Why every microwave sucks these days | Hacker News Reader

Why every microwave sucks these days

moth.monster

175 pointsbearbin408 comments

As a chronic comparison shopper, this is a first-world problem that's near and dear to my heart. I think the reason microwaves (and appliances in general) suck is because comparison shopping is so hard.

I wish I could get a list of all microwaves and filter by criteria such as:

- Does the +30 seconds button start cooking immediately, or do you have to also press "start" afterwards?

- Does it beep every 30 seconds after it finishes, and if so can I turn that off?

- Better yet, can I turn the beeping off completely without taking the damn thing apart and desoldering the beeper, and of course in the process risking my life near the high-voltage electronics?

But it's basically impossible to know these things without buying it and opening the box, so there's no competitive pressure pushing manufacturers to make their appliances less annoying, so we all have to live with these little papercuts throughout our daily lives for perpetuity.

The Samsung microwaves, although with good build quality, are notorious for having a very bad UX.

- The buttons don't give have tactile feedback.

- Setting time is very confusing.

- You have to press multiple buttons just to start.

- If you want to cancel/clear timer, you have to press multiple buttons again.

I've had the misfortune of using a Samsung microwave, electric oven, dishwasher, and phone.

I've concluded that Samsung products are just generally dogshit.

After owning LG, GE, and Samsung appliances, I am now an LG fanboy.

I do have to mention that out of all their appliances, I do love their washing machines. I have owned a couple over the last 10 years ant they just keep working.

How is Samsung so bad at software in every single division they own? It's amazing.

I quite like their software on my phone. Usually better than their google counterpart, and samsung dex is a little gem.

I just want a microwave with an analog dial for time and a switch for low, med, high. They can keep the computer.

Would purchase.

I was looking for a microwave with two knobs a few years ago and finally found one.

Unfortunately it was one of the most expensive ones in the stores: https://www.breville.com/us/en/products/microwaves/bmo850.ht...

Biggest annoyance is that it's 1500W so any time I'm microwaving packaged food I have to scale down power to 70-80% to match the wattage on the package.

I bought this one for the same reason , two simple knobs , no BS keypads and presets. It was expensive but I love it, more than I expected.

Breville. They're OK. Which is praise when the competition sucks. I've got their slow + pressure cooker and a coffee machine. Both more expensive and better than the alternatives in their price range, but still with plenty of problems. It's like they give half a shit when manufacturers like De'Longhi give none.

Depending on how you feel about IKEA, their TILLREDA model microwave is two dials for time and power, and a button to open the door

I wish I knew this existed when I was in the market for a new microwave oven. It's perfect!

I like the concept, but the rotating turntable for the food and plate is silly. I have a Panasonic NE-1022F (sadly, no longer available) and it rotates the antenna under the floor of the unit.

That approach enables use of a smaller motor, requires fewer moving parts, and makes the interior very easy to clean.

Interesting, I've never seen a microwave oven without a rotating turntable.

There are a few now, though they're still a minority, we have a Sharp SM327FHS which has the same arrangement - flat bed with a hidden rotating emitter.

Seems good so far.

(It does not have the physical dial though, it has buttons like most other microwaves)

My parents have an ancient one, which they inherieted from a relative decades ago...

It has a button to cycle through the power levels (the typical couple seconds on, couple seconds off duty cycle power levels), and four buttons to set the time: one under each digit (adds one to the digit and overflows to zero), the start button, something for temperature cooking if you have the probe (they don't). Actual buttons, because touch buttons hadn't been invented yet. A total of 8 buttons, plus the door open.

Anyway, no turntable there.

Same here, but unlike my rotating one, that one had classic coldspots and hotspots microwaves sometimes had.

But I sure loved the fine grained time and power control. Figure out the setting put once and then it is unattended perfection every time.

Yeah, my parents have an upside down ceramic pie dish permanently in the microwave which raises the food to be heated up into what seems to be a more favorable area for heating. Before we got that in there, you'd have to do a lot of short bursts and mix / rotate, which is tedious especially when there was about two seconds of off time when starting...

Before they were integrated into the microwave, you could buy third-party turntables.

They were like a child's toy; you would spin it a dozen times counterclockwise, and then it would slowly rotate clockwise for the next several minutes. Obviously, it couldn't be battery-powered.

Thinking about it now, it must have had some kind of plastic spring mechanism. Wish I had busted it open and looked.

they still make them, although this one seems to be out of stock on Amazon.

https://www.amazon.com/Nordic-Ware-Microwave-Micro-Go-Round-...

I think that’s how most “commercial” microwaves work; the food stays put and the element moves. It’s much easier to clean and it (usually) heats the food more evenly.

They're common in catering, for easy cleaning, but require more sophisticated design of the waveguides.

I think Panasonic still make some. The term they use if you're web searching is "flatbed".

Commercial microwaves often don't have turntables. What they have - based on observation of a single one I took apart once - is a "scatter wheel" in the roof of the chamber, that spins just by air movement from the cooling fan, and reflects the microwave energy this way and that.

But that produces a stationary pattern (averaged over a rotation). Depending on where your food item is, some spot in it may never actually get high power energy if the overall scatter pattern is weak there. Actually rotating the food through a stationary pattern is likely to provide better coverage.

This is not proved. It is possible to set up an experiment to prove it. But it's reconciled me to the idea of the turntable. Also, consumer microwave turntables have, in my experience, been reliable.

A turntable also inhibits superheating of water. A superheated cup of water will expand to steam immediately if disturbed before it cools:

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/boil-on-troubled-waters/

The turntable's motion ensures the water is somewhat "disturbed" and minimizes superheating.

Dare I ask why? Analog dials for time are imprecise, frustrating, and I've seen far more of them break than any electronic component in home appliances.

Very quick and easy to turn it to where I want and precise time isn't very important on a microwave. Idealy the scale wouldn't be linear so that you have more accuracy under 1min and more range available.

Disagree. The perfect amount of time to cook my favorite brand of Hot Dog in the Microwave is exactly 12 seconds. Shorter and it's too cold, longer and it starts to split.

For such a short amount of time, you could count the seconds - or note how far the turntable rotates in that time. Even with a digital dial, I doubt I would take the time to input 12 seconds - I'd just whack the +30 second start and stare at it for 12 seconds.

>Even with a digital dial, I doubt I would take the time to input 12 seconds - I'd just whack the +30 second start and stare at it for 12 seconds.

...which is far easier and more consistent than trying to counting seconds in my head.

It's also more repeatable and transferrable when someone else is cooking the same thing and asks me how long I heated it for.

Humans aren’t digital, dials have a feel that you get used to.

My toaster oven has a dial, I have no idea of the values, just how far I turn from muscle memory. I love it

It really doesn't matter whether you heat your food for 28 or 32 seconds.

No, but 10-15 seconds vs 30 seconds is a huge difference in some cases. 15 seconds will take butter from fridge temp to room temp. 30 seconds will take butter from fridge temp to melted.

While I know this is a bit crass to say, there was a time where people just knew how long things took, via internal clocks.

It's a skill like any other, which of course has vanished, much like reading maps and math in head.

Much of the progress of civilization has involved tools that turn things from skills which require focus into things that are automated. It frees the mind to focus on other, more important things.

I could also just have an "on" button I have to hold, count seconds in my head, and stop when I think it's done, but thankfully no one is advocating for regressing UI quite that much....yet.

And 33 seconds is boiling molten lava.
I love how microwaves work, there’s a real art to it. 25 seconds , everything is cold but 40 seconds is boiling.
25x2 seconds , with a very short break in between the two, is not equal to 50 seconds.

Making these numbers “up” but anyone who has used a microwave with skill and attention will understand me.

Also, free tips: 1- put a moist paper towel over pizza and bread to keep it from hardening like a rock later on. 2 - microwave stale bread for a second life.

This is especially true when heating soups or similar things.

1x120 seconds means it's completely cold in the middle, but molten lava at the sides and even the dish is too hot to touch.

1x30-45 seconds, mix with spoon, 1x30-45 seconds and it's just right.

there are things that I heat for 11 seconds. If it is in there for more than 12 seconds, it starts to overcook. An analog dial is a poor choice in this case.

I have one of these. It's fine but I prefer being able to set exact times for certain things. The perfect middle ground for me is a +30s button that also immediately starts it

Best of both worlds is a digital dial with ~log scale. My Bosch microwave has that, though apparently newer models don’t.

Decades ago, my college microwave was an ~800 watt unit that had a large, analog dial, and an actual bell that dinged once (and only once) when it was done. That's it, no other settings. Zero displays, other than the pointer on the dial as it clicked down.

I still miss it.

Those are just the bargain-basement ones. You can still get them if you’re so inclined.

I bought one like this on Amazon. Dial for power, dial for time, one ding. I forget how many watts, I think 800 or 1k.

The dials feel cheap, but it's fine.

I was tired of pushing buttons and setting clocks. I don't want everything to be a gizmo.

Honestly. That's pretty close to the perfect UI for a microwave.

That describes the first one my parents got in the early 80s - except I seem to remember a power slider as well. Best microwave UI ever.

I have one just like it, and the best part is that I just leave the timer wheel set to max, and turn the microwave off by opening doors. I keep the doors just barely open all the time, woth benefit of it starting the moment I close the doors after putting a plate in.

The only button I ever pressed on it is to open doors (mechanical), and once in a while I turn the timer to max (when I notice).

I bought onw just like that (Amica) and I'm very happy with it.

I know what you mean. Sadly, looks like our Panasonic (NN-CF778SBPQ) may be on the way out after a decade of daily service, and I've been trying to find an equivalent with the two knobs. You can adjust power and time while it's still cooking. If something needs more time, a quick twist of one adds more seconds. If something is about to overheat and you want to buy a bit more time while you prep something else, you can twist the other and back off the power from high to warm/simmer/low. Plus it's a combi, so could initially microwave to defrost, then convection cook whilst also gently grilling to toast the top of the foodstuff.

The break room at my last job had a microwave like that: the interface consisted of one big knob, which worked like a wind-up timer. It was the best microwave I've ever used.

Literally all those things are discoverable if you buy in a store.

Edit: I maybe should have clarified "appliance store", rather than big box. But there are three appliance stores within ten miles of me that sell appliances. Not Home Depot, not Wal-Mart. Appliance stores. The refrigerators and ovens and microwaves are all plugged in and you can try any of them. The only thing you can't try is the gas ranges.

This is the world we built shopping for price.

Do stores let you operate these kinds of things where you are?

Yeah, any appliance store will. Not like a walmart, but also they probably will, at the very least you could buy it and return it, but just go to an appliance store or even lowes. They will have lots of floor models open and active and will help you set up to test anything else you want because the salesmen are paid on commission.

I think people are so conditioned to the modern lack of customer support from companies (or the strict adherence to "policy) that simple things like this are overlooked. Literally just asking them to plug it in before you buy it... is forgotten by most people. If it's not a secice written on a sign then it's must be impossible right?

Are they? Perhaps I'm out of touch with the brick and mortar experience.

The majority of microwaves I've seen at my local department store are in a box, those few models that are on display are not powered.

Even in the highly unusual case that they were powered or within proximity of a free power socket, I think it'd be rather unorthodox to go to the store and test drive a microwave with your instant ramen.

Yes, at appliances stores. Also though, at goodwill. Mine always has like 30+ microwaves and of course you can plug in and test.

I went to an appliance store. A real appliance store like you're talking about. They told me that all the consumer models are the same. Same hardware, same manufacturer. They only had 2 or 3 to choose from. They said there is basically no point to shopping them, the quality is the same. You can pick stainless, or black or maybe get one that mounts under a cabinet.

>The refrigerators and ovens and microwaves are all plugged in

Not at the appliance stores near me.

I could do without the clock. How about if I do not set a time on the clock, then do not display 12:00 or anything when not in use.

Seriously. I used to have a microwave and oven stacked on top of each other. Both had an LCD, and so some horrible PMs somewhere presumably had entire sets of meetings to spec out the clock feature.

The microwave would not function if the time and AM/PM values were not set. (As far as I could tell, there was no way to actually ever see the AM/PM value after setting it!)

So. Every time the power went out, I would be confronted with blinking times on clocks I didn’t even want, and a nonfunctional microwave.

I will never buy a kitchen appliance with a mandatory clock ever again.

