Best Gas Ranges of 2019

Best Gas Ranges of 2019 - Reviews of Gas Ranges

Since we first started reviewing gas ranges in 2014, we have spent about 100 hours researching gas ranges, and although we found several that do remarkably well, our top pick is the LG LRG4115ST stainless steel gas range. With this stove, you get a 6.3-cubic-foot oven with seven oven rack positions so you can position numerous pans, casserole dishes and ceramic cookware the way you want. The heating element on the back of the oven and its powerful fan ensure the heat will circulate evenly. With a rapid-boil burner among the five on the stovetop, you can bring foods to a boil fast, and the central oval heating area makes a great spot for a griddle. Cleaning the oven is easy; you don’t need smelly commercial products since it uses water to clear away the grime.

Best Overall

LG LRG4115ST

The LG LRG4115ST free-standing gas range with its versatile five-burner cooktop and its 6.3-cubic-foot oven is so multidimensional, it can make meal preparation easy even for an inexperienced cook. This range provides an exceptionally big oven that offers three oven racks and seven rack positions.

The LG convection oven features a heating element on the back of the stove for better heat distribution and food that comes out evenly baked or roasted. A lower-level food drawer lets you keep already-cooked foods or premade dinner rolls toasty. For safety precautions, the oven offers a timed automatic shutoff function and a child lock.

The right front burner provides ultra-fast heat that reaches 18,500 Btu, so you can bring food to a rolling boil quickly. You also get an oval central heating zone that lets you use a griddle on top. A precision 5,000 Btu burner lets you simmer food or melt butter, and a 12,000 Btu burner lets you cook the bulk of your food without overcooking.

Metal control knobs span the front of this range, and they’re slightly tilted toward you for easier access. Some cooks might not like controls there since they can be accidentally bumped and turned on. The stovetop has a porcelain-coated finish that makes cleanup easy. The cooktop pan beneath the metal grates curves upward around the burners and edges. That way, if a pot boils over or you spill something, the mess can be wiped up easily. You don’t need dangerous chemicals for cleaning the oven either since it self-cleans with water in just minutes.

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Best Value

GE JGB700SEJSS

The LG LRG4115ST free-standing gas range with its versatile five-burner cooktop and its 6.3-cubic-foot oven is so multidimensional, it can make meal preparation easy even for an inexperienced cook. This range provides an exceptionally big oven that offers three oven racks and seven rack positions.

The LG convection oven features a heating element on the back of the stove for better heat distribution and food that comes out evenly baked or roasted. A lower-level food drawer lets you keep already-cooked foods or premade dinner rolls toasty. For safety precautions, the oven offers a timed automatic shutoff function and a child lock.

The right front burner provides ultra-fast heat that reaches 18,500 Btu, so you can bring food to a rolling boil quickly. You also get an oval central heating zone that lets you use a griddle on top. A precision 5,000 Btu burner lets you simmer food or melt butter, and a 12,000 Btu burner lets you cook the bulk of your food without overcooking.

Metal control knobs span the front of this range, and they’re slightly tilted toward you for easier access. Some cooks might not like controls there since they can be accidentally bumped and turned on. The stovetop has a porcelain-coated finish that makes cleanup easy. The cooktop pan beneath the metal grates curves upward around the burners and edges. That way, if a pot boils over or you spill something, the mess can be wiped up easily. You don’t need dangerous chemicals for cleaning the oven either since it self-cleans with water in just minutes.

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Most Versatile

Samsung NX58F5700WS/AA

The Samsung NX58F5700WS/AA can do so many tasks, you can let your inner Julia Child loose. This multipurpose five-burner cooktop comes with an elongated oval heating area and a griddle, so you can cook items that need a flat heating surface.

You also get a wok grate to place on top of a burner, so your round-bottom wok won't just sit in the cupboard. You get a rapid-heating burner as well as a lower-temperature simmer burner, so you can simultaneously whip up pasta on one and gently melt chocolate on the other.

The 5.8-cubic-foot oven is equipped with seven oven rack positions and three racks, two of which are the standard wire racks. The third is a rack that glides on ball bearings so you can safely ease it out of the oven to check on a big, heavy roast with less worry of getting burned.

There are a couple of drawbacks: The stovetop operates with knobs on the front, which can be accidentally bumped, and the electronic controls for the oven are on the back, which means you must reach across the burners to get to them. However, this gas range's few flaws are outshone by its many useful features. You get a delay-cook function so you can pop a meal into the oven on a busy day and come back to a hot dinner. It also features a handy warming drawer, even convection heating and an extra-large oven window.

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Longest Warranty

Maytag MGR6600FB

The Maytag MGR6600FB is a large-capacity, 5.8-cubic-foot gas range with plenty of power and functionality to cook food for a big family.

The five burners have continuous grates and cooking variability between 5,000 and 15,000 Btu, which is not as broad as some of the other ranges in our lineup, but will still let you cook with power and precision. The Maytag’s warranty stands out among the ranges we looked at. Like all the ranges in our lineup it has a limited one-year parts and labor warranty, but many of its parts have a limited warranty of up to 10 years. These parts include cooktop burners, oven burners, cast-iron metal grates and cavity. This gives you confidence that this is a product with some longevity. It is solidly built and functional, though it doesn’t have a lot of extras like convection functions.

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Best Convection Cooking

Electrolux EI30GF45QS

The Electrolux EI30GF45QS is a solidly built oven with several extras that let you cook food the way you want. The oven capacity is limited at 4.5 cubic feet and the range is pricey, but extras like convection cooking will make it a good fit for the right home chef.

