I use consumer reports for trends, not specific items, as they tend to review things not available around here. (If Bosch is 3 of top 8 rated, I’ll look at what’s available.) I also look at reviews on Amazon (to see what people complain about) and other sites like Lowe’s and Airport Appliance or others. It gives me a general idea of what people do and don’t like.

When my last gas cooktop had to be replaced I called several appliance repair places to see what they would recommend as reliable. Well, as a chorus they all said to check the size of the hole and buy the one that fits. We had only two choices it turned out that would fit in the existing hole. One on the very cheap end and one on the high end. We ended up with the Wolf and I love it.

I don’t have any suggestions, but lots of sympathy; rotten timing!

Well I can’t offer any suggestions because what you can buy is totally different than what I can buy in Canada. And I have never had a cooktop. Just the plain old regular stove – everything in one piece of equipment.

I like the idea of Bosch and your edit sounds like you may have a winner.

But I must say the Bosch dishwasher we have at work has not impressed me one little bit. Design and operation are not great. Your cooktop mileage may vary- I sure hope so.

I had a Viking range and thought it a poor value. It was not well made and had few features for the price. . A good friend just researched extensively and got a Wolf cooktop. It has a chocolate tempering feature she really wanted.

If I were buying a new cooktop right now, it would definitely be an induction range. We had one for a few years at the last house and loved it. Instant heat – and instant off. And no flame or hot burner unit to catch anything that touches it on fire, sweaters or bags of rice that accidentally lean over and fall onto the hot stove or whatever. No emissions like gas has, and if there is no gas line already there, you get the performance of gas without the expense of the line. I don’t recall the brand we bought, sorry. They do require certain pots and pans – anything that a magnet will stick to – but we found a set on sale at Costco to cover the few pans we had that weren’t compatible and we were set.

We redid a kitchen 16 years ago and put in a Wolf cooktop. We cook, and probably used the cooktop 2-3 times per day (at least). Never had a problem with the top itself, although the knobs broke a couple of times (because they were plastic–go figure), but wolf replaced them. We have since moved, and are redoing our current kitchen, and again chose a wolf cooktop. We switched from Dacor ovens (saw the repair guy too many times), to a W
Wolf double oven. Excited to get cooking again (maybe in January!)