Not to mention having to update the time every DST transition otherwise you have a wrong clock which is worst than no clock at all.

I usually set such clocks to some random time that's so off you would never mistake it for the real thing.

I tend to set non-TZ-aware/non-NTP clocks to UTC.

I do this as well. It works well for me.

My Siemens oven wanted an Internet connection on first power up.

I fired off an E-mail to Siemens, stating that there was ONE feature which could tempt me into granting it access: NTP support.

Much to my surprise, I got an enthusiastic reply from an engineer stating that this would be rolled out in a future firmware update.

Fingers crossed.

thinking of internet of things - I would expect ntp was top on the to do list for anything wanting to be on that.

I would assume that it usually IS a feature on the top of a list... but then they actually start to work on it, and a new fresh set of young developers get exposed to the nightmarish clusterfuck that is datetimes and networking, and then it eventually gets rejected.

this implies that at some point NTP won't be implemented anywhere because the fresh sets of young developers are too delicate to handle the problems of various older technologies that everything depends on?

Windows, after 30 years and billions of development dollars, couldn't make ntp work. I still must set time manually once a month.

I set up a second private network on my router for iot devices. On a but on a whim.. I don't know how private but its something

A while back I got an Amazon branded microwave w/ Alexa integration. I bought it because it was one of the few I could find in the form factor I wanted, and used the novelty factor to break the tie. The voice activation is useless, but the one thing I love about it is that when the power blinks out it'll get the time from the nearby Alexa & set itself. No more blinking.

> My Siemens oven wanted an Internet connection on first power up.

I hadn't thought of that. I'll add that to my list of reasons why I will not buy an appliance that wants to connect to a network.

Bosch microwaves for example let you turn that off. See e.g. https://pdf.lowes.com/productdocuments/3c4ab01b-1931-4181-be... page 18.

Yeah, ditch the clock and backlight the damn keypad FFS.

I can call myself lucky then, I bought the cheapest uW because all the “fancy” ones were all huge, I believe it is Black & Decker branded, if the clock is not set it will stay in timer mode indicating 0:00 (not blinking) if you press just the start button it will run for 30 seconds it also has an uncomplicated kitchen timer function. It’s small, underpowered and will overheat if run for more than 12min straight but i paid $50 for it.

I bought a Forte brand microwave on Amazon. (I've never heard of the brand). But it has been a good microwave so far. and I was happy to notice that when the clock is not set, the screen just stays blank rather than a blinking 12:00.

I've done my research, on sale floors. The best I've come up with are Teka microwaves:

- Electronic, unfortunately. No time/power dials, in favor of a menu system from hell, but

- One button press to start (max power, 30s);

- After starting, there's a button to add 30s;

- It only beeps twice after finishing, then shuts up.

Looked up Teka microwaves, they look very fancy. My $50 microwave from walmart from like 2014 does all this haha, but the downside is you can't disable the beep.

I have similar UX desires and I typically have good luck looking up their manuals or just looking on reddit or whatever before I buy.

It's often some combination of holding down 1, 2, or 0 for a few seconds to change those modes.

The kind of review you're looking for is what Consumer Reports is, (or at least used to be, as I'm not sure of the current state of things,) famous for.

Because it's a paid subscription, and all of the items they review are actually purchased from retail suppliers who have no knowledge that Consumer Reports is the buyer, they can take their time and do very thorough comparisons incorporating tests of real world usability and reliability that are difficult to tabulate and instead have to reviewed like a movie or a book. But I don't know, it's likely the consumer reports type of shopper is such a minor fraction of the market that isn't worth optimizing for them any more.

For those who don’t want to pay, many libraries allow free digital access to Consumer Reports.

You can usually stop by and flip through the buying guide index, too.

> For those who don’t want to pay

For those who wish Consumer Reports didn't have the money to buy the products they test and depended on advertising and payola inevitably gaming the reviews instead...

Arguably advertising destroyed the microwave ... and everything else.

The problem with consumer reports is I only need it every once in a while, so it isn't really worth paying a continual subscription for.

I do it anyways, because I need them the most on expensive things, so my subscription evens out. But they do have common household items as well.

I get one and split it with my whole extended family.

Libraries have their subscription.

I got a CR subscription to look at air filters. For good air filtering you really only need a hepa filter ($20) in front of a fan ($20), but CR only analyses the performance of brand name products ($200).

Not exactly. To be comparable to the good air filter products, you'd want to build a cube of air filters and attach the fan so it pulls air through the cube. Fun DIY project, but it's not for everyone. There's a good YouTube video for it.

The DIY cube air filter even has its own Wikipedia entry:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corsi–Rosenthal_Box

Next time try your library. Many offer free access over the web.

For best filtering, place the filter so air is “sucked” through by the fan, rather than “pushed”.

(Quite possibly what you meant; I just found “in front of” easy to interpret in either way)

HEPA filtration only matters if you have a clean side and a dirty side. Most air filters exhaust clean air into the same room as the intake, so all that matters is clean air delivery rate [0]. It's often possible to get better clean air delivery rate using higher flow through a less restrictive non-HEPA filter.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_air_delivery_rate

The removal efficiency of the filter is built in to CADR, so say a MERV-14 filter with higher air flow and a HEPA filter with lower air flow can have the same CADR.

The Wikipedia article does not discuss the 2 (different!) methods of calculating CADR but this does: https://frdmtoplay.com/nagivating-air-purification/

What we really need is a project farm for microwaves

Can you elaborate? I was about to ask are there are concept designs for microwaves, particularly the UI, but other features as well - I'd be interested to see ideas of what microwaves could be.

I don't think the article is correct that the humidity sensor was the last innovation (and actually, how can I tell if a microwave has this, and how is used anyway?) - we also have inverter microwaves recently, as well as combi grill/microwave etc.

EDIT: Oh, I think you meant "Project Farm", the youtube reviewer. Anyway, I'd like to see a 'design farm' for microwave concepts and designs, and appliances in general actually, they all suck.

> Does the +30 seconds button start cooking immediately, or do you have to also press "start" afterwards?

i've seen one where buttons 1-6 immediately start cooking for that many minutes, alongside a +30 button, so that every 30s interval between 30s and 6:30 can be activated in one or two button pushes; fastest nuke in the west

Ours does that. I never touch any of the (indeed useless) Potato / Popcorn / Soup (yes, soup... What?) buttons, but the instant-on time-interval buttons are lovely.

It's "Magic Chef", for those of you who are curious. We didn't buy it (came with the house), and I'm not pulling it off the shelf to look for a model number on the back (I moved the vinegar bottles next to it, and there's no sticker on that side, nor the other, either), but that's a place to start.

> Soup (yes, soup... What?)

Actually, yeah! The "soup" setting nukes it in such a way that you don't get a scolding hot bowl + top layer of soup, while everything else stays cold. (Mostly by spinning the tray and heating it in a burst-like pattern, I think)

I still would rather just cover the dish with another bowl, which achieves a better & faster result.

Huh! TIL. That said, I've heated a lot of soup - without using the "Soup" button, mind - and not experienced the problem you describe.

IANAMS (I Am Not a Microwave Scientist), but observationally it seems to me that bowl material has most to do with microwave results. I have a few bowls (and mugs) I never use in the microwave, because they seem always to get hotter than their contents. Later, I'll try one of them on "Soup" to see if it makes a difference.

> does it beed every +30 seconds

No joke, I bought and returned 4 microwaves before I found one that doesn't. I'm picky, and finally found one that does a quick double "beeep beeep" and is done.

Well don't leave the crowd in suspense.

I use a Panasonic NN-SD945S and it's configurable https://help.na.panasonic.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/NNS...

I leave it enabled though because it is not continuous and has like a TADA.WAV kind of vibe. So happy!

Oh, I have a Panasonic NN-GD38 that only beeps once. Sometimes I forget my food in the microwave because of it though. It's the best microwave I've ever had (also the first time I've ever spent so much on one).

Not OP, but most LG microwaves allow to turn sounds off with a special button combination. Even though my model's manual doesn't mention it, I could guess it from other manuals and YT videos.

It's a GE. That's all I know :/

Most microwaves have a mute setting. Often it’s set by holding 1 for 5 seconds. Varies by brand and model of course. Definitely worth looking up if it bugs ya!

Do most of microwaves have such a setting? I've never seen one.

It's not a setting you'd "see", it's a secret you'd find on the last page of that manual you threw out.

My ideal microwave would have two buttons.

1: The first two times you push it, it sets the timer to 0:30 and starts cooking. The next time, adds 0:30. Each time after that, it adds 1 minute and starts cooking.

2. Reset the timer to 0.

And a door latch which stops cooking.

I don't need power levels, or more precise timing, or any of that other stuff.

Commercial microwaves for restaurants are like that.

Ah, nice. Do you know any brands/models?

What an asinine solution. A button that doesn’t work consistently. How are you going to set 1:30 (which is very common)? Or 55? You’re going to stand there and press that one button 57 times? What about defrosting where you want a low power level? Or soups? Or a hundred other examples. How does having a number pad ruin the experience?

> What an asinine solution

"Why does not everyone have the same opinions and preferences as I do?!"

>What an asinine solution

Please be nice. This isn't Reddit.

> A button that doesn’t work consistently.

A button that is context-aware.

>How are you going to set 1:30 (which is very common)?

Good point. It should add 30 seconds until it gets to 2:00 then do 60 second increments.

>Or 55?

55 minutes is not a thing I ever do with a microwave.

>What about defrosting where you want a low power level?

I already said I don't use power levels. If I want to defrost, I just cook for a few minutes then let it sit for a long time, or use some other method.

>Or soups?

Assuming you mean a tub of frozen soup, I usually cook for 5 minutes, stir, do another few minutes, etc.

> Or a hundred other examples.

There are not a hundred other examples. That's the point. The vast majority of the time I'm heating at full power for short periods of time.

> How does having a number pad ruin the experience?

It doesn't ruin anything. But it costs money to implement.

I just press "Start" on my microwave and it uses sensors to cook. Works at least as well as I do with guessing times.

For something like popcorn with a set time (2 min 20 s is perfect on ours, 10s too much and it burns), it's twist the dial then press start.

I think I had such a bad time with sensors in the 80s I've never trusted them since. :)

Which model is that?

Hitachi MRO-W1A

This is the nearest I've seen to that: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Russell-Hobbs-RHEM2301B-Flatbed-Mic...

Four buttons: Microwave, Defrost, Stop, Start.

Defrost is 40% power. It is a flatbed, so no turntable to clean.

but power levels are amazing for reheating (around 50%) and defrosting (around 25%)

and I would argue these are two of the major reasons to use a microwave

Power levels are essential to me. I thought all microwave ovens were borderline useless to heat/cook food unless you don't care about how the food comes out. Learning to use power levels really improved the usefulness of the machine.

Particularly for defrosting things and softening butter.

Does cooking for 4 minutes at 50% really yield a significant difference to compared to 2 minutes at 100% then waiting 2 minutes? I'm curious.

Yes, it's a massive difference.

My "favorite" feature on the GE microwave that came with my house: If you cook something then walk away (leaving the food inside) then come back and want to zap it for 30 seconds, you must open and close the door to "Insert Food".

> comparison shopping is so hard.

This indeed, there is no structured info anyware in even the software land where it's easier to get the info without buying/unboxing, so you can't rely on reviews that takes all those things into account and can't really do it yourself

It seems like you have an amazing talent for reviewing electronics, and that you've identified a kind of review that doesn't exist in the market and people might find valuable!

NYT bought Wirecutter for 30 million dollars so... who knows, there might be a business here.

I subscribed to Australian Choice for one year a few years ago. It sounded really cool, you pay a hundred bucks a year and they go out and buy a bunch of stuff and compare it in an unbiased way.

And it was cool for a while, until I started reading their reviews and comparisons on products I knew a lot about and done my own research on. I found they just missed a lot of things I found really important.

We didn't agree on things I know about, so I had to assume we wouldn't agree on things I did know about!

https://www.choice.com.au/

> comparison shopping is so hard

Yes, but it's much worse than it needs to be. When searching for hard disks on Amazon, if you search for "hard disk 8 tb" for example, Amazon will suggest the following criteria on the left side of the page:

Hard Disk Size

4 TB & Above

3 TB

2 TB

1 TB

501 to 999 GB

321 to 500 GB

121 to 320 GB

Up to 80 GB

Really? What is the point of this? How can it not do better?

