All other microwaves that I've used I had to have someone explain to me what buttons to press in what order to do even the simplest things. And I've never seen anyone use all of those fancy buttons.
My wife and I used to have this small grill oven with two knobs: one for time and one for temperature. She was into baking cookies and I was into her works. I was also into toasting bread for breakfast.
One day she appeared to be ready for the next level and demanded that we replace it with a shiny electronic grill oven with larger capacity. Replace we did but the next thing I found out was the previous 1 second toasting experience where I turn the time knob to 5 minutes has turned into a 27 button press procedure: first press to select mode; 25 presses to tune the time from the default 30 minutes down to 5 minutes; and one final press to start it.
The worst part of this is, she's probably only used it for once or twice before moving along with other interests than baking cookies, but I had to endure the 27 button presses every morning.
I have a GE combination convection oven/microwave and it was clearly designed by someone who had their first experience with LSD that day. Every function requires a different, magic, set of key combinations to make it work. Want to set a timer? That's easy, press timer, turn the dial to the right time (which inexplicably increases/decreases the time in 30 second increments). OK, you've done that, now you want to start it. Press "Timer" ... nope. Press "Start" ... nope. Oh, I have to push in the dial... I didn't even know that, too, was a button. Oh, and not once, not twice, but three times is the magic number of times required to start said timer.
Starting the microwave with a specific time in mind requires hitting no less than 6 buttons, but there's one button that will start the microwave on high for 30 seconds, so everyone just uses that button and hits it as many times as is required to get close to the desired cooking length. I can hear my wife counting out loud ten beeps for a 5 minute cook time.
It's got piles of advanced, useless, features, my favorite of which is a hybrid "microwave/oven cook" mode that manages to bring in the worst of both methods, giving you soggy food, unevenly cooked that takes an eternity to cook.
Even the clock is stupid. You punch in the hours/minutes, and thinking you're done, you move on to something else. Later you go to cook something and for some bizarre reason, "AM or PM" pops up on the screen at which point nothing in your previous experience in operating a microwave prepares you to figure out why heating something up requires knowledge of whether it's morning or afternoon. Of course, nothing this microwave does requires knowledge of AM/PM, nor does it display AM or PM anywhere on the screen, but for some reason it just must know.
[0] This isn't the exact model but it looks close: https://www.amazon.com/GE-PVM9179SFSS-Profile-Stainless-Micr...
Had he gotten the real shit, it would have been a musical instrument... with wheels, which also microwaves... inside and outside... Because that's how you get to the aliens.
Who wouldn't want his oven to roll around the house improvising some trippy music while the meal is being heated ? While at it, why not also vacuum clean the house ? Just hit the knob a magical 4 times ..
You've got the wonder machine right there. I mean hello? Whatever happened to creativity these days ?
Experience tells me I have to disclaim this: yes, of course it's a joke.
For real! It would also be the only microwave on the market that no matter what's cooking, it will make your kitchen smell like the color blue.
I'm honestly not sure how they managed to screw that up. 32.768kHz crystal was too expensive? Or just too incompetent to keep track of time correctly?
[0] https://www.amazon.de/Sharp-Mikrowelle-Grill-Kompakt-Mikrowe...
We were convinced that the microwave was a low wattage unit because it would require you to cook things about 25% more than whatever the package said. It turned out that the digital timer was fast. We started the thing for a minute against a stopwatch app and it was off by more than 10 seconds.
This thing didn't even have a clock -- it was basically designed to do two things: (1) Bombard food with microwaves and (2) stop bombarding said thing after a specified period of time. It did one of those things about as poorly as it could be done.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_clock
My car's clock is also awful about this - it loses something like 3 minutes per month. But at least there you can blame it on the unknown and varying voltage that the battery and alternator provide...
The older Ford Fusion Sync radios (Microsoft variety) are a perfect example of how not to do a UI. I wanted it because my previous car had Bluetooth pairing and I got used to using my phone for music/entertainment and wanted my new car to have the same experience. Of course, being the MS variety of Sync, it has the buggy Bluetooth implementation, so one out of three times I get in the car, my stereo fails to connect. Thank GOD it's got voice commands because I have no idea what combination of buttons is required to actually switch to the Bluetooth input (which is required to be done every time you start the car again regardless of whether or not you were previously on that input). As long as everyone is silent when I hit that magic button to issue my command, and as long as I tilt my head upward toward the mic and speak very clearly, about half the time it switches the input correctly.
Who the hell thought it would be a good idea to make a car stereo so complicated that it pretty much guarantees you're going to take your eyes off the road for long periods of time trying to figure out how to change the station when One Direction comes on (I feel the same way about newer cars that just have the "iPad Screen" style interface -- no tactile anything).
so I blame consumers for buying the ones with the silly buttons.
On the other side, there's probably a demand on the "designers"to keep inventing and adding new features while keeping it as cheap as possible to produce. And each version is just slightly different from the previous one, so best not to redesign the wiring/programming, just add the new feature in the technically easiest/cheapest way!
It goes to show, though, when you jam in a bunch of features into a device that isn't really meant for those features, the added features are often not implemented well enough to make them very useful.
The one redeeming factor this microwave has is that the entire interior is stainless steel. Everyone who uses our microwave does a double-take when they open it seeing all that metal. It's super easy to clean, but that's about it.
[0] Natural gas ovens are less dry than electric ovens, so baking in them results in very moist results but also often requires cooking things longer. I bought it, though, because they're really simple devices that will basically last forever, having only really the $20 ignition element fail about once every decade.
My favorite peeve is that cheap MW ovens often don't let you add time while the oven is running when the affordance is already right there (just push the +1m button you used to set the time again). You only get that feature if you buy a more expensive and complex model.
