I think that in a competitive environment, one gets what he pays for, or a bit less. Competitiveness includes an assumption of wide dissemination of relevant facts -- not always true of residential kitchen renovation products. In such cases, time and effort are required to find needed facts, or at worst, gather informed opinions. If Chinese kitchens are spec'd to a higher standard, then they may get a higher standard. However, what matters to a kitchen's productivity versus what matters to a residential kitchen built partially for show (or at least decent aesthetics) can vary. A commercial kitchen that is heavily used in an environment where absolute cleanliness is not considered important, can use lower cost but just as strong metals as what we might choose for perpetual shininess in our own kitchens. Whether lower gauge (thicker) metals are called for depends on what physical hazards the sheet metal parts have to resist. Put yourself in the shoes of a Chinese head cook in a Beijing hotel restaurant. He has a tile lined kitchen and a stove that may be burning coal, or gas, with at least 100k BTU available from each of several ports/burners. Multiple cooks are moving about. Apprentices are washing metal cookware in metal or stone sinks. Imagine what level of noise is present. Would the cook care if there was a rattle due to imperfectly fitted baffles? It is best to decide what one's own requirements are, and then evaluate the candidate solutions for those requirements against how well they appear to meet them. kas

CWirick: I know it's been a while, but just curious if you got your Ancona rangehood sorted? We're considering the 900cfm option, too; like you, because of the good price. Which one did you get? Here is a link that might be useful: Costco's Ancona rangehoods

Time for an update. 5 months (to the day) after receiving the NXR, it is finally installed. I ran into issues with cabinets and after exploring all options I could think of, finally gave up and installed the NXR as is. No range hood at this time until a kitchen remodel can be done and that is simply not in the budget anytime soon. The space I had to fit the NXR in is 30 1/8 inches wide. So I was a bit nervous about that. The main problem we ran into was the rear legs digging into the linoleum and stopping rearward progress. The guy helping me had a great idea and we dry soaped a couple of yardsticks, put them under the feet, and slid the range into that tight space. The adjustable feet were not very cooperative. We removed the toe kick and sorta had access to the front feet and no access to the rear feet. We could get one side to adjust, but not the other. The feet would not budge. The mistake we made was sliding the range in place before testing the foot adjustment. So we ended up shimming the left side feet. And finding a level reference was challenging too. I ended up using the oven racks as they seemed to be different from the front lip. I see no signs of any damage to the porcelain. The range was well packed and arrived without incident. I ran the burn in process. That is definitely stinky! And I am amazed at the burner control. From high, there are 3 steps ending in a simmer that looks barely enough to warm your hand. I had to turn off the kitchen lights just to see the flame at simmer. I bought a ChefAlarm and rack clip from Thermoworks to calibrate the oven. I hope to have time to do that soon. Testing oven accuracy Here are some pics of the burners. In the 4 burner shot, the lower left is high, then 1 click down going clockwise until the bottom right is at simmer. So far, I'm quite pleased with the NXR. I just need a new kitchen to go along with it! Edit: one thing I noticed (and it may be entirely normal) is that 30 minutes or so after doing the burn in process for the oven, the top of the oven door and the lip remained too hot to touch. Is that normal?

I agree! I love Costco, too! I'm hoping the NXR will be relatively quiet and function well, but ours won't be in for about 2 weeks (as long as we stay on schedule). I can provide an update once it's in, but that may not help you much since it sounds like you'll have yours around the same time. I will say that it looks substantial and high quality, so hoping its function is on par with its looks! The bit about removing the NXR logo was something I found while searching the forum. Here's the link: NXR badge removal. I didn't find any user reviews either, unfortunately, so I based my decision on the few reviews on the Costco website and Kobe hood reviews. The NXR has the same instruction manual as the Kobe CH-100 SQB-1. The only difference I could find was that the NXR has halogen lights while the Kobe CH-100 SQB has LEDs.