Amazons search as you are aware has been notoriously bad for many many years at this point. i find that the diskprices website is very helpful when searching for hard drives on amazon. https://diskprices.com/

If you dont want to use amazon https://www.pcpartpicker.com has a good section to search and compare hard drive sizes/pricing

My conspiracy theory is Amazon search is intentionally bad to make their ads more valuable.

Thats the reason I just ignore amazon. When, once in a while, I search for something on amazon, it just returns pages of related things. Its worse than Youtube search. They can keep it.

Buy a Panasonic. They seem to care about user experience. Beeps once, +30 starts it, and they're the only one with an inverter, so you can do a true 50% (unless I'm in a huge hurry I always cook at 50% for double the time, and it seems to come out much better).

I have an LG that's an inverter one. I agree though, don't buy a non-inverter model if you care at all about the quality of what comes out of it.

And for the above poster, +30 starts it, it plays a little tune when done, and then every maybe 30s afterwards for 2 or 3 times. Oh, and the turntable rotates at 0.1Hz so a mug's handle is facing the same way it went in after any interval of ten seconds.

i could compare washing machines for a long time before i decide on which on is best suited for my needs ... then again, though, i have used hundreds of different washing machines in my life and i can't remember even single time having been unsatisfied with the cleanliness.

my conclusion: it often doesn't really matter.

If we're listing things we want to see in a microwave, I would add a knob! Just let me spin a dial to set the time then push that same knob to start/stop. I almost had this with my latest microwave, but alas, you can set the time with the knob and then 'set' the time by pushing the knob. But then you have to do the extra step of pressing a separate 'start' button. Why? why do this?

I feel a bit whiney complaining about such a minor thing. But it does bug me everyday. The sheer senselessness of bad design is infuriating. They will make thousands, maybe millions of these things. Put a bit of time in designing it!

</end rant>

> But then you have to do the extra step of pressing a separate 'start' button. Why? why do this?

Probably some consumer tests showed that people had trouble with rotating the knob without pushing it during rotation. Or, pushing the knob sets the time and now you can set the power by further rotating the knob and then pushing start.

In case it helps, I've run into the same types of problems frequently, and YouTube reviews are a godsend.

Random people actually film themselves unboxing and using the product, and you can watch what buttons they have to press, etc.

Also you can virtually always download the manual as a PDF.

Of course that's not a list, and it takes a lot of work. It's deeply unfortunate -- somebody like Amazon could actually implement the kind of comparison matrix you're talking about, but they're not exactly innovating on the UX front. :(

(Amazon does sometimes show a comparison matrix of 4 products with something like ~6 rows of features for some products, but I think it's created by the manufacturer, so only compares models for that one brand, and doesn't always list the feature you care about either.)

> somebody like Amazon could actually implement the kind of comparison matrix you're talking about

Would that be valuable, though? Could Amazon do this in a useful and non-manipulative way? I have doubts.

It would be valuable if the filtering conditions are up to the user.

Can I press 1-9 just do get 1-9 minutes.

My current one is:

Press cook time, 1, 0, 0, start. Too long.

So for 1 minute it is faster to do +30, +30, as that immediately starts.

There's a big innovation I'm looking for in microwaves and I simply do not understand why nobody sells it yet:

An interior IR sensor/camera that will cycle/adjust power until my food is fully cooked to a certain temperature but not above it.

I don't want to pick a duration and I don't want to pick power levels and I don't want hot spots and I don't want to have to check the food every 30 seconds or 3 minutes or whatever it is. I just want to cook to a certain temperature, and avoid hot spots above that temperature.

So instead of fiddling with dumb things like 100% power for the first 2 minutes and then 10% power for another 8 minutes, I just want to reheat my chicken breast to 145°F or my salmon to 120°F or my soup to 165°F or my maple syrup to 180°F or my water for tea to 205°F. (Just examples, not looking to argue over temps!)

So let the microwave blast it full strength until there are hot spots, then cycle off to let hot spots spread their heat to the rest of the food, then blast more, until the whole food exterior is within a range of the desired temperature, then ding it's done!

And while it can't detect interior temperatures directly, you should be able to use the rate of exterior cooling during the off cycle to determine whether the interior has come up to temperature. E.g. the outside of a chicken breast with a still-frozen interior cools rapidly; the outside of a chicken breast with a hot interior stays hotter for longer.

My microwave has "sensor" modes for cooking various things but you don't have any control over the temperature it targets.

Yup, that's a humidity sensor. It's entirely useless in my experience -- the steam generated by food tells you that something is cooking to some degree, but you're still just as likely to wind up with rubbery overcooked hot spots while half of your item is still frozen.

Ah, i wondered what it was sensing.

I have had a less technologically forward gripe with microwaves. The start button should not exist. Number pads should not exist. There should really only be one main button that you press: “quick cook/add 30” that auto starts it. No one has a valid use case for setting their microwave to run for 1:37. Multiples of 30 are all the granularity you need.

Some companies get this right but others it’s astounding how many buttons you have to press to get the damn thing to start. I very much enjoy my current microwave which has a quick start button which is also knob. So you poke it and it just goes, but once running you can granularity adjust time up or down by turning the knob. Very satisfying.

+30 seconds quick start is pretty common already on microwaves.

But it doesn't cover all use cases -- I regularly cook things for e.g. 15 minutes at 10% power, to defrost and warm them evenly. That's one of the main thing I use my microwave for, actually.

I don't want to have to hit +30 thirty times in a row. If it's digital, I'm gonna need a number pad.

I would be perfectly happy with clearly labeled time and power knobs, however -- but I'm not sure it's easy to make a knob that works accurately and intuitively for both 30 seconds and 30 minutes.

> but I'm not sure you can really make a knob that works accurately for both 30 seconds and 30 minutes.

Not terribly difficult. An encoder and software to handle "acceleration". Move the knob slowly, and it steps by a small amount (say, 30s). Move the knob quickly, and it jumps by more per degree of change. My main camera lens's focus works like this, and it's great. This does require care in implementation, getting the acceleration curve right is hard.

Yes, most microwaves with dials do in fact work like this.

Compare the the distance between 0 and 1 with the distance between 5 and 6 on this microwave:

https://www.amazon.com/Panasonic-NE-1025F-Silver-Commercial-...

That only goes up to 6 minutes though.

30 minutes involves a much more extreme change in distances... and then of course in the speed of the knob as the timer runs back down.

That's a bit different, it's got graduations on the knob. I'm thinking of a pure encoder-based system, where the absolute position doesn't matter but the change in position (and rate of change of position) do. Think like a mouse scroll wheel, but with acceleration.

In the 90s we had a microwave where the only control surface was a knob like an egg timer. Turn the knob, oven goes whirrrr, knob winds down, goes ding, oven turns off.

There’s this sort of perennial tragedy to perfectly simple consumer devices. They never last long until v2 comes out with more LEDs and buttons.

This is the way. I'd probably do four controls though.

Higher end CNC-esque jog dial for control. ex. http://pico-systems.com/images/pendant.jpg (10th of a second increments maybe. Sometimes putting in 3 seconds to warm a tablespoon of syrup is useful or 24 seconds to warm your teacup).

Momentary switch to start.

Seven segment display array for time setting and countdown.

Sound cue to let you know when countdown has finished. Disabled via a prominent toggle switch. I'd say annunciator to keep with the industrial terminology but...

No need for a screen with countdown. The egg timer dial is also the display.

I have a gripe about people who say "no one".

My microwave heats a mug of water to the perfect temperature for tea in 2:10. I don't want to stand there to act as the timer myself.

And knobs are rarely used today because they cost more and fail easier than flat buttons.

But there are plenty of applications where you only only need a few seconds (e.g. softening butter). I've seen a good application of this with a Panasonic microwave where it has a knob that starts by adding single seconds, and progressively increases the amount of time between notches on the dial as the time increases. That said, I hate the style, since punching in the numbers is quicker and requires less attention.

If you just need to cook a few seconds, stand next to it and open the door to stop it. It takes more time fiddling with the control to select just the right amount of seconds than it takes to actually cook for those amount of seconds, so your time is wasted anyways.

I've used a microwave like this an I hated it. I like to put precise times into my microwave.

My parents until recently had a microwave made in 1984 that had that feature. It had a port for a temperature sensor probe that (I assume) you pushed into the food being microwaved.

I seem to recall that it didn't have a turntable, which is a pretty big negative, but probably required for a wired sensor.

What if you push the sensor from the top, couldn't you still spin it ?

Technology connections made a video about this a few years ago, apparently microwave technology already peaked in the 90's, but it never caught on: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UiS27feX8o0

Instant Pot died primarily due to private equity greed, not because of Instant Pot reliability.

In 2017, Cornell Capital bought the company for a total $500M of which $300M was financed by debt. Then 4 years later in 2021, it refinanced and added on debt, bringing the total debt to $535M. $245M was immediately paid out to shareholders as a dividend. Cornell Capital got paid back all the cash it invested in the company's acquisition, and then some. In 2023 due to high interest rates the company was no longer able to service its debt, costing the company ~$50M a year, and the company had to file Chapter 11.

What are the magic words these people use to get a bank to give them millions of dollars, let them walk off with it, then eat the loss?

The debt likely wasn’t a normal bank, and the interest rate was likely quite high. The parties making the loan were likely fully aware of the risk and thought the interest rate appropriate compensation.

Are those banks the same that failed to recognize what a bad idea it was to bet on sub-prime loans before 2009?

Those WERE a great idea--as long as you weren't the one caught holding the bag

What I don’t get is why we don’t consider it fraud to knowingly take a loan you have no intention of paying back.

1. It is fraud

2. Is there any evidence that's ever the case from PE firms? Startups fail all the time, but I wouldn't characterize them as "knowingly take a loan you have no intention of paying back"

It's call "high risk debt". The high interest rate offsets the likelihood of default.

Wow... I have heard this story so many times. Question is how do you get $300M debt which probably everyone involved knew that it would be written off in short order?

When big money changes hands, at least one person on each end gets a bonus of some kind.

When it's $300 million the bonuses can be kind of sizable, so everyone else including the shareholders, be damned.

The shareholders don't find out until it's too late.

Any chance of the lenders reclaiming some of that dividend money? Or was it paid out too long before the bankruptcy?

I wonder how much the author has traveled abroad, because when TFA mentions "the world", I don't recognize what I see here where I live: I've never found a pocorn button, for example, or moisture sensors, not even in the good old times. And Instant Pot is completely unknown, Covid notwithstanding.

Yeah, I wonder if this is a US specific problem, because there seem to be plenty of "stable" established household appliance companies in Europe that are perfectly happy living on the margins of products that only get bought when the old model fails.

In this particular case I bought a simple "one knob for power, one for time" model at the local Swedish supermarket for the equivalent of about fifty dollars (because it was in the discount) just a few years ago. It was during covid times so it can't have been more than three years. It works fine, precisely because it's dumb.

They don't sell that model any more, but another local chain has the equivalent for (at current exchange rates) about 90 dollars[0].

[0] https://www.clasohlson.com/se/Fristaende-mikrovagsugn-vit/p/...

I had the exact same thoughts, that this might be centric to the US. I also never seen a popcorn button and popcorn for the microwave exists and is fairly easy. Not as good as from a popcorn machine, but still ok.

I also don't know anyone using an Instant Pot.

And so far I also don't know anyone whose microwave broke after just one year, no matter if cheap or expensive.

> capitalism will destroy everything it touches.

The irony of some US based kid, who's literally been the biggest benefactor of capitalism his/her whole life, coming up with this line of argument isn't lost on me.

The first time I've personally even seen a microwave was around 1992-93, because communism.

https://moth.monster/about/

A 21-year-old from Baltimore.

I actually have one the the Panasonic microwaves whispered about at the end of the article, and it's been the best microwave I've ever owned. "Panasonic NNSC688S Mid-Size 1200W Inverter Microwave Oven, 1.3 Cuft, Black Stainless Steel" which Amazon sells for CAD$300, although I see one used is available for $180 - a steal, IMHO.

