7 simple tips on how to choose a microwave for your home

Along with the refrig­er­a­tor and stove, the microwave oven has become an inte­gral part of the mod­ern kitchen. As a rule, it is used to heat food and defrost meat, but the func­tions of a microwave oven are not lim­it­ed to this. Some mod­els are able to bake, steam, and even equipped with a grill func­tion. In the desire to acquire such a use­ful assis­tant, we go to house­hold appli­ance stores and Inter­net sites, and there hun­dreds and even thou­sands of mod­els are wait­ing for us. How to under­stand how one dif­fers from the oth­er, if they look almost the same, and the dif­fer­ence in price is sev­er­al times? Let’s fig­ure it out togeth­er. We col­lect­ed all the infor­ma­tion, high­light­ed the most impor­tant and found the secrets, so now we know exact­ly how to choose a microwave for your home. We will be hap­py to share our dis­cov­er­ies with you, try­ing to state every­thing briefly, clear­ly and to the point.

The myth about the dangers of microwave ovens

Ten years ago, tele­vi­sion pro­grams vying they intim­i­dat­ed us that ter­ri­bly harm­ful rays come from the microwave. The pop­u­la­tion was afraid, they passed on what they heard to each oth­er, and the results of this dam­aged tele­phone were some­times unpre­dictable. Recent­ly, the net­work dis­cussed how grand­moth­ers in line at the clin­ic said that the microwave changes the struc­ture of DNA. Jokes are jokes, but such facts emerge from insuf­fi­cient aware­ness.

How does a microwave oven heat food? The microwaves it gen­er­ates set the water mol­e­cules in the food in motion. They begin to move faster and faster, which caus­es heat­ing. Remem­ber how in physics lessons they talked about the tran­si­tion of kinet­ic ener­gy into poten­tial ener­gy? This is what it is.

Should we be afraid of mod­ern microwaves? No, it’s not worth it. The thing is that each such device receives sev­er­al lev­els of pro­tec­tion, pre­vent­ing microwave radi­a­tion from in any way affect­ing our body. First­ly, the door fits snug­ly, and if you open it, the microwave will turn off. Sec­ond­ly, there is a pro­tec­tive grid on the inside of the device. Third­ly, there is also an elec­tro­mag­net­ic “trap”. If this is not enough for you, then we add that all mod­ern fur­naces under­go manda­to­ry cer­ti­fi­ca­tion with the pas­sage of 4 lev­els of qual­i­ty con­trol and a radi­a­tion test.

Con­clu­sion: microwave is very con­ve­nient, but not scary, and our myths, prob­a­bly, in a cen­tu­ry, our chil­dren will com­pare with the fear of rid­ing the first trains and watch­ing the first films. Unpleas­ant con­se­quences can only occur if for a long time every day for 8 hours you are at a dis­tance of less than 5 cm from the microwave, but it is dif­fi­cult to imag­ine such a sit­u­a­tion. Note that repair­ing the oven your­self is not worth it — this is just the same unsafe.

Now you can safe­ly pro­ceed direct­ly to the issues of choos­ing a microwave oven.

Summing up

In con­clu­sion, we can say that now you know what is the dif­fer­ence between a built-in microwave and a con­ven­tion­al one, what pow­er and vol­ume of the device are need­ed to per­form basic tasks. Recall that the dif­fer­ence between a built-in microwave and a con­ven­tion­al one is that such a device does not vio­late the integri­ty of the design. At the same time, the func­tion­al­i­ty is iden­ti­cal, it’s only in appear­ance.

To choose the right microwave oven, the rat­ing of the best is also worth study­ing, and addi­tion­al­ly view­ing user reviews on var­i­ous sites and forums.

Council number 1. Determine the purpose of the microwave

Why are you look­ing for a microwave oven? To quick­ly reheat and defrost food? Or in order to bake meat with a crispy crust and cook oth­er culi­nary delights? The answer to this ques­tion depends on the type of equip­ment.or rather its func­tions, and, of course, the price.

All those microwaves that you see in the store can be divid­ed into the fol­low­ing main groups:

• solo ovens;
• grill oven;
• oven with grill and con­vec­tion;
• oven with grill, con­vec­tion and steam gen­er­a­tor.

