Hacker News Reader

Comment by saagarjha | Hacker News Reader

Putting aside the obvious "are they better?"–does anyone have strong opinions on microwaves? I feel like they are fairly reliable, unlike, say, fridges. Some of them have a nicer keypad or something or cook more evenly but I don't think I've ever been super upset by a microwave.

View on HN

I use my microwave like once a year; I honestly would rather have that space for something else that doesn’t make food simultaneously boiling hot and freezing cold and/or rubbery.

Maybe they should move toward deprecating microwaves for great airfryer/toaster oven combos.

If your food ends up with freezing cold and boiling hot spots after microwaving, it’s probably because of how you’re using the microwave. Don’t use the high setting on completely frozen foods. Set it to medium instead. This gives the food time to heat up evenly. Microwaves mostly heat the surface, so a medium setting works better for even cooking.

Great explanation by America's Test Kitchen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJrdXRZ3PUE

Yeah but at that point I’d probably do it on the stovetop rather than futz around with microwave cycles and stirring.

It's not exactly a major inconvenience to just set the power level lower.

You still need to take out of the microwave and stir a few times and do it once or twice more until it’s evenly hot. To each their own but I maybe use my microwave once a week.

The entire point of running it on lower power is to avoid any uneven heating and manual intervention. Some really delicate foods I've put on low with plenty of success

Depends on the microwave actually. I used to have a microwave with two knobs: power and time, so setting the first was as trivial as setting the latter. Now I have one with a dozen capacitive buttons and changing power settings requires a sequence of presses akin to some Street Fighter combos.

This seems like a skill issue.

Joking aside, you should learn what the tool you are using does instead of saying that's its bad because it does not do what you think it should do

They’re still good for heating up some liquid quickly or maybe some leftovers. But I mostly use stovetop or oven unless I’m really in a rush for most things.

I suspect that this is something that there’s a lot of variance between people/households. But certainly microwaves aren’t the essential appliance for a lot of people that they seemed to be in their heyday.

I have an oven though. I wouldn’t get a toaster oven/airfryer.

It's funny how I'm close to the opposite. I use the microwave and air fryer extensively because they are very convenient for cooking and reheating unattended with minimal oil and cleanup.

I’ve read reviews saying pricier microwaves with inverter technology are less likely to have hot and cold spots, and more likely to cook evenly.

Infrared temp sensor is useful but it's not so common. My JDM Panasonic microwave have it.

I understand not to expect a high IQ from users on this site when it comes to topics outside their areas of expertise, but your comment wins the cake. The truth is that a microwave is the safest form of cooking or heating, especially in the presence of water. In contrast, air fryers and toasters achieve a much higher temperature, which makes food harmful to eat due to the creation of toxins such as AGEs and PAHs, etc.

This would be a good comment without the first sentence, which ruins it.

It seems popular to want to suppress them from making a noise when the food is ready, and to be annoyed if there's no silent option - or to prefer ones with mechanical bells that can be removed.

Fairly agree with you, but a buzzer also can be removed.

Some models let you do this but don’t advertise it. You have to always check their manuals online before buying. Often it’s a question of hitting a magic combination of buttons at initial configuration (when it’s powered up). Some of the higher end microwaves like from Panasonic or Breville or others are more likely to have this.

Samsung was my only option when I was downloading manuals to look for a silence option here. Press start+stop together to toggle sound.

I bought a cheap Whirlpool microwave ($200), to replace my cheap Frigidare that lasted 20 years. It has this silencing feature and I love it. You hold 2 down for 3 seconds and it silences all beeping until the next power cycle. My only gripe with it is that it also silences the timer going off (ie, not using the oven, just the timer), which seems a little boneheaded.

Been using the same $25 dollar one from big mart for over a decade.

We don't use it for primary cooking but use it quite a bit for reheating baby food and left overs.

Spending money on a microwave is insane to me. There's almost always somewhere better to spend that money in a kitchen.

I have been thinking of getting inverter one which could control actual power level instead of doing on/off cycle of maximum power. But the probably cheap one that was left in place as slightly annoying to remove(power cable behind shelve) just haven't gotten around to.

I got also top of the line Samsung one with all the features(convection+grill) stored but it was worse as microwave than the cheap one... Can't get that, I buy essentially best model and it does not do main job properly...

The only issue with my current one is with the silicon bowls I use for my kids. Somehow the dish focuses the microwaves and starts making plasma on the food leaving burn marks.

Highly opinionated: Never get one with the twist knobs for setting the time. They work for a while and eventually just do random things. I also hate the push button to open, I want a handle. My last microwave was a Sharp and worked well for about six years and then the entire inside started to flake off. I now have a Samsung that has ceramics coated interior, keypad everything and a handle. I hope this one will last me a while.

