There are many excellent brands out on the market today. I own a Futuro Futuro hood and I'm happy with it. Several of my friends own different brand range hoods and they are happy with them too. It depends on how much or often you cook to better determine which hood is best for you. What size is your stove going to be? What is your price range? You might want to wait for the New Year prices to hit before you purchase a hood - you may be able to get a better deal for a hood that's out of your price range now. Call a few companies or stores who sell several brands and ask them if they are expecting sales on some brands after the new year. Good luck to you and your search.

ccoombs1 and megma, Thanks for pointing out the Elite 6400 series. I looked up the specs last night and it seems to be a good fit for everything I'm looking for and I saw it online for about $200 less than the Kobe CH-91. However, I noticed that at highest CFM it's a whopping 13.5 sones (compared to the Kobe's high of 4.5 sones and that one goes up to 720 CFM). Do you find this to be a big issue? I know megma, you said you usually are able to keep it on the low, but I'm assuming every now and then you'd need to crank it up to high...just wondering exactly how loud that is? It seems that most reviews for the Broans the one main complaint is fan noise. festusbodine, thanks for the eBay tip. I have started to search the listings to see if any of the models I'm interested in come up. I don't know a whole lot about the Kitchenaid models, though.

A decade ago @clinresga measured the noise performance of two comparable systems, one by Vent-a-Hood and one conventional, and reported here that the VaH was louder. Newer VaH blowers may have reduced noise. I have not read of any measurements of recent systems that would allow comparison. However, given that blade tip turbulence dominates, a VaH fan at the cook will always be louder than a axial or radial fan well away from the cook, particularly if a Fantech silencer can be fitted into the intermediate duct. If the hood is on a wall with an internal blower or with a same power immediately outside wall blower, then both will likely be similarly noisy unless the outside blower is oversized and run at reduced power.

This is a city apartment so most heat is provided through steam radiators heated by a huge multi-million BTU industrial boiler in the basement with no furnace in the apartment itself. The apartment has a central air conditioning system with 3 zones and a 2.5 ton air handler for each zone. The other two zones are a/c only, but the kitchen's zone will have an electric heating coil. A 2.5 ton air handler has 30,000 BTU capacity, which according to your chart, is enough to heat 30 degrees at 1200 CFM. The MUA is drawn from a distant exterior vent over 50 feet away from the kitchen zone's air handler through the return air ducting, so the MUA will mix with the rest of the apartment's already heated (or cooled) return air as it moves from the exterior through the apartment to the kitchen zone's air handler. As a result, the outdoor air will be tempered with a lot of 65-75 degree air before it ever hits the handler to be conditioned. As it was described to me, even if the outdoor temperature is 20 or 30, by the time it gets to the handler, we won't ever need to heat more than the 30,000 BTU air handler's capacity.