Solo ovens

In this case, the microwave equipped with microwave emit­ter only, due to which the prod­uct is processed. These devices are easy to han­dle heat­ing and defrost­ingThey also know how to cook sim­ple meals. Nat­u­ral­ly, the price of these microwave ovens is the most afford­able. This is a great option for the home if you pre­fer to cook on the stove and in the oven, and plan to use the microwave oven to quick­ly heat up food. Often such fur­naces are also tak­en for offices. In this case, the sim­plest device that can heat the fin­ished dish will fit — no oth­er modes will be need­ed.

Note! Pre­vi­ous­ly, ovens were sold with only one microwave emit­ter, so many com­plained that it was impos­si­ble to cook in microwaves, as the dish­es remained raw. Many changes have tak­en place since then, but dis­trust of microwaves per­sists. Most mod­ern ovens two or even three microwave gen­er­a­torswhich emit waves in dif­fer­ent direc­tions, they are reflect­ed from the walls and even­ly dis­trib­uted, pro­vid­ing high-qual­i­ty heat­ing and even cook­ing.

Grill microwaves

Such devices can affect the prod­uct not only with microwave radi­a­tion, but also with heaters (grill), due to which the microwave turns into a direct com­peti­tor to the oven. In this oven you can cook com­plex dish­es and bake food until crispy. If the fam­i­ly loves to eat meat, and the host­ess bold­ly goes for culi­nary exper­i­ments, then such a microwave will come in handy.

The grill func­tion is ensured by the pres­ence heat­ing ele­ments, which can be of two types:

• heat­ing ele­ment has a com­plex shape, is placed on top or side, or both top and side. In some mod­els, the heater is mov­able, and its loca­tion can be changed to achieve the desired effects. Ovens with a heat­ing ele­ment grill are inex­pen­sive, and the qual­i­ty of bak­ing is on top. Of the minus­es, we note only the bulk­i­ness of the devices and the dif­fi­cul­ty of car­ing for the heat­ing ele­ment, since it often has a com­plex shape;
• quartz grill takes up less space, is mount­ed on top, costs more, but is eas­i­er to clean.

In some microwave ovens you can find both heat­ing ele­mentsso that brown­ing and cre­at­ing an appe­tiz­ing crust will be as sim­ple as pos­si­ble.

Microwaves with grill and convection

Such an oven Eas­i­ly replaces a con­ven­tion­al oven. A fan is added to the microwave emit­ter and heat­ing ele­ments. Due to it, con­vec­tion is pro­vid­ed. Rough­ly speak­ing, the fan over­takes warm air, it is dis­trib­uted even­ly, due to which the heat­ing occurs quick­ly and even­ly.

By com­bin­ing con­vec­tion, grill and microwaveradi­a­tion, you can cook any kind of food in the most unimag­in­able ways. There are about 20 pro­grams in such microwave ovens, there is a man­u­al mode, so the pos­si­bil­i­ties are lim­it­ed only by your imag­i­na­tion.

Pana­son­ic releas­es invert­er microwave ovens with con­vec­tion and grill. One of their dif­fer­ences is the increased vol­ume of the cham­ber, which is achieved by reduc­ing the size of the hard­ware. The main fea­ture is auto­mat­ic tem­per­a­ture con­trol, which allows you to cook with sig­nif­i­cant ener­gy sav­ings.

Microwaves with steam generator

It’s still rare items on the mar­ket, and some­thing tells us that they are not des­tined to become pop­u­lar. Yes, the device turns out to be mul­ti­func­tion­al: you can get a harm­ful crust in it, and cook healthy steamed veg­eta­bles eas­i­ly, but you will have to pay a lot for it, and such a stove will take up much more space than its sim­pler coun­ter­parts.

Additional functions

In addi­tion to the basic func­tions, the microwave oven can be equipped with addi­tion­al “chips”.

They are not always impor­tant, how­ev­er, their pres­ence makes it pos­si­ble to fur­ther facil­i­tate the culi­nary process­es.

So, for exam­ple, spe­cial mul­ti-lev­el grill allows you to cook not one in the microwave and sev­er­al dish­es.

The fry­ing disc is used as a small fry­ing pana the steam “con­tain­er” is respon­si­ble for the prepa­ra­tion of healthy and dietary food.

Here’s anoth­er a list of cool, but not always nec­es­sary fea­tures:

• auto­mat­ic weigh­ing of prod­ucts;
• dou­ble microwave radi­a­tion;
• dia­logue com­mu­ni­ca­tion.

Remem­ber! In fact, many man­u­fac­tur­ers, in an effort to increase the final cost of microwaves, are con­stant­ly sup­ply­ing them with new fea­tures.

