GE Cafe Series CGS986SELSS 30" Slide-In Range with Warming Drawer - Stainless Steel

This range is a complete lemon. We bought it when we renovated our kitchen. The electrical panel had to be replaced twice within 2 years because the oven settings wouldn't work. It looks nice but not good quailty.

Control panel went after 5 years... $500 to replace. Decided to just buy another brand to replace.

I like this unit. It is attractive and after a month of use I find it well designed. I learned the hard way there are several key features in this kind of range (dodged a bullet with the purchase and then before-15-day return of the Jenn-Air version).The front panel must be more or less vertical, not horizontal or you can't see the clock from across the room, it gets covered in cooking grease and the knobs get uncomfortably hot to touch when the front burners are used. Check.The griddle must have sufficient burner power or it is semi-useless and this unit has the best solution of any in its price range with a total of 6 useful burners rather than the more standard 4 useful and 1 oddly shaped useless one. Check.I did not give it 5 stars for two reasons.The first is that while the stock griddle is a wonderfully solid chuck of cast iron it comes with a surface so rough it would take years to season, so I had to spend an entire morning grinding it smooth with a power sander.Second, and this is a problem with the entire market of these kinds of ranges, the cooling fan (not the convection fan) is very loud, on the order of 75 decibels. I got the level down to a more ignorable 70 db by taking the back sheet metal off, installing sound deadener on the fan shroud and replacing the sheet metal while ensuring it was tensioned against itself. Further quieting could be achieved by a little more careful engineering of the intake surfaces. I feel like for $3000 GE should have done this engineering (and ground down the griddle) for me.

After a solid decade of service, we decided to replace our slide-in GE Profile range with a Café series model.Pros:- Oven heats up more quickly than previous ones- More burners than the Profile that we replaced- Burners are higher-output, and the dual-ring high output burner has a smaller flame ring, so you can turn it on full blast on slightly smaller pots and pans- Installation was a cinch- Includes a cast-iron griddle for use over the middle two burnersCons:- The range is a little bit deeper than the old GE Profile I replaced by about an inch and a half. While it fit in perfectly width-wise into the counter's cutout, it sticks out a bit more than the older range.- The warming drawer is smaller than the storage drawer on the GE Profile.- Cleaning the cooktop is a bit trickier with this range -- the old Profiles had a glassy ceramic top which you could scour with your usual ceramic cleaner and use a razor blade for super-stuck on stuff. This one is all metal, and there are no removable trays which you can replace. Warm soapy washcloths and stainless steel cleaner are your friends.Indifferent:- WiFi/Bluetooth (do I really need the ability to preheat my oven while sitting on the couch? Is it a selling point that I don't have to reach up to press a button to turn on my range hood when turning on the stove?)- The Café series is definitely a "musical" range in terms of the sounds it makes to let you know your oven is pre-heated, or your timed bake is over, etc. A definite change from the single kind of "beep beep" the Profile made.

I bought this product from a local retailer (not amazon), but I saw it on here and since I love it so much - I thought I'd tell you. The only down side is the front controls are a bit sensitive. For example, I'm 5'2" and weigh about 115 lbs. and when I stand close to the stove or reach across, it often randomly turns a control on - I have wondered how someone with more substantial body weight or a tummy would do cooking on this.... but other than that..... love this stove!!!