You can find bad reviews of any product - if you look on Amazon for example, you can find bad reviews because people were shipped the wrong product. Also, every brand has an occasional lemon. What specifically did the reviews say? Kobe is generally well thought of.

djh...I wish I could answer your questions...but it's not hooked up yet!...so I really don't know. We thought about the fact that the center burner is 12,000 BTU compared to the 15-17,000 we saw on the other "pro-styles", but since we've been cooking with Halogen for the past 15yrs, after talking with other folks, we felt it wouldn't be an issue. I'll know more next week :) There other ranges are beautiful as well, and if we were doing a more classic/country kitchen, we would have done one of the other models with an enameled finish in a second. Jim

Hi, I lurked on here last year while our kitchen remodel was in full swing. At the time I noticed there wasn't much feedback about these ranges...we purchased a 30" dual fuel model anyway and we've been pretty happy with it. Likes: - the bridge burner and griddle - 18K BTU burner for wok cooking and water boiling - analog oven temp dial - convection oven - in-oven temp probe for roasts - looks Dislikes: - oven racks a little sticky pulling in and out, wish it had the roller racks - lack of fine burner control on the back left burner - ceramic range top kind of a pain to keep clean I found out that these ranges are made by Electrolux in Canada. The Pro ranges are essentially rebranded Electrolux Icon ranges with a few different bells/whistles. We got it from Sears for about $2800 on sale and at that price it was a no-brainer. If you can get it for that or less, I'd think its a great value for a pro-style range. Hope this helps. Chris

We have both gas (in the range) and electric (combination steam oven) ovens. I find that for the vast majority of dishes, the fuel source doesn't matter at all. Is there a strong reason why you are focused on dual fuel? Many of the dual fuel ranges these days have trouble with the coating on oven liners failing over time, and you end up with little bits of glass in your food. That's probably the majority of bad reviews you have been reading. Gas ovens anecdotally don't seem to suffer from this issue, and neither do ovens with stainless steel oven cavities (e.g. combination steam wall ovens). The only food where fuel source does make somewhat of a difference is artisanal bread. It prefers higher moisture during the initial oven spring, and gas ovens tend to be dryer than electric ovens that don't require the same type of vent. The solution is easy, I either bake in my steam oven or I use a cast iron Dutch oven when baking in the gas range. Then I can just keep the lid on for the first half of baking. I really enjoy cooking and baking with our Bluestar RNB range; wouldn't recommend buying the Platinum if baking is important to you. Our oven is very even and predictable, as long as you preheat it properly. And that can take between 20min and 40min. If you need faster preheat times, get a small 24" wall oven. They preheat in a few minutes and honestly do fill most of the cooking needs that we have. These days, I only use the Bluestar oven for its amazing broiler or when cooking very large meals.