This should be tak­en into account when buy­ing, since in stan­dard sit­u­a­tions, fur­nace own­ers rarely use all the pos­si­ble func­tion­al­i­ty of such a device.

Council number 2. Deciding on sizes

Glanc­ing at the shelves with microwaves, it is easy to see that even visu­al­ly they dif­fer in size. The vol­ume of the most com­pact is only 12–13 litersbut there are mon­sters with vol­ume up to 42 l. Which microwave is best? The answer is sim­ple — the one that will cov­er your needs:

microwave rating

Com­par­ing cus­tomer reviews, you can under­stand which microwave oven of which com­pa­ny or brand is in great demand. We have com­piled a rank­ing of the most pop­u­lar brands. It should be added that choose the Chi­nese assem­bly last, if there is no alter­na­tive. And, of course, all these com­pa­nies are respon­si­ble for their brand.

1. Ger­man Bosch (assem­bly Belarus);
2. Kore­an LG — (Assem­bly Malaysia);
3. Japan­ese Pana­son­ic;
4. japan­ese sharp
5. Ger­man Miele;
6. Kore­an Sam­sung (Malaysia assem­bly);
7. Sloven­ian GORENJE;
8. Swedish Elec­trolux.

Council number 3. Power is one of the most important parameters of a microwave oven.

The more pow­er­ful the microwave, the faster it will heat/defrost/bake. As a rule, the larg­er the fur­nace, the high­er the pow­er. This indi­ca­tor ranges from 300 W to 2 kW. More is not always bet­ter. Here, as in the case of size, it is nec­es­sary to build on your own require­ments:

• for solo ovens, the nor­mal pow­er will be 700–900 W — this is enough for heat­ing and defrost­ing;
• for ovens with a grill func­tion, a pow­er of 1.2–1.5 kW will be suf­fi­cient;
• a con­vec­tion oven will have a pow­er of at least 1.35 kW, but it is bet­ter if this fig­ure is at the lev­el of 1.8–2 kW.

In all mod­ern microwave ovens, the pow­er can be adjust­ed. Old­er ana­logues of this fea­ture are deprived.

Note! The pow­er of the microwaves them­selves, as a rule, is 700‑1000 W, the rest is the pow­er of con­vec­tion and grill. Let’s say the pow­er of the microwave emit­ter is 800 watts, the grill is 700 watts, and the con­vec­tion is 600 watts. Run­ning every­thing togeth­er, we get a pow­er of 2.1 kW. It doesn’t hurt to fig­ure out in advance whether such a mon­ster will be pulled by home wiring.

What size to choose

Exter­nal dimen­sions are a sec­ondary char­ac­ter­is­tic. It is nec­es­sary to pay atten­tion to the vol­ume of the inter­nal cham­ber, where the heat­ing or cook­ing is per­formed. It is indi­cat­ed in liters (or in dm3).

Freestanding or built-in

Con­ven­tion­al­ly, all microwaves are divid­ed into 2 cat­e­gories:

1. Embed­ded. They do not have an exter­nal dec­o­ra­tive case. They are installed direct­ly in the kitchen set. Their advan­tage is the sav­ing of free space. Also, this tech­nique will ele­gant­ly fit into the already dec­o­rat­ed inte­ri­or of the kitchen. But you should select strict­ly accord­ing to the dimen­sions (there are sev­er­al stan­dard­ized sizes).
2. Stand-alone. An option for those whose kitchen set is not designed for the instal­la­tion of built-in appli­ances. The microwave has a dec­o­ra­tive out­er cas­ing, most mod­els are pre­sent­ed in dif­fer­ent col­ors.

There are also ovens with a microwave func­tion. But they cost an order of mag­ni­tude more expen­sive, take up a lot of space and are main­ly used in the com­mer­cial sec­tor (restau­rants, cater­ing estab­lish­ments). For pri­vate kitchens, they are usu­al­ly not pur­chased.

What volume to choose

Accord­ing to this char­ac­ter­is­tic, microwave ovens are con­di­tion­al­ly divid­ed into 3 cat­e­gories:

1. Up to 19 liters. The best option for heat­ing food or defrost­ing semi-fin­ished prod­ucts, meat at home. You can also dry your greens eas­i­ly in a small microwave.
2. From 20 to 25 liters. Microwaves with this inter­nal cham­ber vol­ume are the best-sell­ing. A uni­ver­sal option, in 90% of cas­es it ful­ly sat­is­fies the needs of a fam­i­ly of 2–4 peo­ple. Suit­able for both heat­ing food and defrost­ing, cook­ing.
3. From 26 liters and more. An option for those who pre­fer to cook dish­es in the microwave. It is often equipped with a grill grate, a con­vec­tion sys­tem, which allows you to even­ly “bake” the meat.