The key word in the description is "inverter". I am very much in the pro-inverter camp. In an inverter microwave, power is supplied through an inverter circuit to supply a steady and constant amount of power throughout the cooking time without cutting in and out. So if you select 50% power, the microwave will deliver 50% power throughout. Inverter microwaves are also more energy efficient than standard microwaves.

I've also got one, although mine is the larger NN-SN946W model.

It has had one odd behavior that has me quite puzzled.

I was regularly having for breakfast a microwaved frozen breakfast sandwich and a couple hash browns cooked in a toaster. The hash browns took 10 minutes, and the breakfast sandwich 1 minute.

I'd program the microwave for a 9 minute timer stage, followed by a 1 minute cooking stage, and then start the microwave and drop the hash browns in the toaster.

I could then go do other stuff and when I heard the microwave beep I'd know it was time to go take the hash browns out of the toaster.

This worked great for weeks, then one morning the microwave would not start.

Some experimenting showed that it would still start as long as the first stage was not a timer stage of a multi-stage program was not a timer stage. E.g., cook stage + timer stage was fine. Cook + timer + cook was also fine, so it wasn't that timer stages could not precede cook stages. Timer only was fine, too.

This is not an internet-connected device, so it wasn't some sort of stealth firmware update. Reset didn't help, and neither did unplugging it overnight.

It was this way for a couple days (as a work around I'd do 1 second cook + 9 minute timer + 1 minute cook)...and then it started working normally again and has continued working normally ever since (about two years since the glitch).

I can't even come up with a reasonably hypothesis to explain this.

First: kudos for RTFM and learning that you could batch operations. Honestly, you might have inspired me to do it, too. Isn't it funny that a microwave with a local wifi network and the ability to run JS/Lua/whatever scripts would be exponentially more useful than "smart" features?

I agree, what you are describing is thoroughly bizarre. When you say that it wouldn't start, do you mean that it wouldn't let you hit the start button at all, or that the timer would run out and then nothing would happen?

The only thing I can think to ask from a debugging perspective is whether there's someone in your home who was using a mode last thing before bed that would have set it in an uncertain state?

Heck, even the moisture sensor, or whether someone opens the door on the last second of a cook before a beep could leave some register in an uncertain state.

It wouldn't do anything when I pressed the start button. It didn't even do the normal beep that normally occurs to acknowledge button pressed.

There's no one else in the house (that I know of...).

What... is a "frozen breakfast sandwich"?

I googled it and it looks like... a regular sandwich that needs to be put in the oven for some reason?

A "breakfast sandwich" is usually a food item containing eggs (pre-cooked, scrambled or fried), cheese, two slices of bread, and possibly sausage or bacon. The other ingredients are placed between the slices of bread, often this bread is some sort of roll but it may also be a pastry like a croissant. Miscellaneous foods placed between two slices of bread is known as a "sandwich", and the first meal of the day is known as "breakfast". So a "breakfast sandwich" is a sandwich containing foods typically eaten at the first meal of the day!

A "frozen" food is one that has been frozen, usually sold from the "frozen foods" aisle of a grocery store. Sometimes people will prepare meals in advance and then freeze them for storage. These items must be "defrosted" before eating, usually also heated to a desired temperature. This takes substantially less time than making the meal from scratch.

A "frozen breakfast sandwich" is a "breakfast sandwich" which has been pre-prepared, and then frozen. That saves the eater time & effort in the morning, since they only have to heat up the sandwich before eating, not go through the whole process of frying the egg, cooking the bacon, assembling it into a sandwich, & heating that. Even if the eater is also the preparer, it still saves time in the morning (at the expense of preparation time on a different day). For people who don't like getting up early or with long commutes, having pre-prepared frozen breakfast sandwiches can be a significant benefit.

I love it when people react to convenience foods a) as though they have no idea what you're talking about b) that you're just lazy because you don't just do 27 steps in 3 three minutes with ingredients that cost more and expire quickly if you're single while dirtying 3-4 bowls and pans and c) as though you aren't well aware that it's probably not the best for you, if you eat them every day.

I also have a Panasonic Microwave, in my case I went with the 2.2 cubic feet NN-SE982S. It replaced an older 2.2 that died after about 6 years of heavy usage lol.

I LOVE those machines. The inverter is great because it doesn't make the lights dim periodically lol.

I have another version of the same model (NNSC669S) and while I think it was one of the best options available today, I hate it compared to the old Sharp microwave (with a MFR date of 1994!) I had before. I just hate interacting with it, the buttons are difficult to push and the way it makes you enter in things is backwards to what makes sense.

I'm not entirely convinced about the longevity either, the turntable of the first one I received was DOA and I had to get it replaced.

We have a Panasonic NE-1258R.

It's a commercial kitchen microwave oven and is built like a tank.

It requires a 20amp circuit and it has no turntable because it has two magnetrons.

https://www.manualslib.com/products/Panasonic-Ne1258r-Commer...

Recommended.

Well at least you know your electrical system will be up for fast charging an EV. a 20A microwave is probably something you'd want to supervise pretty closely.

It's only 33% more power than a regular microwave (which requires a 15A circuit).

"The oven must be on a SEPARATE, 20 Amp, 60 Hz-120V GROUNDED CIRCUIT."

20A @ 120V is only 2.4 kW max while you should only run it at 80% of the circuit/breaker load so 1.9 kW. Not exactly a fast charging EV circuit. It is not that much greater than a 15A circuit. It would take over an entire day to charge a typical EV, e.g Tesla LR Model 3, from 10-90%

Yes, a typical EV has a 11kW onboard charger. Some have up to 22kW but it’s relatively rare. And that’s for slow charging.

You can always charge slower but if you install a circuit for EV charging it’s nice to have a good one.

An old Renault Zoé equipped with a Continental power train and onboard charger had up to 43kW on AC, but the industry seem to prefer external DC chargers for faster charging. And that starts about 50kW. Though nowadays people would avoid such slow fast chargers and prefer the 100kW+.

> a 20A microwave is probably something you'd want to supervise pretty closely

Aren't standard microwaves 15A? Wouldn't a 15A -> 20A microwave just be 33% more powerful? Is that a dangerous jump?

I know very little about electricity

If I’m not mistaken 15A is a standard residential wall outlet with 14 AWG wires. 20A isn’t that much more but since it’s not standard, I think it would require a higher gauge of wire such as 12 AWG and an updated breaker. I don’t know much about electricity either

20A is now standard in kitchens[0]. For example, when I moved in, all my kitchen outlets were 20 amps. The sockets look like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:NEMA_5-20R.svg

[0]Requirement: Provide at least two 20-amp, 120-volt circuits to supply power to GFCI (Ground Fault Circuit Interrupter) electric receptacles for countertop and eating areas. -- https://www.thespruce.com/kitchen-electrical-code-basics-182...

Oh that's nice! About a year ago I was considering a 20A countertop appliance (espresso machine), but my kitchen only had 20A plugs for the fridge/oven.

Smart on you for getting a commercial appliance.

Residential grade appliances are quite frankly awful and really limit how well you can cook. My dream kitchen is ironically a professional one.

One of my rants are stoves. They is not get as hot as professional stoves. To overcome this, I got a Blackstone griddle that also includes a gas range. I then replaced the propane regulator with some Chinese one that lets me output ateasg 2.5x the amount of gas the stock one did.

I could probably damage it at max output but I've never tried. Instead o get up to 600* F and cooks mean steak and perfect smash burgers.

Wow, is your oven capable of both proper wok and pizza cooking temperature?

By oven do you mean the one in my kitchen?

It gets up to 500F but a good pizza oven goes hotter. For a wok the stove top is gas but the answer is no. It won't get the sear I want.

To overcome this, I have a cuisanart pellet smoker and a big green egg. Those can get me into the 600F range that gets me the pizza cooking temps I want.

For the sear, I just cook on my griddle since the whole surface goes up to 600-700F with that new regulator.

Honestly if I had pro grade appliances, I'd need a massive vent hood and some sort of advanced fire suppression because ho le fook do those grills get hot.

My work had a load of commercial microwaves. Always wondered why they had no turntable. But the buttons on the front never made sense to me. Had to poke around to figure out which one cooked my food in the right amount of time. Not sure if they are all programmable for quick cooking specific foods in restaurants or what.

This microwave is at all the convenience stores in Japan

How much did it cost and where did you buy it?

As usual, the industrial-grade stuff is the only stuff that is actually worth having; while the whole entire consumer market is by and large a rip-off and a scam. Not just for microwaves. Also food ingredients, cosmetics, drugs, electronics. The problem is that business-to-business suppliers are harder to find and contact, they rarely engage with private individuals and often they are even restricted by the government from selling to you. The whole thing drives me nuts.

When I search Google Shopping for 'Panasonic NE-1258R' then I find plenty of companies willing to sell it to me.

discovery is still an issue for this particular example.

The best microwave I've ever used was probably from the early 80s. It was in my maternal grandparents' house.

The controls were two knobs. There were no other controls. No start button. No open-door button. Both knobs felt Very Serious. There was no spinny platter thing, but it didn't seem to really do any worse than the new ones with it—but it was easier to clean. It was pretty big for a microwave.

One knob was power. One knob was a timer. You turn the timer knob to start it. It physically ticks down until it dings (real bell, not a speaker) and stops. You pull the (heavy) handle on the door to open it. It's secured with (I suppose) one or more of those mechanisms where a flared tab goes between a pair of little wheels, so it's secure unless you pull fairly hard, no need for a release button.

It was still mounted in the exact same place and working just as well as it did in the 80s and 90s, when my grandma moved out to live with my parents in the 2010s.

I've seen a few kinda similar models on offer, but they're expensive and without feeling one in person I really doubt they're actually as good.

(A bunch of the finishes on their very-modest poor-rural-town house—outlet and switch cover plates, some of the trim, the front door, the storm doors of all things, and the doorbell, were all luxury-tier by modern standards—some of those, I've never seen anything as good on any house built since 1970 or so, and I've been in some "nice" ones; some stuff's simply gotten worse, and I tell you what, the solid feel and butter-smooth action of some of those things really did make life better)

I also remember our microwave as a kid had a power level knob. Now that property is hidden behind some combination of pressing 5 different beeping buttons that I never use

I'm fine with digital entry for time (30 vs 45 seconds can be a big deal when heating up your coffee), but just have a knob for the power level. Every single microwave seems to have a different way of selecting power, when a knob would be so easy.

As soon as you open the site in Chrome it complains that my browser is stalking me (I know and don't care) and that this site does not work with it. So I closed it. More annoying than my browser's stalking habits is the assumption that one knows best and can decide for others what they should be using. This is the first time I see something like that. Hope it's the last too.

same here. and no option to close it. is this some sort of joke or someting

Enjoy you advertiser-driven web.

This won't stop an advertiser driven web. Only an alternative approach that maintain provider profits. Adverts exist because we refuse to pay for every service. This doesn't offer an alternative, but presumes to know better by removing user's choice.

If people listened to the author of the web page, it would stop an ad-driven web. Because the world continues to use Chromium skins, we are inevitably going to get some technology that ad blockers won't work on any more. See FLoC, Web Bundles, or Web Integrity.

How do you all use a browser that comes up with these adversarial technologies?

Because on a daily basis, it doesn't affect me. Personally. I don't care. That's the honest answer.

On days I do care, I have my means to be undetected. When the ads bother me, I switch on the pihole. Some sites don't work with pihole enabled so sometimes it's either off or I create exceptions. But I like Chrome. The convenience I get from chrome is invaluable to me. No other browser can give me that exactly. But all of the above are based on MY decisions. I chose to use X or to ignore Y. When a site decides that for me, well... I just walk away.

I too do not care about the environment because a litle polltion won't make a difference.

And I don't bother with a retirement fund because I make enough money for my needs right now so why care about the future.

These are bad analogies. I can block ads on the net and still use chrome. I can choose whether ads bother me or not. I can choose if I want/agree to be tracked. My choice doesn't hurt anyone. You want to fight the ads - take on the ad networks. Provide an alternative. Without an alternative it's just a cardboard sign with some text.

If you emit CO2, you are hurting everyone else. If you participate in a web browser monoculture, you allow one company to own the web, therefore hurting everyone else. Please don't absolve yourself of the harm you are causing those of us that don't want to be under Google's thumb.

