Microwave spontaneously turned on by its LED display

Yep, the GE over-the-range model PNM9196SF3SS. GE is just a Haier badge since 2016. I'm not surprised by a Chinese company not giving a shit, but for a microwave magnetron to fire on its own feels like a sign of deep engineering rot.

The only fix was to unplug it then swap the logic board. Once it happened again with the new board we threw it out.

> One day it stayed on after opening the door.

So you basically got exposed to microwave radiation. That's dangerous. Have you checked in with a doctor?

Maybe not. I recently did the lengthy CPSC form, to report a defective new name-brand microwave oven unit, which was manufactured with a 1/8" mis-seating of parts, where I measured with a professional meter to be leaking much more than anywhere else.

A week later, I heard back:

> [...] The product or particular concern that you describe does not fall within CPSC’s jurisdiction. You may wish to contact the agencies listed below, which we believe can best handle your concern.

> U.S. Food and Drug Administration Center for Devices and Radiological Health Document Control Center – WO66-G609 10903 New Hampshire Avenue Silver Spring, MD 20993-0002

> https://www.fda.gov/radiation-emitting-products/getting-radi... [...]

(BTW, I suspect the process apparently not forwarding a report between two agencies will result in some problems falling through the cracks. And it did, in this case, since I stopped holding the defective unit (I'd asked in my report that they let me know if they wanted to examine it), returned it to the store, and never looked into starting over the reporting process with a different agency.)

No. I bitched about it on an old social media platform called Twitter but it never got any traction.

I have a lower end Samsung that “started” after I opened the door. I hope it was just the fan and lights like the article mentioned. But it scared the heck out of me.

> Sure, if you have money you can go with a reputable brand like Bosch & Siemens

Just FTR they're exactly the same -- "BSH Hausgeräte GmbH" -- with just a different label on it. ... And I didn't have a single good experience in the last years, IMO they're designed for planned obsolescence.

E.g. my premium Bosch Hand mixer broke after 2.5 years. Afterwards I bought a >35 years old used RG28e for half the price and it's still going stronger than the Bosch ever was, 5 years later.

> if you have even more money you can go with Miele

If you buy cheap (or uninformed) you most likely buy at least twice.

With Haier, specifically, I certainly it were a lot easier to tell what they build in Kentucky versus what they ship from China. For now you can still seem to count on the GE Profile series, if you are rich enough, but the mid-grade stuff is slippery, GE badge or not. (Some of the non-GE badges are coming from Kentucky, too, but like I said, I, at least, don't know how to figure it out without begging any friends that work at Haier to give me specific model numbers to look for in stores.)

I dunno about the fawning over Bosch. My Bosch induction cooktop performs far worse than the half price GE Profile cooktop I had at my previous house. The Bosch does not heat evenly at all - almost all energy is focused in the center of the pan. I'm hating it so much I'm about to rip it out and replace it either with another GE or an LG. My mom got an LG induction range and I took my largest pan over to her house, put in a few inches of water and turned it on high - it produced even heating/bubbles across the entire pan, something the Bosch just doesn't do. Feh. I wish I would have done that test before buying the overpriced and underperforming Bosch. Talk about coasting on your brand name.

The commercial microwaves we have at work have both a large dial to set the time, and four large buttons under it for 25%, 50%, 75% and 100% power. No other controls. They are great.

I bought a microwave a couple of months ago, and found it impossible to determine which if any of the cheaper ones were inverter microwaves, or if they just used duty cycle power control. I assume that distinction is only made with higher-end microwaves.

In the end I went with the model that looked to have the simplest design and least things to break.

Pulse width modulation works just as well if the pulse width is short compared to the overall cooking time. And not having an inverter makes it more efficient. Unfortunately lots of cheap microwaves have a pulse width which is more than 10 seconds, presumably to help lifetime reliability, but means that for cooking times less than a couple of minutes it doesn't work well.

Interestingly enough, this particular question has been tested by Rtings [1] They found that during their tests, inverters which continuously varied the power did not necessarily lead to more even heating, but they do note that small quantities of food (like the butter you mentioned) that need to be heated for very short periods show some differences between inverter and non-inverter models.

Overall, they found that the improvement was much smaller than I'd originally anticipated.

[1] https://www.rtings.com/microwave/learn/research/microwave-in...

It does heat food as evenly (possibly more evenly) than my other microwaves.

Why do manufacturers still release products like it's 1980. I can hear when it's done, because the unit has turned off about when I expected it to.

My combo microwave/air fryer beeps if you take food out and close the door before the timer is finished, like it doesn't know what to do now.

I've bought a dumb microwave and it stopped working after a bit over two years (conveniently). I replaced it with a fancier model, with an inverter, and it's been working for about four years now. It probably won't work for 20 years, but maybe it will survive long enough to justify its higher price (3x).