Council number 4. What is the best interior lining?

Often we eval­u­ate the microwave exter­nal­ly. For many, it is enough that the stove can heat up and look pret­ty. The result can be dis­ap­point­ment. Before buy­ing, it doesn’t hurt to look inside the stove and under­stand what its walls are cov­ered with:

• enam­elled coat­ing — the cheap­est option. More­over, it wash­es per­fect­ly, and all splash­es and dirt leave it with min­i­mal effort. Minus — low dura­bil­i­ty, but do not rush to get upset. Enam­el is afraid of pro­longed expo­sure to very high tem­per­a­tures and shocks. So if you choose an oven with­out con­vec­tion and grill, you know how to care­ful­ly place and remove a plate, then the enam­el will serve you for a long time. If trou­ble has occurred, the enam­el has been dam­aged and the met­al has been exposed, then, alas, dam­age can­not be avoid­ed;

  

• stain­less steel per­fect­ly with­stands high tem­per­a­tures, strong, durable. Noth­ing will fall off of it (as is the case with enam­el), but such fur­naces are also more expen­sive. The main dis­ad­van­tage is the dif­fi­cul­ty in care. Fat lit­er­al­ly sticks to the walls, so you can’t do with­out spe­cial clean­ing prod­ucts. Patience will also be need­ed, since you will only have to work with soft sponges and gels — brush­es and prod­ucts with abra­sive par­ti­cles are con­traindi­cat­ed;

  

• ceram­ics or bio­ce­ram­ics absorbed all the best from steel and enam­el. It is easy to clean and is not afraid of high tem­per­a­tures, it is not afraid of scratch­es, it is durable, but microwaves with such a coat­ing are expen­sive. Under strong impacts, ceram­ics crack, but under nor­mal con­di­tions there are no such impacts.

  

The cheap­est microwave ovens use enam­el imi­ta­tion. There is no ques­tion of safe­ty and dura­bil­i­ty, and after a few months, pseu­do-enam­el begins to crack and crum­ble. Do not take microwaves from lit­tle-known man­u­fac­tur­ers that offer too low prices.

Choose the type of coverage

Hav­ing dealt with the type, dimen­sions and con­trol, it remains to be decid­ed what to pay atten­tion to so that the inter­nal coat­ing lasts as long as pos­si­ble. The inner cham­ber of the microwave oven is made of enam­eled or stain­less steel, and may also have a ceram­ic or bio­ce­ram­ic coat­ing.

Enam­el. The most eco­nom­i­cal, but not too durable option. Such a coat­ing must be cleaned imme­di­ate­ly, and with­out using abra­sive prod­ucts.

Stain­less steel. Durable and rel­a­tive­ly inex­pen­sive. Often used in grilled microwaves. The down­side is the com­plex­i­ty of care — it is dif­fi­cult to remove adher­ing fat from stain­less steel, and traces remain from touch­ing the sur­face.

Ceram­ics and bio­ce­ram­ics. In addi­tion to sta­bil­i­ty, ceram­ics and bio­ce­ram­ics have antibac­te­r­i­al prop­er­ties, retain heat well and reduce elec­tric­i­ty con­sump­tion.

Council number 5. Functionality, or What should a microwave oven be able to do?

The answer is the same. It all depends on your per­son­al pref­er­ences. Some­one just wants to sim­pli­fy the process of dai­ly heat­ing food, and some­one is going to use a microwave oven for cook­ing. Nat­u­ral­ly, the func­tion­al­i­ty in these cas­es will require dif­fer­ent.

