Possibly one of the least exciting purchases for your kitchen, a rangehood is a necessary but often overlooked purchase.
But it's one that's important to get right – choose poorly and you could be stuck with a noisy eyesore that doesn't do much to remove the heat, steam and smoke from your kitchen.
And given that rangehoods can range in price from $99 to over $2000, you'll want to make sure you're spending your money wisely to get the most suck for your buck.
"While you want your rangehood to suit the style of your kitchen, your choice should be based on more than aesthetics," says CHOICE rangehood expert Rebecca Ciaramidaro.
"Does it actually 'suck' steam and odours out of your kitchen, and can it do so without being too noisy? There's no point buying a rangehood that's so noisy you'd rather not use it at all.
"Also, consider the size of your cooktop when buying your rangehood. To work effectively the rangehood should be larger than your cooktop, especially for times when you're using multiple cooking zones at once."
At CHOICE, we test rangehoods on both ducted and recirculating modes, assessing how well they remove steam, how much noise they make on both low and high fan settings, and how easy they are to use and clean.
If you just want to know which ones perform best, check out our ducted rangehoods review or our recirculating rangehoods review.
The lowest scoring ducted rangehoods
"Ducted rangehoods work by sucking in odours and venting them outside; recirculating rangehoods suck the air through filters and then put the air back into the room," says Rebecca.
"If your kitchen allows for a ducted rangehood, we tend to find that this type performs better than recirculating rangehoods."
These are the lowest-scoring ducted rangehoods from our tests.
Blanco BRS61X
- CHOICE Expert Rating: 56%
- Performance score: 55%
- Noise score: 55%
- Price: $193
If nothing else, this Blanco rangehood is consistent: our experts gave it scores of 55% just about across the board. Unfortunately, a score of 55% is 'OK' according to our rating scale – and it only just scrapes into the OK rating.
You'll notice that Blanco makes several appearances in this list of rangehoods to avoid. It doesn't necessarily mean that it's a terrible brand – just that these particular models didn't perform well. To see how other Blanco products stack up against their competitors, take a look at our rangehoods review.
Read our full Blanco rangehood review.
Qasair 600HL1T
- CHOICE Expert Rating: 60%
- Performance score: 65%
- Noise score: 45%
- Price: $2137
At this price, it wouldn't be unreasonable to expect perfect performance and whisper-quiet operation. What you get instead is pretty ordinary performance and noisy operation – plus a big hole in your bank account where the $2137 used to be.
Read our full Qasair rangehood review.
Blanco BRS602X
- CHOICE Expert Rating: 60%
- Performance score: 60%
- Noise score: 55%
- Price: $489
This Blanco rangehood has the unenviable distinction of being one of the worst ducted AND recirculating rangehoods in our tests.
So where does it fall down? It's not particularly terrible at anything, but it's also not great at anything either. Most of its scores fall in the 'OK' range, but you can definitely find a better rangehood for your money than this one.
Read our full Blanco rangehood review.
AEG DGE5660HM
- CHOICE Expert Rating: 60%
- Performance score: 60%
- Noise score: 58%
- Price: $1099
This fancy AEG rangehood comes with a remote control, and you can connect your hob to the rangehood via Bluetooth. It may deliver on nifty features but it'll leave you underwhelmed with its performance, which our kitchen experts rated as just 'OK'.
It's noisy to operate, and if the lights need replacing you'll have to call out an expert as you can't replace them yourself – which means you'll be spending even more money on top of the $1099 upfront cost. Oh, and the carbon filters will cost you $165 a year to replace. Hope you've got your wallet at the ready.
Read our full AEG rangehood review.
The lowest scoring recirculating rangehoods
Blanco BRU53X-3
- CHOICE Expert Rating: 47%
- Performance score: 35%
- Noise score: 63%
- Price: $719
While this Blanco undermount rangehood delivers good visibility over the cooking area courtesy of the lights, it performs poorly and will cost you a bomb in filter replacement – $180 a year if you follow the manufacturer's replacement schedule, to be precise. And once you've spent the money for new filters, you'll find that the carbon filter is not particularly easy to replace.
Expensive and tricky? This is definitely one to avoid.
Read our full Blanco rangehood review.
Fisher & Paykel HS60LXW4
- CHOICE Expert Rating: 48%
- Performance score: 40%
- Noise score: 58%
- Price: $369
It might have performed okay on our ease of use and noise tests, but this Fisher & Paykel rangehood really bombed out in terms of performance, scoring just 40% – what our experts rate as 'poor'. Our experts also found that it's noisy in recirculating mode.
Read our full Fisher & Paykel rangehood review.
Bosch DHL555BAU
- CHOICE Expert Rating: 48%
- Performance score: 35%
- Noise score: 70%
- Price: $799
Good points about this rangehood: it's not too noisy, and the lights provide good visibility over the cooking area. Bad points? It performs poorly, the controls aren't great to use and the carbon filter is tricky to replace.
Luckily it's an undermount rangehood so you'll be able to hide it beneath a cupboard in your kitchen, so no-one will know you've wasted nearly $800 on a sub-par rangehood.
Read the full Bosch rangehood review.
AEG DGE5660HM
- CHOICE Expert Rating: 48%
- Performance score: 45%
- Noise score: 50%
- Price: $1099
This AEG rangehood receives poor scores across the board – in both ducted and recirculating modes. Ummm… at least it's consistent?
We recommend giving this one a miss, especially at this price.
Read our full AEG rangehood review.
Blanco BRS602X
- CHOICE Expert Rating: 49%
- Performance score: 45%
- Noise score: 50%
- Price: $489
We've already discussed this disappointing rangehood. Its performance in ducted mode was rated by our experts as 'OK', but in recirculating mode, it's even worse, with our experts ranking it as 'Poor'.
Not much else to say, really, is there? Whether you're looking for a ducted or recirculating rangehood, this isn't the one for you.
Read our full Blanco rangehood review.
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Stock images: Getty, unless otherwise stated.