Well, they use also tons of carbon instead of iron/aluminum to lower weight, so that price may be justifiable. Maybe.

There was a time in the 1990s when a product was sold that was intended to cure that problem: A microwave light bulb.

And by "microwave light bulb" I don't mean the 25-Watt appliance bulb that is buried inside of your Moulinex, but a light bulb that was meant to be placed in the corner of the microwave oven.

Microwave on? Light bulb turns some of that RF energy into light energy, and illuminates the interior. Microwave off? Light goes dark.

I couldn't find any reference to them having existed when I last looked a few years ago, and I don't have time to look again right now, but it was a thing that was advertised on TV and sold on J-hooks in big grocery stores. It definitely existed. (It may have even been something that my mother bought once, but that concept is less clear in the ol' memory hole.)

The waves are only heating specific parts of the product. By reducing power you let heat propagate more evenly. You can avoid explosion, for instance if the middle of a butter is melted and boiling while the outside is still cold. Or better defrost without cooking.

You can achieve the same by heating full power and doing regular pauses (which is often how this is implemented anyway).

Who said theyre useless?

Lower power levels are great when heating things that are prone to boil over. The pause between heating cycles gives time for the heat to "soak" into the interior of the food, avoiding excessive heating on the outside.

The difference is amazing. 1kW uninterrupted is the "dry my food" setting. Reheating chicken like that basically dries and cooks it again. At half the power and twice the time you can have an actual warm, soft chicken again.

Try heating something you cooked yourself recently and you'll see the difference clearly.

This is like asking "Why does a kitchen stove have a range of settings on a dial when simply having the burner be on or off would also be able to cook food?"

And the answer is simple: Because they can be useful settings.

The food being warmed does conduct heat, but it is not an ideal conductor of heat.

And microwave ovens (just as any other kind of oven I can think of) heat from the outside. And they're supposed to make things easier and simpler.

So let's make an example: Leftover refried beans, still cold from the fridge.

I can put them in a bowl at 100% power for three minutes, and they'll probably explode and make a mess and still have parts that are cold. This "works" but it's obviously not very good. (I can mitigate some of the mess by using a cover of some kind, but that's also kind of shit.)

Or: I can put them in for a minute or two at 100%, and then stir them, and then run them for a another minute, and then stir them again, and maybe then do another minute. This "works" but it's enough work that perhaps I would be better off to skip the bowl and warm them up in a pan on the stove instead.

Or: I can set the microwave to (say) 40% duty cycle, and put them in for whatever I think is a reasonable time for the volume of beans at that duty cycle. Let's say 5 or 6 minutes.

It's slower, which prevents layers from getting stupid-hot and explodey, and gives the beans more time to reach thermal equilibrium. It's completely hands-off once the buttons are pushed. I'll probably still give them a stir before serving, but they'll be fine.

(I'm a fan of simplicity, but I'm not a fan of lack of control like OP's microwave offers as a primary selling point.

The microwave oven that we had when I was growing up was simple and functional: It had mechanical timer switch with a mechanical bell to set the cook time and announce the end of a run, which is about as simple as it can get while retaining any aspect of automation. It also had an analog dial with which the duty cycle could be continuously set, from somewhere between ~5% to 100%, and this duty cycle could even be changed while the machine was running. No computers, and nothing particularly electronic at all. Just a timer and [what was probably] a heated bimetallic switch (just like a common, cheap electric range uses).)

We had a microwave in the office that auto started based on whatever number you pressed. If you wanted to type in 45 seconds, you would press 4 and it would instantly start running with 4 minutes on the timer. Everyone just pressed the "+30 seconds button" until it was close to the time they wanted and then stopped it manually to get it more precise.

If I remember right the solution was to press "Cook Power" then type in the number of seconds. There was nothing on the microwave to explain this, I had to look it up online.

But the properly made microwave of that kind will probably carry on living after you. Mine (Moulinex) outlived my mother and has been working for me for the last thirty years.

Indeed, nothing is heating in this state.

Can confirm because at my work, they initially put ordinary consumer microwaves in at the coffee/lunch stations. They failed quickly. The commercial ones last. However the latest ones have a very flimsy feeling control wheel, I somehow imagine a 25 cent rotary encoder behind that which, if it fails, may still cause the otherwise solid machine to be discarded.

I cooked for a family in part with a consumer-grade, Walmart-sourced Panasonic inverter microwave oven for a dozen years until circumstances made me get rid of (donate) it.

No issues ever. It was reliable, had some useful programming options (that nobody ever used but me, but it had them), and it did a good job of microwaving food in a consistent and predictable manner.

(But that's not an indication that inverters are reliable, or that consumer is the same as professional, or that Panasonic is good, or of anything else really other than that anecdotes are anecdotes.)