We will list the main fea­tures of mod­ern microwave ovens, and you your­self choose which of all this you real­ly need:

• man­u­al heat­ing mode avail­able in all ovens. Every­thing is sim­ple here. You just need to choose the pow­er, time and start the process. Over time, you will under­stand how much time is need­ed to heat up var­i­ous kinds of prod­ucts;

  

• man­u­al defrost mode. Here every­thing is exact­ly the same as with heat­ing, only the defrost mode is turned on with a but­ton or a rotary lever. Prop­er­ly defrost­ing food in man­u­al mode is not pos­si­ble for every­one. A com­mon result is ice on the inside and a toast­ed sur­face on top. To avoid improp­er heat­ing and defrost­ing, some microwave ovens have auto­mat­ic modes;
• auto­mat­ic heat­ing. The user selects the type of prod­uct, its weight and starts the process. The oven decides how much time it needs for an opti­mal result;
• auto-defrost. Time and pow­er are select­ed by the stove inde­pen­dent­ly, based on what type of prod­uct and weight you indi­cat­ed;
• auto­mat­ic prepa­ra­tion. Some ovens have ready-made pro­grams for cook­ing cer­tain dish­es: con­vec­tion, grill, microwave radi­a­tion, tem­per­a­ture and pow­er are reg­u­lat­ed with­out human inter­ven­tion. There are usu­al­ly 4–8 such pro­grams, but there may be more. Some mod­els allow you to add your own pro­gram;
• microwaves + grill. This mode, beloved by many, allows you to cre­ate a deli­cious crust;
• microwaves + con­vec­tion. The mode pro­vides faster cook­ing;
• con­vec­tion + grill. The mode is used for bak­ing and fry­ing;

  

• bread mak­er func­tion still rare, but allows you to make bread and buns in the microwave;
• delayed start — a great fea­ture that migrat­ed to microwaves from mul­ti­cook­ers. You put, for exam­ple, a chick­en, set the mode and asked to start cook­ing after 4 hours, for exam­ple. When every­one gets home, din­ner will be ready;
• steam oven clean­ing. There are far from all mod­els, but it great­ly sim­pli­fies the process of clean­ing the walls of the microwave;
• odor removal. If you cook or heat dessert in an oven where fish was recent­ly heat­ed, then the dessert will be, to put it mild­ly, unap­pe­tiz­ing. To avoid such incon­ve­nience, some mod­els have a spe­cial func­tion that acti­vates the built-in fan and allows the stove to ven­ti­late faster.

  

It is fool­ish to over­pay for func­tions that will not be used, so sober­ly, with­out hype, eval­u­ate your require­ments for a microwave oven.

Often, man­u­fac­tur­ers com­plete microwave ovens with grills, trays, skew­ers, and even some uten­sils. You can use ceram­ic, glass or porce­lain dish­es. No met­al plates and uten­sils with a met­al bor­der. The plas­tic must have a spe­cial mark­ing that allows heat­ing in the microwave.

The main criteria for choosing a microwave

Imag­ine that you have decid­ed which microwave is bet­ter — solo, grill or con­vec­tion. Now you can start con­sid­er­ing the cri­te­ria for choos­ing a good microwave.

Won­der­ing how to choose a microwave oven? A test pur­chase is a TV show that will prompt you in this dif­fi­cult process.

It is worth not­ing that this task is not the eas­i­est, so you have to spend time and effort search­ing for the opti­mal mod­el, depend­ing on per­son­al pref­er­ences and bud­get. Many rec­om­mend that in order to choose the right microwave, ini­tial­ly decide where the device will be placed, how and when to choose a built-in microwave, how much food will be heat­ed and cooked. So the choice of a microwave oven is very dif­fi­cult, since there are a lot of plus cri­te­ria and no less man­u­fac­tur­ers.

Next, we will talk in detail about the most basic cri­te­ria for choos­ing a microwave. This will allow you to reduce the list of appli­cants.

Types of microwaves

Ear­li­er, we have already dwelled on the exist­ing types of microwaves. It should be not­ed right away that it is dif­fi­cult to get an unam­bigu­ous answer to the ques­tion of which microwave ovens are the best and most reli­able, since each buy­er has his own pri­or­i­ties. Your task in the process of choos­ing a microwave oven is to decide which options are impor­tant to you in the first place. And you can start just with the type of device:

1. Solo. An eco­nom­i­cal and func­tion­al option that per­forms basic tasks — heat­ing and defrost­ing.
2. Grill. The pres­ence of such a pos­si­bil­i­ty increas­es the cost of the device, but also increas­es the num­ber of func­tions. You can cook var­i­ous dish­es with a fried crust.
3. Con­vec­tion. This is a replace­ment for the oven, you can bake meat, cook pies, etc. The price is high­er than the pre­vi­ous­ly pre­sent­ed options, but there are more modes.

Here it must be said that there are built-in and free­stand­ing microwave mod­els. What is the dif­fer­ence between a built-in microwave and a con­ven­tion­al one — lat­er in the arti­cle.