The consumer in the store thinks that better product has more buttons and features, not thinking how they would be used.
For example, a landlord is biased towards purchasing appliances that looks complex so they can show off all the extra "features" to clients.
I have an old microwave with two buttons and it works great. Kids can use it too.
I don't have kids and I haven't found a way to disable it, it looks silly opening and closing the door twice every time I want to use it, but I've automated the habit.
This was also purchased in 2005 or so, and was a relatively new idea at the time that, thankfully, didn't take off terribly well.
First, the current implementation isn't rigorously thought out. For example, for most operations, you put in the food, then select time to cook, press 'start'; but for thawing, you select the food type, then it asks you 'put in food', and won't continue until you open and close the door. This annoys me to the point that I've contacted Miele several times, but nobody seems to even understand the problem. At one point they send a service technician over (I guess they were exasperated by my repeated calls) who didn't understand the problem either, which led to a Monty Python-esque scene of me saying variations of 'it should work differently!' and him saying 'it works as it should!'. So if your father still have contacts, please let him/they contact me - I'm sure that if only I could get through to the right person, they'd agree with me that it's a bug.
Anyway, apart from these implementation issues, I think overall the concept of having a touch screen that guides the user with many tasks is an improvement over the two-dial system. It tells me exactly how long to heat and at what temperature, and the results are (much) better than I ever get from microwaves/ovens that make me decide that for myself. The downside are increased time-to-task for most common operations, and increased complexity in the UI. I think it's inevitable though; I don't see how you can still have the same UI guidance from the machine yet make it easier to learn. It's like my circular saw - the more expensive one I have now, has more buttons and levers than the $49.95 I has before. I have to think how to use it; the cheap one had an on/off button, that was it. But I do get consistently better results with the expensive one. There, too, I don't see how it can be made simpler - those additional controls just make for a better result.
(if I wanted to start a flame war, I'd compare it here to Notepad vs Vim. Why use something complex like Vim when you can also program just as well with Notepad? And yet, I've been using Vim for well over 15 years.)
Is it like that with the Miele?
So yeah - what it boils down to is, what is 'possibility'? 'Technically' possible, or 'realistically attainable by the average user'?
I successfully navigated washers, espresso machines, etc, set to operate in languages I do not speak and was still able to get them to do what I wanted with minimal effort
The designers thought it'd be good to allow pressing the dial, as if it was a button. Pressing the dial set the cooking time to 30 seconds and immediately started cooking. A one-touch interface, how useful!
The only problem was that it was difficult to press the dial without accidentally nudging it clockwise or anticlockwise. Nine times out of ten I managed to turn it anticlockwise, which set a time of 95 hours or thereabouts - and began cooking.
I hate to think what may have happened in some people's houses where they've done this, not noticed that it said 95 hours and forgotten it was cooking.
My wife and I decided to do this after experiencing yet another consumer over breaking after only having it a couple of years. We decided to go with the Sharp model, because it (along with Amana) is what you see in most restaurants. We figured to give it a shot, and see how we liked it, and how long it would last.
We've only had it a couple of years, but so far we love it. It only has one knob, only runs on "HIGH" full power, and only allows for a few minutes of cooking at a time. But so far, we haven't had a problem cooking anything in it. You have to adjust how you used to do things (if you're used to power levels - especially "defrost") - but overall, it isn't that big of a deal. Just stick the food in, turn the knob, come back when it "dings".
Doesn't get any simpler.
Now if only I could figure out how to get a TurboChef cheaply...
https://www.amazon.de/Severin-MW-7874-Mikrowelle-kombinierba...
I explicitely chose that mircrowave because it only had two knobs and I just get confused with too many buttons. I always thought I am weired for not wanting all these special features.
1. A major manufacturer and appliance dealer have managed to deliver 3 DOA appliances.
2. There are no gas stovetop/oven combinations which don't have electronic controls. Certainly nothing for less than $3,000 (and the budget is about 1/6 - 1/2 that).
3. It is oh so easy to screw up a design with a simple oversight. The GE oven that has no externally-activateable oven light. Range tops which lack a center-cross support -- this limts the minimum-sized pot you can use, including the oft-cited-here Moka pot, which sees more use than any other cooking utensil in the house.
4. Manufacturers are apparently putting zero thought into how they package their products, both in terms of styling and shipping. The model we've looked at (otherwise among the better ones available per numerous ratings) has a thin sheet-steel back behind which, at a depth of < 1cm, is a printed circuit board managing the exhaust circulation system. Two units have arrived with dents over this element.
5. Solid-state touch controls work ... until they don't. All are placed either directly above the oven, or directly above the oven exhaust. I'm curious as to what thermal-cycling protection or durability is engineered into these.
This for something whose basic conceit is to get hot when you want it to.
I'm thinking through where stoves reached their apex. I'm thinking that electric spark-light gas range was about it. Everything since has added to complexity with very, very minor increases in delivered utility.
Just enough to be sure it lasts past the end of the warranty period.
Don't look for perfection by comparing the best of each. Sucks that none of them are perfect perfect for you but people have different needs/wants/tastes.
I agree on the two knobs though. I noticed after I buying an expensive in wall microwave that the thing would randomly glitch (you have to power it off to use it again). You have to use a "race condition" to launch it at full power without having to set the power then the time and then press the start button.
I had no idea you could fail so bad at making a microwave.
It is much better to be able to select the wattage directly. With food products that specify the wattage and time on the packaging, you are ensured the proper, manufacturer-intended cooking.
Apparently they are fairly robust inside as well:
They didn't know that knob 2 changed the power (despite it being labelled), they just kept adding more time and eventually giving up.
Now I own one with a bazillion buttons and I only ever press one button - +30 seconds.