Cooking gear: ranges & microwaves.(Product/service evaluation)

If it's been a while since you shopped for a range or microwave oven, you'll find that they're becoming more and more alike. Some ranges now have a second, upper oven designed for pizzas and snacks, and microwaves continue to move beyond popcorn and nachos.

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Maytag's Gemini range debuted the dual-oven concept a decade ago. Sales have recently surged as more brands woo busy families juggling different schedules and empty nesters who want a smaller oven most of the time and a larger one for holidays.

We put 66 ranges and 55 microwaves through the gamut of our cooking tests. Some of the best cost the least and include more work-saving features. But several new models left our testers cold. Our range vs. microwave cook-off also revealed that some microwave features might not be all they're cracked up to be. (See "The Great Chicken Cook-Off," page 37.)

Ranges steal from microwaves. Twooven ranges from GE and Jenn-Air are the newest to the table. GE's $1,750 smoothtop did well in our tests and includes a microwave-inspired pizza setting for the upper oven, which yielded crispy pies and faster preheating time. But Jenn-Air's even pricier, $2,150 two-oven gas range proved only mediocre at quick heating, baking, and broiling.

Jenn-Air's new smoothtop-electric JER8885RA and JES8850BA ranges also borrow a leaf from microwave ovens with preprogrammed cooking and a reciperecall button that stores temperatures and cooking times. But like the company's dual-oven models, both are pricey, and Jenn-Air has been a repair-prone brand of electric ranges in our surveys.

New names, so-so cooking. Better-known for low-priced furniture, Ikea now sells a smoothtop electric range made by Whirlpool that costs just $600. But mediocre cooktop heating speed and oven broiling kept Ikea's new Hemkar model among the also-rans in our tests. LG's first, $1,300 gas range proved no faster at cooktop heating and was judged only fair in our broiling tests.