Volume

This cri­te­ri­on is also sub­jec­tive, since it is influ­enced by many fac­tors. At the same time, the vol­ume allows you to under­stand how much food can be heat­ed at a time.

If the device will be used by one per­son, 12–14 liters is enough. For two, the device already needs a larg­er one — up to 17–20 liters. If you are buy­ing for a large fam­i­ly, then it is bet­ter to imme­di­ate­ly pur­chase a mod­el with a vol­ume of at least 30 liters. Such a device will cope with meat, bak­ery prod­ucts. What is the best microwave oven in terms of vol­ume depends on the sit­u­a­tion.

Which microwave is cheap­er and works well? Solo mod­els are suit­able here — the ratio of func­tion­al­i­ty and price is excel­lent.

Internal coating

There are three types of inte­ri­or coat­ing that are most com­mon­ly used by mod­ern man­u­fac­tur­ers:

Enam­el. Heat-resis­tant and wear-resis­tant mate­r­i­al. Sim­pli­fies care, as car­bon deposits are removed with ease. The ser­vice life of the device with such a coat­ing is up to 7 years. The dis­ad­van­tage is that there are scratch­es on the sur­face.

Stain­less steel. Durable coat­ing is not afraid of tem­per­a­ture changes. The key dis­ad­van­tage is that the sur­face becomes dirty quick­ly and is dif­fi­cult to wash out.

Bio­ce­ram­ics. When choos­ing microwave ovens in 2021, pay atten­tion to the nov­el­ty among man­u­fac­tur­ers. Bio­ce­ram­ics com­bines the advan­tages of enam­el and stain­less steel. Easy to care for, resis­tant to scratch­es, tol­er­ates sud­den changes in tem­per­a­ture. But the price of such mod­els is 2–3 times high­er.

What are the best microwave ovens in terms of reli­a­bil­i­ty? It is enough to study the tech­ni­cal char­ac­ter­is­tics, name­ly, pay atten­tion to which coat­ing is used by the man­u­fac­tur­er.

Housing material

Man­u­fac­tur­ers use stain­less steel and high-strength plas­tic to make the case. Which microwave oven to choose, or rather, with which case? Stain­less steel is more styl­ish and mod­ern, looks great in any kitchen. But on such mate­r­i­al there are fin­ger­prints. As for plas­tic, such a case is more frag­ile when com­pared with stain­less steel, but such mod­els are more afford­able.

At the same time, plas­tic is dif­fer­ent, if we are talk­ing about high-qual­i­ty, the case is able to with­stand shock. There­fore, what are the best and most reli­able microwave ovens, it is clear.

Door Features

The oven door is a pro­tec­tion of a per­son from radi­a­tion. There­fore, this ele­ment in the design of the device fits as tight­ly as pos­si­ble and is pro­tect­ed by a mesh screen. In mod­ern mod­els, brands have pro­vid­ed for block­ing the door dur­ing oper­a­tion and turn­ing off the oven when the door is opened.

The door can be opened using a push mech­a­nism, most often it is pre­sent­ed in the form of a but­ton. The sec­ond option is to open the door with a han­dle. Next, we will focus on which microwave is bet­ter — mechan­i­cal or sen­so­ry.

Power

Con­cern­ing this para­me­ter, one can often find dis­putes among experts. As prac­tice shows, the pow­er ranges from 500 to 1500 W and above. Accord­ing­ly, to the ques­tion of which microwave is bet­ter in terms of pow­er, the answer is unequiv­o­cal: with the high­est rate. Pow­er affects the dura­tion of cook­ing. The most accept­able pow­er is con­sid­ered to be 800‑1000 W; this mod­el of a microwave oven is inex­pen­sive and is bet­ter suit­ed for a fam­i­ly of 2–3 peo­ple.

Please note that not every wiring is designed for heavy loads. There­fore, before buy­ing a device with max­i­mum pow­er, check whether your wiring can with­stand it.

Most mod­ern mod­els are equipped with invert­er pow­er con­trol. That is, you can smooth­ly inde­pen­dent­ly adjust this indi­ca­tor using a spe­cial mech­a­nism. In most cas­es, man­u­fac­tur­ers pro­vide from 4 to 10 pow­er lev­els, if nec­es­sary, the user can mon­i­tor the defrost­ing or heat­ing process by inde­pen­dent­ly set­ting the pow­er.

Which microwave is bet­ter and with what pow­er of microwaves? It all depends on the tasks assigned to the device. For cook­ing, fry­ing meat, it is bet­ter to buy a more pow­er­ful device.

