Best Slide-in Range for the money

Our family moved to a different house this spring. The house was wonderful, with the exception of the cheesy kitchen appliances. I don't compromise when it comes to kitchen appliances. I want the best quality and performance, without spending a small fortune. This range delivers both quality and performance, for around $2000. We purchased it from a local dealer instead of a "big-box" store and paid less than $1800.

The cooktop:
Four sealed burners including:
16,000 BTU burner in the front right
15,000 to 750 BTU "EvenThree" burner in the front left
9,200 BTU burner in the rear left
5,000 to 625 BTU burner in the rear right

Cast iron continuous grates with a matte finish

All the burners light quickly, and provide ample heat to get any cooking job done. The burner controls operate smoothly and adjust the flame fairly linearly. The burner knobs are huge, easy to grasp, and feel substantial. The burner valves also feel like they are of higher quality than you will find on other ranges. With other ranges we considered (even some Jenn-Airs) you can grab the knob and wobble it from side to side. This may just be a nit-picky thing on my part, but to me that just screams low-quality valves.

The cast iron grates are nice. The matte finish helps keep pans with a smooth finish on the bottom from sliding around, but also provides a texture for boil-overs to adhere to. Clean up hasn't been too bad. So far there haven't been any boil-overs that wouldn't come of with ample soaking and elbow grease.

The oven:
4.5 cubic feet of cavity
3 racks included
Multiple convection modes

The oven is where this range really shines. It has the largest cavity you will find in a Slide-in with convection. Jenn-Air provides three racks with this range, and in convection mode, they are all usable. The oven is set from the membrane pad control panel mounted front-and-center. The controls are menu driven and relatively intuitive, however the oven has so many features, options, and capabilities you should definitely read the manual that Jenn-Air provides. As the oven preheats, the control panel counts up the temperature by each degree, instead of much coarser 5 or 10 degree increments. The control panel also emits a much more civilized electronic "ding" instead of a shrill "beeeeeeeeep" when the oven has preheated, a timer has expired, or the meat probe has reached the set temperature. The oven temperature seems to be very even, in both conventional mode, and convection mode. I haven't done any scientific testing, but cookies, cakes, biscuits, etc. have all come out evenly browned on the bottoms and tops.

Note: The oven preheats using the broiler burner unless you select the "Rapid Preheat" option on the control panel. I have burned the tops of some items once or twice by sticking things in a little early. I also haven't timed the preheat cycle to determine just how much more rapid the rapid preheat is, but the oven heats pretty quickly, "Rapid Preheat" selected or not.

The oven shuts off automatically after twelve hours, unless you enable Sabbath mode. We're not Jewish, so we have never tried this feature.

I'm tall, and have to stoop or back up slightly to operate the control panel. It's not a big deal to me, but I thought I should mention it.

The range (oven in particular) has MANY more features than I have mentioned here. Jenn-Air makes the manual available as a PDF download at http://www.jenn-air.com. If you are considering purchasing this range, I highly recommend you download and peruse the user manual.