Baroque recorders are the most common and familiar type. The plastic recorders that children play in schools are based on a Baroque style of instrument. Baroque recorders are roughly modelled after those used in the 18th century for the demanding repertoire of composers such as Bach, Telemann, Handel, Vivaldi, and Hotteterre. They have a fully chromatic range of over two octaves, with a sweet, even tone throughout. They have a narrower bore and a more refined tone than Renaissance recorders, as well as a larger range and better chromatic notes. They typically have double holes for the lowest chromatic notes.
If you need a single, all-around do-everything instrument, a Baroque recorder is usually the best choice. You can play Renaissance music on a Baroque instrument, but the range and chromatics make it much harder to play Baroque music on a Renaissance instrument.
Baroque recorders still vary greatly from one model to the next. Even instruments based on the same original will vary quite a bit from one maker to the next. Original instruments are generally not at pitches commonly used today, so the measurements usually need to be scaled somewhat to pitch. Also, original instruments have usually warped, shrunk, cracked, and otherwise changed from what they were when they were new, so a modern maker attempt to determine what the original maker's original intent was. And finally, all makers wish to make the best instrument they can; therefore, they frequently choose to change aspects of the original in order to improve the model or make it better suited to the preferences of modern players. While there are many aspects of instruments patterned on the same original that are more or less shared between different makers' copies, each maker's version also exhibits characteristics of the maker's own taste and style, and may be very different from the original.
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