Workflow management

There are three types of microwave con­trol:

Mechan­i­cal. This option is con­sid­ered the most afford­able and easy to use. Dura­tion and pow­er can be adjust­ed using the round switch. Dis­ad­van­tages: dif­fi­cult to main­tain, low accu­ra­cy of para­me­ter set­tings, lim­it­ed func­tion­al­i­ty. The main dis­ad­van­tage is the inabil­i­ty to track the exact time until the com­ple­tion of the acti­vat­ed process.

Elec­tron­ic. Most often, such mod­els are equipped with but­tons and a touch pan­el with a dis­play. There are more func­tions, the abil­i­ty to accu­rate­ly set the time and pow­er. Such devices are con­sid­ered more ver­sa­tile than mechan­i­cal ones. But the price of such mod­els is high­er.

Sen­so­ry. In this case, there are no but­tons, a flat pan­el is pre­sent­ed for con­trol. Easy to clean, mul­ti­func­tion­al and more aes­thet­ic.

Which microwave will a mod­ern user choose in 2021, based on the type of con­trol? Most like­ly a sen­so­ry option.

Placement method

So, here there are two types of microwave, what is the dif­fer­ence between a built-in microwave and a con­ven­tion­al one — we will con­sid­er fur­ther.

Built-in microwave is con­sid­ered more prac­ti­cal, since it can be hid­den in any niche, while main­tain­ing the integri­ty of the kitchen set. At the same time, you need to think about the place­ment of the device. The selec­tion cri­te­ria for a built-in microwave oven are iden­ti­cal to a con­ven­tion­al appli­ance.

Sep­a­rate­ly stand­ing. Such a device in the kitchen can be placed on the coun­ter­top, bed­side table, on the top draw­er of the kitchen cab­i­net, on the refrig­er­a­tor or on a spe­cial shelf. Such a device can be moved at any time dur­ing the relo­ca­tion process or dur­ing a move.

The built-in microwave oven is cho­sen by mod­ern users more often because of its attrac­tive appear­ance.

Did you know that there are microwave ovens with­out a turntable. Choos­ing such a device, you have to over­pay, but you get more vol­ume and easy clean­ing.

Selection of additional functions

Accord­ing to experts, any kitchen device should have a num­ber of addi­tion­al func­tions. To get acquaint­ed with the char­ac­ter­is­tics and para­me­ters of choos­ing a microwave oven, go to the offi­cial web­site of the com­pa­ny and study the exact data for the select­ed mod­el.

As for addi­tion­al func­tions, most often the devices have:

1. Built-in bread mak­er and steam­er. This opens up the pos­si­bil­i­ty of prepar­ing var­i­ous dish­es, desserts.
2. Steam clean­ing. Sim­pli­fies the process of clean­ing from plaque, dirt and grease.
3. Remov­ing odors. If some­thing is burnt, you just need to acti­vate this option.

Sep­a­rate­ly, I would like to note the pres­ence of microwave mod­els with­out a turntable. Now microwaves began to enter the prod­ucts not from the side, but from below. The table does not rotate, it is not there, the microwave dis­trib­u­tor is mov­ing. Such a device is char­ac­ter­ized by a large vol­ume of the cham­ber, ease of clean­ing. As for the ques­tion of how to choose a microwave with­out a turntable, here the selec­tion cri­te­ria are the same.

Manufacturers

Now we come to one of the main ques­tions: which microwave oven man­u­fac­tur­er is bet­ter to choose? After all, the range is real­ly con­sid­er­able, and it is dif­fi­cult to decide even with a dozen com­pa­nies. If we talk about the best and most reli­able microwave ovens, then we can high­light the prod­ucts of such com­pa­nies as:

1. LG.
2. Sam­sung.
3. Bosch.
4. Elec­trolux.
5. AEG.
6. Siemens.

The cost of prod­ucts from such man­u­fac­tur­ers depends on the func­tion­al fill­ing, but this does not affect the qual­i­ty. All equip­ment of high-qual­i­ty assem­bly from high-strength mate­ri­als. Also, mod­els from brands such as:

1. Ikea.
2. Franke.
3. Gagge­nau.
4. Smeg.
5. Miele.

These are pre­mi­um man­u­fac­tur­ers, the prod­ucts are of high qual­i­ty and have an ele­gant, thought­ful design, most often a built-in microwave. There­fore, which com­pa­ny to choose a microwave oven also depends on your finan­cial capa­bil­i­ties. If desired, you can find a good val­ue for mon­ey. For exam­ple, prod­ucts from the fol­low­ing man­u­fac­tur­ers fit this def­i­n­i­tion:

1. Dae­woo.
2. Goren­je.
3. Can­dy.
4. hot­point.
5. Moulinex.
6. Whirlpool, etc.

What brand of microwave? It will be cor­rect to study user reviews in dif­fer­ent forums. Per­haps you can under­stand what the pros and cons of each brand are, this is a chance to form a gen­er­al idea of ​​both the com­pa­ny and the select­ed device.