I exhale co2. Should I stop breathing? Should we stop using cars all together? Stop flying? Stop using computers? Sorry but I don't operate in that absolutist way. Existence is not always fair, and it's not always without harm. Everyone has a footprint on their environment. Nobody is without one.

Say you stopped an ad driven web - what do you think will remain when nobody can afford to run anything at scale anymore? Would you be ok paying to use the web? I know I wouldn't.

What are you referring to by "at scale"? Can you give some examples?

I would also like to understand why you think web has to change. Why can't the ad networks change by not allowing tracking in ads, or make ads bearable to look at? I don't need an ad moving on a web page. Newspapers have gotten this right for centuries. I can look at a newspaper all day and not get frustrated, but I can't do that on the web because I have to worry about content moving on my screen or privacy.

At scale - Facebook, google, OpenAI, Twitter, Instagram, etc.

Regarding ads - Don't get me wrong - I hate obnoxious ads, i dislike moving ads, and noisy ads and colourful ads and ad-sites that farm content from other sites to show ads etc. And I think the more obtrusive they get they just harm themselves in the long run. But, I also appreciate that for most content outlets this is the only way to support themselves (except my last example - that has no excuse).

And regarding tracking - personally if I am to see ads, i rather them be relevant at least, and not random. When asked if I want to be tracked or see random ads, i select the former. purely personal preference.

And also: pihole. Seriously. I turn it on and the ads disappear. The net is clean and faster on all devices in the house.

The internet doesn't have to be commercialized. Content like this would exist just fine without profits.

"Adverts exist because we refuse to pay for every service"

No, adverts exist largely because of poor quality content that ranks high in google and does everything possible to give readers the least amount of information in the slowest way possible. I would gladly pay to visit websites that shared a common ethical framework for cost sharing.

Content like that will exist, and have existed before. But large scale operations will not. Search engines, LLMs, social networks. They need a lot of money to run at scale. LLMs charge a subscription. Kagi is doing search engine which is paid (and not bad). If they all started charging pretty soon we'll be paying through the nose for everything. Ads offset that. I pay Spotify, Amazon, OpenAI, Netflix, Diskey, and I'm considering paying Kagi. But I can't pay every single content provider I use... it will never end. I accept the ads where I can and pay where I cannot. I have a choice sometimes and I exercise it. I. Not some content site that makes the choice for me. That is my only point here.

Google doesn't need to exist. Google exists primarily to serve ads and websites with ads. Google is actively harming the internet by existing, not enhancing anything.

Ok. When you have statements that are based in reality and not some pseudo utopian ideological dogma state of mind I'll be happy to discuss them.

I hope you eventually spend more time thinking about this and form a more holistic view yourself.

Funny, since this is something that HN recommended websites begin doing after Google began pushing WEI [1]. Your frustration is intended in this case, the theory being that you'll be pestered into switching browsers. Annoying for some but you have to respect it in a way, what with how it's giving Chrome a taste of its own medicine.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36877524 - Quick example from a search.

When you said HN recommended, initially I read "YC & HN admins" recommended, but you meant "some people on HN". Look, I respect activism of this kind. But direct it where it's meaningful. It's not that I found not being able to comfortably read a lukewarm article about microwaves is the end of the world. The title on HN might as well have been about that "chrome blocker" because that was the actual story here. In the IE days people were furious when sites were only "optimised for IE".

The worst part about this article for me is that there is a reason for some people to buy new microwaves. Inverter microwaves (yes, these have been around a while) have become far more broadly available. This is a worthwhile upgrade for many users.

What do they do exactly? Just operate on a variable power level, without cycling on and off?

Correct

I don't understand why that is dramatically better than cycling? Isn't the overall energy input into the food roughly similar over time?

It's not like microwaving gives great texture or browning to begin with?

The cycle time is too long for sensitive items like butter. Even at low power it will bubble over before it fully melts.

Ah, gotcha

A lot of electric ranges do the same thing, which is incredibly annoying. I mean, the 60 Hz is right there; why are they blasting in 10 second intervals?

I suspect for electric ranges they've historically used relays instead of solid state triacs or the like?

[https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/279752/why-a...]

If so, relays have significant switching times and limited cycle counts due to arcing - especially under load. Enough that sub-second switching times will wear them out pretty quickly, and also be annoyingly loud.

At the power levels we're talking about for a resistive stove, solid state is expensive. At the voltages we're talking about, it's also not trivial to do in a reliable way using solid state techniques (240V RMS =~ 340V peak).

SCRs are used for industrial stuff with much larger loads than a consumer stove. Regular relays definitely are the wrong thing to use for high speed switching though.

Thanks for the pointer - a quick google showed SCRs in the 30+ AMP 240 volt range (minimum useful for even a small range) at well over $1k. That sound about right?

I don't think so http://quantumscr.com/s2pa30.htm

Thanks! The current control one is $210. Still a large percentage of a range's cost (typical equivalent relays would be $30-50).

Anecdotally it seems to heat much more evenly, without the lava and ice pockets my old microwave left.

Seems to work better for defrosting evenly without risking cooking the item, which is one of my main use-cases for a microwave.

Excellent for things like melting butter or chocolate

In addition to everything else people mentioned, high power microwaves tend to cause pockets of steam inside food which explode and make a big mess all over the interior. By dialing down the power level on an inverter microwave, you eliminate the chance of that happening. This did not always work on the old cycling microwaves due to the long duty cycle.

It's a good keyword to search for a microwave that isn't the same $15 hardware as all of the other ones.

I don't care about the variable power, but found an "inverter" microwave without the rotating plate, which cooks evenly without it of course. It has more internal space and is easier to clean.

Yep. We moved house recently so do fall into the articles “no reason to buy one except…”

But when we started shopping we were pleasantly surprised that there had been at least two major developments in the tech since last time I bought one.

First, an inverter gives you actual power-level control instead of the old-fashioned on-off modulation.

Second, flat-bed models have rotating emitters so you no longer need that rotating glass plate to get even application of heat to the food, and can even use square dishes that would be too large to rotate, without risking the usual hot-spots.

Maybe this market isn’t progressing at a rapid pace, but there is some progress.

What was the model/brand you went with?

We ended up with a Sharp flatbed inverter, I think it's a "SM327FHS"

I still wouldn't routinely cook much food in it, but it's been pretty good so far for a microwave, and does defrost better than my old one (more even, less cooking stuff at the edges that you don't want cooked).

Also it fit pretty perfectly in the microwave nook that was already in the kitchen!

"Second, flat-bed models have rotating emitters s"

Now that's interesting, how do they work - is it a rotating waveguide? I see an hour or two of web 'research' ahead.

Hehe, do report back, I don't think I know myself!

From what little I do understand, there's some sort of rotating emitter arrangement under the flat bed on the bottom of the microwave. Panasonic say -

"In the case of Turntable style microwave ovens, the microwaves were emitted from a fixed antenna that is located on the side of the cavity. These emitted microwave will then bounce around the cavity. With microwave ovens that use flatbed technology, the microwaves are emitted from a rotating antenna located underneath the ceramic base of your microwave oven."

We are considering purchasing a new microwave, so I dipped my toes into the review-water earlier this week. The Wirecutter folks have done an interesting job of disassembling the microwaves from many brands and visually demonstrating that they're all made by one manufacturer. Unsurprisingly, when they test them, they all perform the same, too:

https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/best-microwave/

When I was looking for a microwave, I went to an local appliance store because I didn't wanna go to Home Depot etc and get some piece of shit. They told me the exact same thing and that's why they didn't have a huge selection. They basically told me pick the one that looks the best, they all had the same 1 year warranty and same internals. I wasn't gonna get an actual high end microwave without going commercial.

I hadn't heard of wirecutter before! Very refreshing review, thank you for the link :)

Oh this is obviously the main (or only) source of the article we're discussing. Only more interesting and with actual information in it! Thanks!

Got a Breville recently, seemed like the only units that weren't the same as every others out there... Not sure it's more durable, but at least it's super quiet, I can mute beep sounds, I can change time and power while food is cooking, and it's got a stainless interior so there's no cheap paint that'll start falling off after a few months.

Also got a Breville microwave, too the "combi-wave" one or something. Amazingly quiet.

I usually hate all device sounds, but surprisingly this has a reasonably quiet singular bell-like "ding" option, rather than the typical "beep-beep-beep" that drives me nuts.

The only thing that concerns me is the oven modes. It's got this plastic spinner piece that supports the glass turntable that I'm not sure about leaving in, and you can't use the metal tray in microwave mode.

So I just leave it in microwave mode all the time.

My fridge, Drip Coffee Maker and Toast, 3 devices, from 3 different manufacturers all use the same three beeps (same pitch, same time delay between beeps) so its ambiguous to deduce if my toast or coffee is ready or if my fridge door isn't entirely closed. But hey, great component pricing on that beep chip.

I've never understood peoples' obsession with matching appliances for this exact reason. No, I don't want my fridge, microwave, stove, and dishwasher to come from the same manufacturer and make the same noises, thank you very much.

It is not as unlikely as you might think... The cheaper buzzers have a single, preferred frequency (like [0] has 2.4KHz). And engineers like round numbers for time delays.

So I can imagine a spec which says "do a cheapest buzzer on its preferred frequency, 1 second period, 50% duty cycle, 3 times" being independently written in 3 different engineering offices, and multiple devices ending up with identical beeps.

[0] https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/pui-audio-inc/AT-...

Breville combi whatever, microwave, oven, air frier. But real treat is inverter operation that's half as loud and SOFT CLOSE DOORS and ability to turn off all system sounds. Big quality of life upgrade. Not worth $500.

Man, I got the Breville combo toaster/oven/air fryer/dehydrator thing (name escapes me) back in 2017 and it’s the best appliance I’ve ever had. I use it basically every day in at least one mode; I hardly use our full-sized gas oven at all anymore.

Highly recommend

Are you in Australia? Breville in Aus is a different brand to Breville here in the UK (and possibly other places). UK Breville is mostly known for sandwich toasters and fairly cheap commodity kitchen appliances, Aussie Breville seems like a fairly high quality brand, especially with their espresso machines (which are sold over here under the brand name Sage - I have one and love it).

Huh I see that... We get the Australian Breville brand in North America, and while we don't get their full product offering, it's a lot better than what I see on the Sage website.

Domestic brands over here aren't even trying. Build quality is subpar on everything manufactured on the continent, but thankfully designs are pretty simple and parts are readily available.

Our only choice on larger appliances is basically Miele at 2-4x the European MSRP to get anything remotely reliable. Even then the Miele@Home stuff is nothing but a nightmare so far.

Ah interesting. Be thankful you don't get the UK Breville range!

I just about got one of those about a year ago until I ran into a ton of complaints about the door latches breaking and them refusing to provide replacement parts to fix them.

What is this article? It doesn’t even mention why microwaves suck besides handwavyly saying they break in a year (not my experience).

It seems to be some excuse to tell people that capitalism is horrible:

> what can we learn from this? i don't know. capitalism will destroy everything it touches.

Yeah, of all the appliances in my own home, the microwave is the one I never complain about. I press the +30s button a few times, and the food is hot after a minute or two.

Yes, there are ten other buttons I never use. Yes, they could conceivably be “better” in small ways. Yes, modern ones can break like every other appliance does, but the ones from the 80s and 90s broke, too.

I have a Panasonic "Genius" microwave that I actually like quite well. The "inverter technology" does seem to cook more evenly than previous microwaves I've had, and the "air fryer" (not really) mode works very well for a bunch of frozen things that should be a bit crisp on the outside (e.g. samosas or taquitos). Day old fries often come out better than they were when fresh.

Is it an amazing indispensable life-changing invention? No. But does it suck? Also no. The premise of the article is seriously flawed, and comes across as somebody who just didn't like anything but old-fashioned stove cooking (probably by someone else) in the first place.

Yeah I feel the same. I have an LG inverter and it’s absolutely fine. Definitely better than the 70s microwave I grew up with.

I sympathize a bit with those who would like to have physical knobs and simplicity. I’m not a fan of the capacitive touch buttons. They are easy to clean, so I understand why they’re popular, but it would feel nice to just spin a knob to 3:30 and press the start button.

And it was 1/10th the cost of the “good old days” models. I appreciate the cost-cutting that went into my microwave.

This "your browser is stalking you" shit is annoying

What are you talking about?

