We just built a second home and I spent many hours reading about and looking at all of the more moderately priced gas ranges. I have a 48" Dacor that we've had to 12 years - love it - but bought a Frigidaire gas range for the cottage and it is surprisingly good. The burners are in a couple of different sizes - one small and one for a quick boil - there is an oval burner for a griddle in the middle. The oven heats really fast and no trouble at all baking. The racks don't feel as sturdy as the Dacor, and it seems a little bit less insulated, but all in all for a range under $100 I think it is a winner ! Frigidaire had consistently good reviews on their gas ranges.

A few thoughts... Stuff never lasted forever in the good old days...but in college in the 1990s one of my apartments had a fridge from the 1960s that was still working. Nowadays, things aren't made to last very long at all. The ROHS no-lead initiative, though a nice idea on paper, was probably a clever form of planned obsolescence. Superficial testing says it is ok. But no long term testing has proven that lead-free solder won't eventually form tin whiskers...little connections between circuit traces that cause the destruction of the boards. Moist environments like kitchens will hasten this kind of demise. Companies see repairs as money making opportunities. I had an outboard effects unit that was about 10 years old die on me. Harman Audio at the time wanted $500 to even -start- to diagnose the problem. Because it was a pro piece of equipment with XLR outputs...you're a pro, you must be rich and be able to expense everything. I looked into it myself. The power supply was dead - it turns out most serious electronics made since the mid 90s have sets of standardized switching power supplies with matching pin outs and board standoffs. It took a while to track and x-ref various manufacturer codes, but I found a power supply board that fit in the exact same spot and had leads with the exact same voltages. It was $50 from Mouser. Harman would surely have marked up this power supply so repair costs would have been 500+100+(30x2) for UPS shipping both ways...probably $630. Likewise I needed some opamp ICs on a mixer swapped out. After many, many hours of searching, I found a guy in Baltimore who does such replacements, he did about 15 chips for something like $75. Did an excellent job, you would not even recognize it had been resoldered. Point is, SOMEONE out there would know how to fix almost ANYTHING you might own, ALMOST all of the time. Sure, sometimes rare or custom ICs die and there's no replacing them, but 80-90% of the time its capacitors or simpler discrete components. Though a fridge compressor can die, more often it's the thermal switch or some other replaceable part. The challenge is you may never be able to find the good ones who will actually do this kind of work well, and correctly. I'm not even that into appliances but I've read many threads like this one, on various websites, so the experience is far from unique. When I replaced my fridge last year, I spent hours reading online reviews. It seems these days you are either lucky and get one that really passed all its QC checks or you get a lemon that the manufacturer let slip out the door.

My kitchen had all Frigidaire Gallery Professional appliances. They were installed in 2000, by the house's previous owner. The refrigerator died in 2012 (12 years life), I forget what the problem was but some fluid was pooling under the unit and the repairman said it couldn't be fixed (part not available). The range died this month (16 years) and it will cost $600 to fix the multiple problems, including circuit board, temperature sensors, and LCD display (but the burner that won't self-light cannot be fixed, part NLA). The dishwasher still works, but the door cladding has come off its frame a few times, the springs that lower the door have broken, the lower rack is missing half its wheels, so we'll replace it next year (17 years). I'm not sure if 12-16 years is generally considered a good service life for modern appliances, but I don't think it is acceptable. I replaced the refrigerator with a commercial True T49. We just ordered a new range, an American Range ARROB636. Now I'm shopping for dishwashers. In general, I'm looking for the simplest models with as few electronics as possible.

When I looked at Whirlpool ranges a few years ago their convection ovens had just a fan in the back without the additional heating element around the fan so they were not "True" convection or "European" convection. They also only offered the Aqua Lift (steam) for self cleaning on their convection ovens and there were a lot of complaints about how that did not work to clean up baked on grease. Whirlpool did not offer the self cleaning option where very high heat is used to burn off the grease in their convection ovens. People also were complaining because the spray on, chemical grease cleaners could not be used in the Whirlpool convection ovens because it would damage them. So the bottom line was - there really was no way to clean up grease in the Whirlpool convection ovens. Here's a link to some conversation about the problem in this forum where they discuss Maytag and Whirlpool ranges have the same problem since Whirlpool also makes Maytag ranges and they also make KA ranges.