The convection cooking in the comparatively small space will let you bake food evenly and lock in flavor. The oven has a powerful 14,200 Btu broiler. The oven has three racks and five rack positions that let you vary the space somewhat. Given the limited space, you’ll have to remove the top rack if you’re cooking a big item like a Thanksgiving turkey, but the gliding rack makes basting quick and easy. The stove’s five burners have a variability between 5,000 and 18,000 Btu, which gives you all the power and precision you will need. The cooktop has an elongated burner with an integrated griddle.

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Why Trust Us 

We spent 100 hours researching gas ranges to find the best ones, but with the idea that every cook who favors a gas range has an individual cooking style and wants different features for the stovetop and oven. That’s why we searched for a variety of gas ranges.

We examined features including the types and number of burners, the Btu levels for the burners, whether you get a griddle/grill area, whether the grill/griddle comes with the range, the oven size, the number of oven racks and rack slots, the type of heating used for baking and roasting, and more.

We also considered price since that is a key consideration for many consumers. While some cooks will spend plenty to get every feature they want on a gas range, more budget-minded people choose a range that fits their pocketbook and still has the capabilities they find most useful in cooking. For some, it might be a rapid-boil burner; others want lots of oven rack positions for baking. Still others need a Sabbath mode to keep food safely warm for hours for religious reasons.

We consulted with professionals and did extensive online research, reading blogs and dozens of customer and professional reviews, to get insights into the cooking performance of different models and select some of the best models out there.

Professional cooks often prefer gas ranges and cooktops because of the control it gives you when cooking. You have immediate control over the temperature and can visually adjust the heat by looking at the size of the flame. Blogs like Olga’s Flavor Factory and BuildDirect attest to this. Olga also feels that gas cooktops are easier to clean, though she acknowledges that many people feel electric cooktops are easier. Having the ability to wash the grates in the sink and clean out the nooks and crannies underneath, she feels, is an advantage.   

Jill Canty, the author of the BuildDirect gas range blog, provides helpful advice about installing a gas range. She said that before buying a gas range it’s important to pay attention to details like if you have the right amount of space for it and determining if there is a gas connection where you want it installed. These blogs agree that gas ranges are cost effective in the long run. A gas range may cost as much or even more than an electric range to buy initially, but gas ranges cost less to run.

We talked to Nick Cash, a former restaurant owner from Utah. He and his brother owned and operated the Bistro 258, a beloved restaurant in Ogden, Utah, for eight and a half years. Cash said they used gas in his restaurant for everything upstairs and on the main floor. They used an electric oven in the basement for baking bread and roasting vegetables. This was a good arrangement because gas would have been disallowed downstairs due to a lack of ventilation. “Gas was clean and quick to ignite, especially for the type of demand in a restaurant,” Cash said.

As for cooking at home, he said his wife Jolene loves to cook on a gas cooktop. “She loves having instantaneous flame and heat,” he said. However, he said Jolene is not crazy about a gas oven because she feels it tends to distribute heat less evenly than an electric oven. Cash acknowledged that their gas oven does not have convection capabilities, which could dramatically improve the heat distribution problem his wife has experienced. For these reasons, Cash says their next range will consist of a gas cooktop and an electric convection oven.

How We Researched

To find the best gas ranges, we combed the internet, looking for models that would suit a wide range of cooks, but at a reasonable range of prices to accommodate all our readers. We read manufacturers’ websites as well as the details in user manuals, checked the warranties, called manufacturers to ask questions, and carefully studied consumer reviews. A key element in our investigation was whether a particular gas range could adapt to different styles of cooking so you could, for example, make Mexican food one night, Chinese the next and down-home Southern comfort food another day. We also considered how these gas ranges would look in your kitchen since free-standing gas ranges are an integral part of the kitchen decor. Any gas range worth its salt should look attractive and be relatively easy to clean.

What to Look for in a Gas Range

Cooking Capabilities
The best gas ranges give you burners to fit different pans and let you adjust the flame and heat levels. Most cooks appreciate a stovetop with dedicated burners for certain tasks, such as a burner with a quick boiling function or a warming burner so you can keep foods hot without scorching them. A continuous and level cast-iron grate across the top allows you to safely slide a full, heavy pot from one area to the next without having to lift it.

Pricing
The gas ranges in our lineup are priced between about $600 and $2,000, though the majority are well under $1,000. A search on the Home Depot and Lowe's websites reveals that top selling gas ranges start out as low as $450 up to more than $4,000. The pricier ones have special features like double ovens. If you are interested in a double oven gas range, there are some nice midrange options like the GE JCB860EEJES that also has the advantage of convection baking. Slide-in gas ranges with front controls are also more expensive than the free standing ranges in our lineup that have controls in the back. The Electrolux EI30GF45QS is the most expensive gas range in our lineup. It is a slide-in range with plenty of extras, including convention technology, and it has a wide Btu range. It’s capacity, however, is smaller than many more economically priced ranges in our lineup.

Extras
Extras like an elongated burner and an integrated griddle allow the cook to whip up dishes ranging from pancakes to paninis. Many cooks also like a delay-start function, and it's useful to have a gas range with a warming pan so you can keep foods like dinner rolls warm while the rest of a meal is cooking on the stovetop itself.

Easy Cleanup 
Look for a gas range with sealed burners that can easily be wiped clean. It's also a good idea to look for a recessed pan on the stovetop because it catches any liquid spills or drips and keeps them right there. Many gas ranges come with self-cleaning functions that heat up and burn away oven messes, but it's also quite helpful to have an extra steam-cleaning function that uses water to help steam debris off the oven interior.