The author had the incredibly genius idea of making a website that doesn't work on the most popular browser. Ridiculous.

I simply toggled off JS and kept reading

I decided I don't hate my microwave enough to bother, lol

There’s nothing to hate. No microwave I’ve owned has stopped working. That’s his only “reasoning” for why microwaves suck.

I do say, the defcon 1 freak out over googles latest way to track you is quite amusing. its peak HN yuppie hipster bullshit.

yes same here.

Did 15? seconds of fact checking the blog post since, as a home owner, it seemed wrong based on my little experience researching, purchasing and installing kitchen appliances in my own home. Midea controls 90% of the countertop microwave market. Even then, Panasonic, GE and others still manufacture their own. GE, whirlpool and Samsung control the Lionshare of the US market ~ 55% AND there is some evidence that the market for microwaves is growing at ~5% per year. I think there are better examples of total monopolies out there that the author could have chosen.

I still have my stainless steel Bosch microwave that I bought in 2004. It has no display, no buttons. Just two rotary knobs: power, and timer. Simplest thing in the world. I had to replace the turntable motor about 4 years ago, and the replacement part was a generic unbranded "microwave motor" that cost little.

Any time I'm in someone else's kitchen and I just want "900w for 3 minutes" I curse the grid of buttons that show pictures of chickens and fish and who knows what else.

Got the cheap no name microwave at my local supermarket with no reviews. It just works, I’m happy I didn’t go to Amazon for reviews.

I'd like to see a Zojirushi microwave. I feel like they could make one that seems a little magical and worth the upgrade.

I got excited when I misread this thinking they had one already.

Their thermoses are so amazing. In fact, they’re so good that I often have to keep the lid open cuz my coffee stays too hot for too long.

They entered to the market recently (maybe JDM). I've considered to buy it but finally not, due to it's expensive. https://www.amazon.co.jp/-/en/dp/B0B7GZ3DCG/

Couple of things I'm now looking at microwave: 1)inverter 2)no rotating plate.

My understanding is that with inverter the microwave can actually adjust the power instead of doing the on/off/on/off cycle you get with the cheap ones.

I guess the rotating plate is there, because it's hard to distribute the microwaves evenly inside the oven. Some time ago I tried to find one without the rotating plate, but the only ones I could find were professional ones (>$1k)

Now at least Panasonic seems to have models that meet my criteria [1], but they are not on all markets. Haven't checked any reviews yet.

[1] https://www.panasonic.com/au/consumer/household/microwave-ov...

The rotating plate is a weird one. I am not really sure why they are found in most consumer microwaves. It feels like a fancy feature? Not having one is definitely the better options. easier to clean for one.

Without a rotating plate there will be a hidden metal fan-like object ether in the ceiling or the floor. this is a rotating reflector designed to scatter the waves a bit.

Don't consider this a recommendation(it may well be utter garbage) but my next microwave is going to be a Sharp R-21LCFS mainly because it hits all my key points. no rotating platter, no modes or features, just one big dial to set the timer... it's... well perfect. Plus I was able to find the service manual for it. I always feel better about a product if it has a service manual.

https://www.sharpusa.com/ForBusiness/CommercialCooking/Comme...

"Perfection is reached, not when there is no longer anything to add, but when there is no longer anything to take away."

-- Antoine de Saint-Exupery

> The rotating plate is a weird one. I am not really sure why they are found in most consumer microwaves.

> this is a rotating reflector designed to scatter the waves a bit

I remember watching a daytime documentary testing different microwaves with some frozen pocket and then measuring the surface and core temperatures.

IIRC, the low-quality (=/= cheap) microwaves would basically just Gauss rifle your food with a high powered wave while trying to mitigate it by spinning around the tray.

What is the theory that puts power modulation behind the magnetron voltage regulation? Or is the modulation frequency so low that it can leave unevenly heated areas in the rotating plate?

Inverter and no turning table is a common in Japanese microwave market. I think these are obvious improvement over basic one. My third preference is to have infrared temp sensor, but it's still not so common except highends. Panasonic tend to have it.

This is like a textbook example of Louis CK’s adage “everything is amazing and nobody’s happy.”

Microwaves are great. Amazon will have a Farberware or RCA for $70 to my home in two days - including shipping!

What exactly is the problem? No one has ever used them to do anything other than heat things up. I was a child of the 80s. No one ever used these supposed features the post complains are disappearing.

Instant Pot. Introduced millions to pressure cooking. Pork shoulder or brisket in 30m instead of 3 hours. Same for beans. Mine stopped working after several months and I called the company. They sent me a new one, actually a nicer model than the old, for free, that week. And told me to throw the old one out. Years later it’s working great.

Who cares if the company went bankrupt? Yes private equity seems to suck but guess what, you can still buy a cheap great Instant Pot.

Then he has the nerve to complain about capitalism, the reason we have this stuff. Does the author think in the Soviet Union it was easy to get a microwave? Does the author think communist citizens lucky enough to own microwaves had all the features they could want, and could be one tenth as picky as he is?

Please tell me in what system other than capitalism you get to publish your nitpicky complaints about your abundant selection of consumer electronics to the world at the click of a button, on your computer or phone or tablet, that you own and hook up to your broadband internet which is readily available to your heated and cooled home, in one of the most prosperous countries on earth, so you can sneer at capitalism, which literally is the reason you have all this.

What a bizarre post.

In summary, not every microwave sucks, and instant pot isn’t dead.

Thank you. Everyone seems to be talking about number pad bad.

I don't think you read the article and are probably new at life, or just out of touch.

Microwaves should last for decades, this is the same type of thing that you may have heard your parents complain about "I had a can opener that I got from my mother and it just broke, the five new ones I bought same price all broke within a year".

There is really nothing complex about one. It's a timer connected to some voltage equipment and a couple transformers. But, the way you make it, fused steel, well oiled joints, cheap copper wire barely within tolerance or thick wire able to withstand 2x the amperage, varies wildly. As demand goes up, you build fancy microwave factories with expensive well tested molds that can churn out hundreds of thousands of them...until demand goes down and paying for maintenance and power at the factory no longer make sense, let alone having anyone staff the place or prevent looting and squatting.

So you cut corners and your microwave is made of plastic, every time you use it it fries its own cheap water based glue, and the thing falls apart every 6 months.

That's what he's complaining about. Yeah, capitalism works great assuming constant or increasing demand, but it's really bad at financial planning or literally anything else, and then it creates garbage and human suffering.

I think probably the microwaves in the Soviet Union still probably last decades, because unlike the American ones, there were still people willing to buy and or repair their own. Sure they might be "trash" in build quality, at some point in history, but what matters is not all money.

> every time you use it it fries its own cheap water based glue, and the thing falls apart every 6 months.

Which brand has this happened to for you? I've never seen this, but I've only ever had a supermarket own brand which will just be Midea and a Panasonic.

> but what matters is not all money

Then buy a commercial one which last longer and cost more.

1. This was an illustration of how to make an exceptionally cheap microwave that will work a bit before it fries. I don't often buy microwaves (I'm lucky and have an old one), I'm sure you could find something in China like this, though. 2. Not reasonable for most people. Yeah, sure buy everything at $$$$, just sacrifice a life/kids/house. Good luck not going into life-long debt/slavery at 40k$ a year.

> the thing falls apart every 6 months.

Where do you get this? Microwaves do not fall apart every six months. I had one that we had to replace after 4 or 5 years because we didn't clean the spills enough. We liked the quality enough we replaced with the exact same model.

You mention you think I'm young even though I said I was a kid in the 80s. I think it's actually young people who tend to romanticize old stuff. Those old microwaves were not miraculously better quality. The ones still alive today are, this is survivor bias.

The old ones were generally fine, the new ones are generally fine. They break eventually, implements exposed to the mess of cooking (liquids, steam, caked on grime) tend to, unless you maintain them, which guess what, no one does. We don't really have the time.

The best evidence that the quality is fine today is that, by the article's own testimony, people stopped improving them. If they really sucked someone would go in and make a better one and make a bunch of money. There's a reason no one is doing that.

People love to complain, today as ever.

>You mention you think I'm young.

Young or out of touch. Either just bought a microwave and it hasn't failed yet or old and have one that's lasted 5-8 years and don't have a new crappy one yet.

>The best evidence that the quality is fine today is that, by the article's own testimony

He said/she said. This is all assertion by opinion without facts. That said, it appears a year ago the trend was downward, for multiple appliance types, in the US: https://www.statista.com/statistics/220020/average-life-expe...

Anecdotally, modern appliances tend to break after only a couple years (based on reports I hear from friends co-workers, etc.). More cheap shit from China/etc. (my fridge drawers are plastic and snapped about 8 months into usage, something that should have a 13-14 year lifespan, and of course, is out of warranty already).

Trying to produce a chart of microwaves bought and produced in 2020 and how long they've lasted is much harder, and honestly you're bullshitting at least as much if not more than me here - plugging your ears and pretending everything is fine is less honest and not at all observant. Combining the facts I do have (actually decreasing lifetimes over a decade) and people complaining more, and an effective monopoly due to capitalism, I would say the reasonable conclusion is that actually no, microwaves today are not generally fine.

> There's a reason no one is doing that.

The reason is not what you think it is. Nobody owns microwave makers or microwave factories, so people just generally accept gradually shittier shit. People buying things is not people being happy with what they bought. There's a big big difference. Inflation remains at an all time high and people are pretty pissed about how much everything costs already - the system has already started to fail.

> If they really sucked someone would go in and make a better one and make a bunch of money.

Sure, if there are some millionaires with money to spare maybe they'll make some cheap reliable microwaves. But they won't make a ton of money. And since, nobody's interested in making reliable microwaves, and they have other things they are interested in doing (due to capitalism), microwaves continue to get shittier and shittier.

This is the whole point of the article, which maybe you'd have grasped if you weren't all "and they dare to question capitalism those damn dirty hippie socialists".

First soviet microwaves appeared toward the very end of the USSR, they cost 3 monthly salaries and weighted 40 kg.

I wanted a table top oven, my flat doesn't have room to have a built in one. At the shops it was impossible to find simply an oven. Everything was some kind of oven, rotisserie, smoker, steamer, microwave, air fryer contraption. They all wanted 500+ euros for the honour of owning such a device. There were no knobs or buttons. Only a touch interface with dozens of icons with no description as to what they did. And when you use them, they seem to use all of their functionality with some kind of optimization routine to cook whatever it is you fancy. Finally I did find a simple oven (simple meaning, it has one function and that is too be an oven). But it shouldn't be so difficult.

I could do without all the food preset and "AI" crap that they seem to like adding, but convection is nice, and steam is a great add too.

I got rid of my microwave several years ago and don't miss it anymore. (It took a while to get used to its absence.) I still have an Instant Pot but use it very rarely, maybe once a month. Investing in a high quality set of pots and pans has made up for it: copper pots for things that need to be heated quickly (e.g. boiling water, which is almost as fast as the microwave in a copper pot) and high-quality cast iron for things that need to be heated thoroughly (e.g. frying, baking). I also own a toaster oven because I'm too lazy to toast bread in the frying pan :) That one is electronic, but you can still get analog toaster ovens I believe.

I got an Instant Pot because so many people I personally know swore by it, and in the end I just don't get it. Maybe I know too many people who live the bachelor/college dorm lifestyle. It does everything pots do, but it's big and heavy and cleanup is a colossal pain.

Cool, I just bought a microwave that is so much better than the one I had.

Things better about the modern microwave: It heats food faster despite the same power rating. It has a higher CFM vent which is noticeably better than what I had before at getting cooking gasses off my stove. It has a brighter stove light. The panel is completely blank aside from the time when not in use. (I find all the buttons kind of mentally disruptive, odd maybe.) The buttons are kind of annoying capacitive things, but other than that I’m very positive on it.

Samsung, Panasonic, Siemens, LG, Toshiba, Sharp all have microwaves on offer. Are they all made by Midea? Seems unlikely. The diversity of models, sizes, prices is striking when searching online.

Toshiba, given Midea bought their home appliance division, yes:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-03-17/china-s-m...

Looking through amazon, all the most basic models at a ~$80 to $110 price point really look almost identical beyond a basic facelift. They nearly all have a power and timer knob, the same stamped steel internal and side panels and roughly the same max power. At most, you see different generations.