I also have strong opinions on microwaves and while I agree with the 'handle to open' not push button, I am 100% about a knobs for setting the time. Just one knob, twist and push to start.

The cheaper ones have a magnetron that work a set number of cycles. The more expensive ones have much more cycles that cheaper ones.

Microwave with knobs: put food in and turn the knob to the time you want. maybe turn the power knob if necessary, and wait for the ding

Microwave with buttons: put food in, stare at the keypad for 30s looking for the "just f**ing microwave it" button, give up, start putting in a time, realise you need to put in a power first, work out the appropriate power in percent based on the excessive power of the microwave, put that in, figure out the expected format for the time (60 or 100 for one minute?), put that in, press start, wait for the interminable beeping, have to go and press a button to shut it up when you're busy with something else

An exaggeration, but most button microwaves have at least one wacky and annoying issue in their UI, and i've experienced all those problems separately. The panasonic inverter ones with a convection oven are worth tolerating just for the quick yet crispy baked potato option, though.

On mine I just push the number that corresponds with the number of minutes I want. I push two and it cooks for two minutes.

I do actually have a strong opinion about microwaves, specifically about the keypads. I have a perfectly good microwave that's a few years old, and the keypad is a cruddy, worn-out mess that's harder and harder to use every day. The microwaving part is fine, but the cheaped-out UI is making a solved technology unusable.

A microwave looked funny at my mom once.

Seriously, though - I think microwaves are pretty much a solved problem now. Even the full-blown combos that include a convection oven are reasonably priced now. As long as you don't buy a shoebox and there's not some commercial regulation, where it's made probably isn't that important.

I once found a microwave on the curb, in Pac Heights, that just had a charm to it. I took it home, replaced the broken fuse, and it was amazing.

I described it to my roommates at the time as the kind of microwave a celebrity would have had in their house in the early 90s.

It was super powerful and also had a lot of space. However the best thing about it was the sense based reheat and defrost functions actually seemed to work. So you could push a button, walk away, and come back and it would have figured out how to do the job. I’d say it did this well 95% of the time with the food exiting piping hot.

The last thing about it was a very good user interface. The only buttons were the keypad and the sense options. Previous microwaves I owned always had totally bonkers UI’s, like a button that says “chicken”, “popcorn”, and “potato”. Those never worked, no one ever used them, and even if we tried how they were to be used made no sense. Plus the keypad would be littered with button of similar functionality while obscuring the important things.

Anyways, years later I saw a YouTube video from that channel tech connections, or however it’s called, the one that does the engineering behind household objects, and he featured the exact same microwave as mine. I felt so validated at that moment. Someone else, an expert, agreed, this was the greatest microwave ever.

I moved out of that house but the microwave is still going strong and it will probably continue to do so for decades to come.

What brand/model is it?

It was the “Sharp Carousel II”

This one? https://youtu.be/UiS27feX8o0?t=127

Sharp Carousel Multiple Choice.

It seems to use a moisture sensor and lookup tables to adjust cooking times and power. I was expecting something more complex!

You can't mention the Technology Connections video without linking it! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UiS27feX8o0

I owned this microwave back in the day. It was awesome, but its awesomeness didn't stand out that much because we really didn't need all those different recipes -- if we had changed our habits to Microwave All The Things then it would have been more compelling, but really our use cases came down to:

1. Reheating food 2. Popcorn 3. Potatoes

very rarely did we actually cook in the microwave.

So to all who are wondering what model I had: it was the Sharp Carousel II. I don’t think it’s the exact same model as the technology connections video, but it’s from the same family line. His had this big library of foods to cook, but mine was I think the model before that one.

In fact, I liked mine better. Its standout feature was basically just the “reheat” button. You push this, and come back when it’s ready. The microwave keeps adding time and changing the power level according to some algorithm, but the result was super hot food.

The same effort at home would have required to keep checking it or accidentally burning it. With that level of effort I’d rather just use the oven or stove. However with this microwave, it really did work.

There was also defrost but it didn’t result in the food being piping hot, just defrosted. That was also automatic.

To all who say popcorn, potatoes, et. al. I’m sorry, but I respectfully disagree. They don’t work and to make good popcorn you just need to follow the directions of the package. Most packages say don’t use the button anyways.

But I don’t really eat popcorn so idk. Anyways, same applies for all the other buttons. They’re gimmicks. Reheat and defrost are the only ones you need and should be the baseline of all microwaves in the 21st century.

On the contrary, it seems like microwaves that will last more than a year or two are now the exception.

Never liked microwave owens. It's hard to get food cooked evenly. They might be useful for heating up precooked food, but so are other types of owens.

What I use now and I kind of like is a natural gas owen which has hot air recirculation and also allows me to set the temperature.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com