depends on your style of cooking. A lot of spices, frying, wokking, etc? Go higher. Not much? 600 is probably fine.

Cost is also a tough factor. I will say this; I chose a hood that would take up as much space as possible my cabinet insert area (37.5"w x 18.5"d) with 8" max duct, so I found a 34"w x 18.0"d hood that has 1200 CFMs and 8" duct. I hate to say it since ProHoods keeps "spamming" the forum with self promotion, but the best specs I could find was in fact one of their models. And reasonably well priced. Otherwise I kept trading off on size/width of the hood, mesh instead of desired baffles, lower CFMs for the right size/duct, or too high of price.

Spend a few days and do some research, targeting 600CFM minimum and 1200CFM maximum.

I actually doubt how well 1200 CFM would work with 8" duct, although specs say that. VAH requires 10" for their 900 CFM, and 12" for 1200 CFM. Other reputable manufacturers have the similar requirements. I think if 1200 CFM can really work well with 8" duct, they would have lower the requirement already.

I agree, I'm sure 1200 is inflated. Sort of how Kobe has some 750 CFM hoods in 6" duct.

I feel your frustration. It took me months to decide. I received my 36 RCS a couple of weeks ago and so far I'm happy. I haven't put it through its paces yet due to my own time constraints and having to adjust to cooking with gas, but with my limited use thus far I can tell it's going to be fun to use. I went with a hood that was lower in power (750cfm) than I was originally looking for but it is a 42" and seems to do the job (but then again, anything is better than the recirculating OTR micro that I had before this!). Good luck!