Technology Connections covered microwaves: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UiS27feX8o0>

As a slight tangent, here's a weird thing for you to notice:

No two people you know have the same microwave.

I was a bit shocked reading all these comments, because many reflect exactly the issues I had with microwaves and I always thought I'm alone with that. When we moved in 2019 I had to buy a new one, living in Germany, you would usually go with BOSCH or SIEMENS, but at that time, all their models below 100 EUR looked almost identical! And of course had a loud beeping that you couldn't disable and generally looked low-quality. It took me quite a bit to find a decent microwave for around 100 EUR. It's a Samsung! A brand that in Germany is not used for kitchen appliances at all. Just TVs/phones etc. The exact model: Samsung MS23K3515AW/EG (not available on amazon.de anymore) There is a bit of a hit: The beeping returns on power loss. And you have to press 2 buttons for 3sec to disable it again, took me a while to remember them, since we have power loss only like once a year. I guess you could do a small sticker with the instructions. I count the "beeping off" not as a "great feature" - it's just common sense to me. But there is a great feature: the "endless wheel dial" to precisely set the timer in 10sec intervals! That thing is awesome. It's very smooth to turn, but has small clicks for each 10sec interval AND you can use it WHILE the microwave is already running, for example when your wife tells you "but the food has been out of the fridge since 30min" - so you go 10-20sec less. Pressing the START button immidiatly starts the microwave with a 30sec runtime. Press it again and you add 30sec or just use the "wheel dial".

Wanna heat up a cup of milk from the fridge? 70sec. Only half a cup? 40sec. Wife wants the milk extra hot? 80sec. Milk wasn't in the fridge? Minus 10-20sec - and so on. For families it's really useful.

It's 4 years old now and used 10 times a days, and runs still fine. It's a bit loud and the glass is very dark so you can't peek inside (probably the biggest disadvantage).

Well, my instant pot is a piece of junk. I got it ca. 2019 to replace my worn out rice cooker, and within 2-3 years the control dial failed. Now I have to spin the dial at a wide range of speeds while various pushing on, pulling on, and whispering incantations to the stupid thing. Worth making extra waste to replace? No, but it sure makes me mad that I need 90 seconds to set the cook timer.

Mine seems to detect burning about 3 mins into pressure cooking (which stops the heat). I’m fairly certain nothing is actually burning, but even if it is, there seems to be no amount of liquid I can add to get it to stop.

See also:

Shaving Is Too Expensive: https://www.johnwhiles.com/posts/shaving

Your Stuff Is Actually Worse Now: https://www.vox.com/the-goods/23529587/consumer-goods-qualit...

Your Sweaters Are Garbage: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2023/10/sweat...

This is basically a blog summary of Amanda Mull's Atlantic story from this summer:

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2023/06/insta...

https://archive.ph/DKBzB

Except that that article is only about Instant Pot, and this one is (mostly) about microwaves.

I for instance had no idea that a company called Midea existed, much less that it's now a near-monopoly supplier of shitty OEM microwaves to the world. Here's hoping my indestructible Toshiba keeps on ticking, since looks like Midea swallowed them too in 2016.

https://www.midea-group.com/our-businesses/smart-home/toshib...

Interesting, I have a Midea white labeled window air conditioner from Costco and that thing is SUPERB. Extremely quiet, cold, smart, all around just a fantastic device. I wonder why their microwaves are so bad

Costco is not messing around when it comes to quality.

Last time I checked it was a duopoly now. One company is Midea, the other is Galanz.

However, some companies (like Panasonic) still make their own high-end microwaves.

Here in Japan, four major electrics brands (two are now Taiwanese/Chinese owned) still actively develop their original microwave oven combo. https://kakaku.com/kaden/microwave-oven/ranking_2115/

I've used around 15 different microwave ovens consistently though my live, from cheap to relatively expensive ones, between homes I've lived in, apartments I've rented and offices we've furnished. Each one lasted at least 3 years, with some lasting over 10 without any problems.

I've had vastly different experiences than the author.

But did you have a top HN submission with record number of comments? Rage is the recipe of social media success.

I have a fancy GE Microwave, its a built in, over the stove job, that is also a convection oven (a lousy one perhaps), but when used in hybrid convection cook mode, its pretty spiffy.

The boyfriend does not like using it with the moisture sensor active (he strongly likes to cover his food with a lid, to prevent splatter), but I find just a paper towel is good enough for me - and when left to its normal pre-programmed modes it works surprisingly well when I just let the intelligence the engineers at GE programmed into it at the factory do its thing.

I am also the least likely person in our household to actually use one, I have a perfectly good stove and oven, and I'm much more likely to warm my leftovers with that. Then it doesn't come out being uneven in temp, with a weird rubbery texture, or devoid of moisture.

Of course - it cost 600 dollars - as the saying goes, you get what you pay for.

The wife and boyfriend however? the microwave was for them.

You have a wife and a boyfriend?

It’s the wife’s boyfriend

No, he's both of ours boyfriend.

I'd never expected to be in a poly thing, but it works for us.

I suppose if you’re going to make your peace with this, it’s good if you can convince yourself that it works for “us”

Yes.

I'd never expected to be in a poly thing, but it works for us.

Lol

I have one too. The only problem is that you have to change the tray depending on what mode you want to use.

I think we've used the convection microwave part exactly once. Mostly we just use it as a microwave.

You can avoid splatter and get much better results by just turning down the power level. I now rarely use the microwave above 60%!

The sensor cook modes actually do that, they run a test cycle on low, then dial up the heat for the last bit. It works great.

Convincing the boyfriend of that, is harder.

We don't like our LG microwave capacitive-only buttons or the periodic "I'm done!" cute chime, but it works and I use it multiple times a day, because I mostly eat cooked grain and pulse sprouts plus vegetables (vs GERD, and because I like fiber), and a microwave with inverter is the best way to quickly cook this and beets, for example, without boiling over. I set it to 30-40% power (of 1100W max) and increase the time accordingly. My feeling is that low power longer time gives the heat energy time to propagate and minimize hotspots. I stir it all once partway through, often when I add the zucchini or other quicker-cooking veg.

We use our InstantPot daily, too, for all sorts of foods and especially steel-cut oats or oat groats, scheduled to be ready in the morning.

I look forward to direct synthesis solid state microwave ovens. I want to actually get power control.

ooo repurpose-able arrays

Inverter microwave ovens do PWM (which I guess doesn't sound as sexy as "Inverter"?) so you get much finer-grained power control than standard microwaves.

Still they don't give you direct wattage control, which perhaps is what you're asking for.

https://www.techlicious.com/review/microwave-ovens-with-inve...

Don't regular microwaves also do PWM? How's that different from just cycling on and off?

If the new ones are doing PWM (I hadn't heard that's how it works, but have no reason to doubt it), it must be cycling several times per second. It's indistinguishable from having true control over the wattage.

The old cycling on and off, it's full power for several seconds and then off for several. The full power sections are long enough to nuke the shit out of many items. Butter doesn't do well, soup and pizza either, just to name some.

Thanks for the explanation!

I didn't realize PWM specifically referred to fast cycling. I thought any sort of deliberate on/off pattern to modulate power would be PWM. What you said makes sense though, that the regular microwaves can't lower their power output enough (whatever The mechanism) to be safe for some foods.

Phased array, heat sensors, no turntable, uses beam forming to get food uniformly hot.

It's fascinating to me how many people here yearn for a simple set of controls. Two dials, maybe physical not digital. I feel the same way.

I can't remember if it was in "The Design of Everyday Things", or "The Inmates are Running the Asylum: Why High Tech Products Drive us Crazy", but a story is recounted about trying to buy a usable video recorder.

He assumed that the expensive ones would have solved the UX issues (like being able to set the time correctly!), but no. The more expensive ones had control interfaces for all kinds of useless functions and were incomprehensible. He just wanted something easy to use, and ended up buying the cheapest model.

Anyone have experience with Panasonic's "Cyclonic Inverter" microwaves? [1] Are they good?

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEILEEPYiEs

I will never go back to a conventional microwave oven. I run mine at 30-60% power pretty much any time I want to reheat food. Running at full power just creates tiny pockets of steam inside the cold food that then explode all over the interior. At lower power the food heats evenly and this never happens!

I used to use a lid on all the food I microwaved but I learned recently that microwaves and plastic are not a good mix. Low power with my inverter microwave has rescued the device as something useful for heating food!

By the way, the “inverter technology” isn’t really anything special. It’s a switched-mode power supply like you’ll find in millions of devices. The main difference is that this one can output the high voltages needed to drive the magnetron. It’s also a lot lighter in weight since it uses a much smaller transformer!

Your comment seems to completely fail to answer my question? I know what an inverter is. I was specifically asking about Panasonic's Cyclonic Inverter technology, not about inverter technology in general.

To be fair to GP, "Cyclonic Wave" seems to be Panasonic's fancy marketing term for "inverter microwave, but with two magnetrons instead of one".

Putting in two magnetrons doesn't automatically imply field rotation, does it? They seem to rotate the fields here for better heating.

Regardless, I've seen inverter microwaves. The entire point of the question was to find out how this technology performs compared to other microwaves (with inverters or otherwise).

POWER [setting on microwaves] -user, reporting:

I just purchased an air fryer [which has greatly reduced my microwave usage, generally]. I specifically purchased the unit because it had analogue controls, including dual twist-dials (one for time, one for temperature).

As an added bonus, it has a single "DING" from an actual mechanically-struck bell... and it cost 1/3rd of the digital [controls] model I had initially considered purchasing.

To not leave anybody "hanging," the air fryer I purchased was the in-store Mainstays [WalMart] cheapo unit, which air-fries for one.5 PERFECTLY.

”what can we learn from this? i don't know. capitalism will destroy everything it touches.”

Microwaves are better in countries with less capitalism?

Yeah I find this fashionable statement often meaningless when used.

They literally gave an example of how when people were buying them, there was a lot of innovation. That was capitalism too, right?

In fact, if there is any innovation do be had here, it’ll only happen because of monetary motivations.

The problem with any argument over capitalism is that it is responsible for both good and bad.

On the one hand all the innovation and cheap prices are a result of capitalism driven competition.

On the other hand, all the deceptive marketing, addictive vacuous features, vendor lock-in, planned obsolescence and enshitification are also a result of capitalism, which only cares about maximizing profits and return on capital.

Just was need a spicy drama in article

When I moved a few years ago I decided to try existing without a microwave oven to see how it went. I haven’t bothered to buy one, and I don’t miss it. I don’t eat crap like frozen TV dinners, so I have little use for this appliance. My point is, try going without one for a while. You may find it’s one of those things that you think you need because everyone has one, but in fact has little utility, and is just something else that you need to clean. Then, get rid of your garbage disposal.

There's no "why" in this "why" post.

Correct.

This analysis misses a LOT of economic factors.

As well as corporate control factors.

It was easy for me to spot the why, so I'll distill it.

Once a market is saturated and business growth can't continue by selling more of the product(see microwaves), growth occurs through M&A(consolidation) or reducing costs(eg: removing the moisture sensor). The author reflects on the microwave market having single supplier Midea as an example of the former, and their removal of the moisture sensor as an example of the latter.

Naturally, the author asks, "what are the incentives that create these behaviors?" They identify the economic structure as the proximal cause of these incentives. Thus concluding that the economic structure that creates microwave markets ultimately concludes in the creation of the shitty microwaves.

The author extrapolates this to the multicooker market a la InstantPot - a bonus predictive why InstantPot will get shitty soon.

Market saturation is clearly stated or hinted at.

I guess you missed this gem then:

> what can we learn from this? i don't know. capitalism will destroy everything it touches.

I've had my microwave for 16 years. Was thinking of replacing it with new one with a smaller counter footprint. Now thinking perhaps I won't.

People say this - you can't buy a microwave without all the flashing annoying junk but you can. In the UK for example Argos has this https://www.argos.co.uk/product/8999247

no electronic junk, 4.8/5 reviews. But people seem to want to buy the annoing computers stuck in there versions.

I have a combination oven that I bought from MediaMarkt (European electronics retailer) a few months ago, since the small studio I live in didn’t come with one. It has microwave, grill, convection and standard heating options. The controls aren’t particularly intuitive but it works fine and seems to be of decently high quality.

Not to be tin foil hat, and I have no idea what I'm saying, but something just felt unnatural and wrong about microwaves, so years ago started using a toaster oven and I use it now over microwave and oven as well for toasting and baking everything. Please tell me how I'm doing it wrong my mind is open.

Microwave ovens heat things mostly by heating the water they contain. Microwaved stuff can absolutely end up different from other cooking methods and there's nothing wrong with having a preference. Most people prefer toasted bread to microwaved bread, but a microwave is the champion when it comes to things like bringing milk to a near boil and defrosting.

It depends. I like microwaving rolls of bread because they still come out soft and fluffy. Can’t do that with a toaster or anything else really without drying it out.

The microwave oven operates at around the same frequency as wifi (2.4GHz). This is far less energy than even infrared, let alone visible light. These waves are flying all over the place anywhere you go and they’re totally harmless.

The microwave oven is a lot more powerful than a wifi transceiver but all that power is contained inside the interior which is designed as a faraday cage to block and reflect the waves back toward the food. The amount of microwave energy that actually escapes the oven is minuscule to the point where it just barely interferes with nearby wifi signals.

> The microwave oven operates at around the same frequency as wifi (2.4GHz)

Thank you for solving a mystery that I didn't know I wanted to be solved!

It reduces vitamin content. Increases lipid peroxidation. It's a tradeoff for the convenience...

There has been plenty of innovation in microwaves. Commercial kitchens use speed ovens, a combination oven + microwave. The oven cooks the outside of food as expected, the microwave cooks the inside faster than normal. See your local Subway sandwich shop for an example.

And Instapot was killed by private equity.

Opening this page in Chrome i get the following message: "your browser is stalking you."

I love this. I will adopt it.

As far as I'm concerned there is only one microwave on the market worth buying.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B074RCGYLB

ONE dial. One. Zero buttons. Perfect.

It does not have a turntable, but it's never needed one.

Why doesn't it need a turntable?

No idea, it seems to cook things pretty evenly, but if I'm say pre-cooking potatoes for 6 minutes before frying them, I do manually turn every couple minutes to be sure. If you want a turntable this is not the one for you, but the ease of the turn-and-it's-on UX destroys any other concern here for me.

Afaik models without turntables rotate the emitter instead.

Some use a "stirring" fan with metal blades, which is designed to reflect the microwaves to all parts of the oven cavity.

How do you set power levels? That’s a feature I use extensively.

A feature of mere perceived usefulness. Not to be confused with an actual useful feature.

We have a Phillips microwave built in 1987, still going strong. In this domain, older is WAAAAAAY better.

How do we avoid this problem and sustain companies who make long-lasting products?

- Subscription service?

- Annual government funding?

- Annual private funding for "best product in category"?

Also how are some companies who make long-lasting tools which are apparently good quality (such as Lodge, PYREX, Patagonia) seemingly doing just fine?

Lodge and Pyrex are probably not the best examples - Lodge cast iron has gone down the tubes recently, making thinner pans with worse factory coatings, and Pyrex switched away from the high quality borosilicate glass they had used for decades to a cheaper formulation recently.

Patagonia has even lowered their standards somewhat - I know a guy who bikes to work every day in Seattle and has used the same Patagonia waterproof panniers for something like 15 years, and I would be willing to bet that new ones are more cheaply made and less waterproof, while costing more.

Pyrex still uses borosilicate glass in Europe (or so it appears).

Didn't Pyrex move to some cheaper glass formula? I don't use cast iron, but I heard that Lodge quality has declined a lot in recent years?

Patagonia also isn't particularly high quality (I own dozens of their clothes because I like their environmental activism, but many fray out of the bag, fit poorly, have crappy zippers, etc.). Arcteryx and European brands often make much higher quality clothing. Patagonia's on par with REI store brand clothing, IMO. But at least now they're wholly owned by a nonprofit!

I'm not sure any company can avoid this fate long term if they need to keep growing.

And these days, with everything from electronics to materials science to coatings to additives all changing so fast, maybe fast and cheap and easily replaceable is just what the market bears, for consumer and manufacturer alike?

> I'm not sure any company can avoid this fate long term if they need to keep growing.

I wonder why “if they need to keep growing” is so important to literally everyone? I’d die for a meaningful business that predictably spit out cash due to extreme customer loyalty. Why did growth itself become the prize everyone reaches for?

Same. I hate the systems we currently have.

> Why did growth itself become the prize everyone reaches for?

That's literally capitalism. The hamster wheel. A closed loop.

If you take out a loan from a bank, the bank expects 5% annual return on that loan. Where do you get the additional 5% that you owe? You need to take it from someone else (who themself took out a loan, maybe even from the same bank).

While the bank can and will almost literally create (digital) money from thin air.

> If you take out a loan from a bank, the bank expects 5% annual return on that loan. Where do you get the additional 5% that you owe?

This has a lot of implicit assumptions which don’t hold true in reality. The 5% would have to be the same as the return on equity prior to the loan, and the loan would have to be for the full amount of the equity.

What I said above is that you can have a stable business with a decent return without needing to grow the business.

Say you have a business with $10 million in sales, and a net profit margin of 15%, so you take out $1.5 million per year. In my mind this is a great business.

1. To your specific point re a loan, this could easily support a $4 million load at 8% without demanding the underlying business grow revenues at all.

2. Lots of people would be tempted to grow the top line to $100 million even if net margins shrank to 5%. This is the point I don’t understand. Is it just greed? The consequence is that, in the aggregate across the economy, businesses and people rarely become businesses like OP points out and usually end up doing a lot of shitty things that destroy any lasting brand value or loyalty. I’m looking at Google Search and Facebook, and a million other businesses in and out of tech when I say this.

I feel there's some thread that links the USPTO, Treasury, and FTC on guaranteeing the integrity of the dollar and commerce. We don't have a gold standard and the OPEC cartel is a weak substitute. It is some basis for the dollar that in the year 2020 an Intant Pot costs $150 and is designed and manufactured to certain specs and quality. If you look across the economy at all examples of this perhaps it's possible to create a new peg for the USD. Maybe that could even be accomplished without "blockhain" or "AI" :) and just USPS mail-in satisfaction surveys/warranties of some sort tied to corporate lending/insurance.

Terrible management, and the people in charge probably never lost a dime personally for their poor decision making. No reason a company making a product like the instant pot can't stay in business as long as people want the product. After the initial release when everyone wants one, it should reach a steady state where sales reflect the number of instant pots going out of commission due to damage, wear and tear, etc, and the growing population. Plenty of businesses like that exist and do just fine, like selling toilet paper.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/jun/14/pyrex-and-i...

Spoke too soon

I love how my Samsung with nearly all the features does not do the microwave part evenly... And now I use cheap one that was left in the "condo"...

Maybe I need to look into replacing it with slightly better model with inverter... As power scaling might be useful.

I moved to a new place around 8 years ago. In my kitchen, I have all the usual kitchen essentials, and perhaps even some less common items, such as a Cappuccino machine.

But I don't have a microwave and never consider buying one. I used to live without it. When I order fast food, couriers usually deliver a warm meal to me. When I buy prepared food at a local grocery store, I always ask the salesperson to reheat it right in their microwave at the store. When I cook food at home, it will be hot. If I leave something in the fridge, it's not a big deal for me to eat it chilled later. Chilled food does not lose its nutritional value anyway.

The reason I decided to live without a microwave is that I can't find a device without any built-in smart-scheduling functions; instead, I want one that would offer me complete manual control.

What I really need is a device with three simple features:

1. A manual knob to control the microwave power generator output.

2. A manual shut-off timer knob.

3. A manual grill spiral knob.

I remember a time when Panasonic microwaves cost a fortune (like a monthly salary), they came in huge boxes with thick colorful cooking books and included a subscription to real, offline Panasonic cooking courses.

I have a microwave with two knobs: power and time. Both controls are haptic and I imagine the circuitry is the same as what might have been built in the '60s. It's perfectly fine.

Is there something wrong with my browser that makes all sentences start with a lowercase letter? The way I read makes it really hard to follow the flow of the text.

I have a really old microwave made in Korea which I bought used 20 years ago.

It has two mechanical knobs: power and time. You can hear the timer whirring down.

That’s all I need.

Live long and prosper, nameless microwave.

There's one feature that changed the game. Alexa. Now I don't punch in those stupid numbers.

I just go "Computer! microwave for 3 minutes and 30 seconds!" bam!

I'm gonna say it. Instant Pots suck. They're too small compared to a crock pot and aren't really fast for a lot of things. Most things that you can cook quickly on a stove take forever due to pressurizing and depressurizing. I can cook noodles faster on a stove top. Rice is barely faster than my old rice cooker, and if I'm going to make a stew or something, does 4 hours really matter vs 8 hours? I suppose I could start the stew at noon instead of in the morning... But I'm still not gonna get a stew by coming home and cooking it in the evening at the last minute.

4 hours in a pressure cooker? What are you putting in your stew, hooves? A nice stew is 7-8 minutes in high pressure with quick release, otherwise you end up with mush, in my experience. I do a lot of seitan, and that's 25 minutes compared to nursing it for hours on a light simmer. And that's the other thing with the pressure cooker, I press a button and walk away and do something else, the pot does it's thing and keeps the food warm at the end. Having something in a pot on a stove requires more involvement.

I would really like to be able to read this on the browser I want without some box in the way. I'm not changing a browser just to read this.

Have an idea, the space microwave - without this time bullshit but only count of circles while rotating in the loop.Slogan: believe or not, will be hot!

My late grandmother had a microwave from the 80s. Still working to this day, not even sure it had any sort of maintenance.

That website has the only banner ad I have clicked since 2010. Not going to buy the breadboard, but my curiosity was piqued.

Our family don't use microwave over 10 years. I don't miss it.

I'm not an advanced or regular microwave user (try keeping a straight face while talking like that about microwaves lol, but I use it maybe once or twice a month averaged over the year) but frankly I don't see any performance issue with my cheap microwave compared to what one could expect from a microwave. Put food in, wait 4-5 minutes, food comes out hot.

What infuriates me are vacuum cleaners. To make them more "eco-friendly" it's even regulated in the EU now that vacuum cleaners may not use more than 900 watts. But it's not like vacuum cleaner technology has improved tenfold since I had my good old 1500 watts vacuum cleaner in the 2000s (rip). So how did they achieve this magic? Well, new vacuum cleaners don't vacuum for shit, that's how.

The Sebo E3 is 1200 watts and has a 10 year warranty. Built like LEGO, every part is serviceable too.

Miele and Lindhaus are also good.

Maybe you have an older version from before the regulation was introduced, but The Sebo E3 is now 890W as advertised on their website.

Yes I have a Miele which is decent but not as good as my previous one from before the regulation (also a Miele that died through no fault of its own).

You've done what looks to be a sincere job of blaming capitalism while complaining about a manufacturing monopoly hosted by a self proclaimed communist party. That is to say, for me, your example paints a dark picture of communism being weaponized against capitalism through the exploitation of well meaning globalist agenda. Trust in good foreign relations, in this example, has allowed a foreign bad actor to skirt around antitrust rules. Capitalism sure has its flaws, but naivety is an aspect of politics, not economics.

Naivety is an aspect of economics when the globalization/dropshipping dynamics comes at play. For a lot of Western brands it's cash in, cash out, just some worries about sales-related personnel and maybe (not in this domain) some R&D. Unless you want to treat stories like Amazon and its sellers or rise of brands like Xiaomi/Mi as a cost optimization, in that case you're right that naivety goes entirely out of the field of view.

I may have missed the meaning. Are you saying that the fact of foreign relations is inherently economic? Any economic system would be just as vulnerable if foreign trade is allowed to exploit extra judicial privileges. Imagine a communist economy where workers determined to make a product are undermined by the incentive of trading raw materials to a foreign company for personal gain. Foreign trade in this example, much like the microwave monopoly, is outside of judicial reach. It doesn't have to be. But it's not a problem that would be solved by switching to a new economic system. It's absolutely something to solve through legislation. So, for this microwave monopoly, it doesn't make sense to blame capitalism, as best I can tell.

> what can we learn from this? I don't know. Capitalism will destroy everything it touches.

Sad, but somewhat true. Brilliant post.

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