More bud­getary, but no less high-qual­i­ty goods are offered by the fol­low­ing com­pa­nies:

1. Delfa.
2. Elen­berg.
3. Hansa.
4. Kaiser.
5. Vitek, etc.

Most often, goods from such brands are afford­able, but with­out addi­tion­al options. Here are the best microwave oven man­u­fac­tur­ers, which com­pa­ny to choose depends on per­son­al pref­er­ences and bud­get.

Council number 6. What is the best way to operate a microwave?

Anoth­er impor­tant ele­ment to note when answer­ing the ques­tion of how to choose a microwave for your home is con­trols. The com­fort of work will depend on their con­ve­nience and log­ic. There are sev­er­al options for imple­ment­ing con­trols:

• mechan­i­cal, using sev­er­al rotary switch­es. One, as a rule, is respon­si­ble for pow­er and modes, the sec­ond — for time. Some­times there is a third lever. These are sim­ple, reli­able and inex­pen­sive fur­naces. Minus — the inabil­i­ty to adjust the cook­ing time to with­in tens of sec­onds. As a rule, solo ovens and ovens with a grill are per­formed in this way;

  

• push-but­ton elec­tron­ic con­trol allows you to fine-tune the microwave oven, set every­thing down to the sec­ond. The main dis­ad­van­tage is the dif­fi­cul­ty of main­tain­ing clean­li­ness in the area near the but­tons and under them;

  

• touch elec­tron­ic con­trol — it is mod­ern, beau­ti­ful, com­fort­able. Noth­ing sticks out, which means that there is nowhere for dirt to clog. All process­es are reg­u­lat­ed as fine­ly as pos­si­ble. Minus touch elec­tron­ics — low reli­a­bil­i­ty. A pow­er surge — and she risks fail­ing. These stoves are, of course, more expen­sive.

  

Learn more about modes and features

Please note that the num­ber of modes and func­tions depends on the man­u­fac­tur­er, mod­el and price of the device.

The most com­mon modes found in microwaves:

1. Auto­mat­ic defrost­ing and heat­ing.
2. Rapid defrost­ing and reheat­ing. Suit­able for small prod­ucts.
3. Auto­mat­ic tem­per­a­ture main­te­nance. The device main­tains the desired tem­per­a­ture so that the dish remains warm.
4. Auto­cook. If the mod­el is equipped with such a mode, then you can save recipes for dif­fer­ent dish­es.
5. Launch delay. The mode allows you to heat up food at a spe­cif­ic time.
6. Cook­ing pro­gram­ming. The pres­ence of such a but­ton saves the sequence of modes.

To under­stand how to choose the right microwave, you need to care­ful­ly study the tech­ni­cal spec­i­fi­ca­tions. In par­tic­u­lar, pay atten­tion to what func­tions the device sup­ports. List of encoun­tered func­tions:

1. Dou­ble boil­er. It can be found rarely, in the most expen­sive mod­els. The option allows you to cook dish­es for a cou­ple, ster­il­ize dish­es and clean the walls of the appli­ance with steam.
2. Bread mak­er. You get a 2 in 1 device. You can bake bak­ery prod­ucts.
3. Steam clean­ing. Makes the cam­era clean­ing process eas­i­er.
4. Sound sig­nal. Mes­sage about the end of cook­ing.
5. Timer. You can record the time of cook­ing or warm­ing up the dish.
6. Block­ing. Mod­els with this func­tion are espe­cial­ly suit­able for fam­i­lies with small chil­dren.

Mod­ern man­u­fac­tur­ers are adding the option of con­nect­ing the oven to the smart home sys­tem. This is the abil­i­ty to con­trol the device remote­ly via a PC, cell or tablet. Next, we will look at the dif­fer­ence between a built-in microwave and a con­ven­tion­al one.

Council number 7. Where to put?

The microwave can be built into the kitchen set, or you can put it on the work sur­face. The built-in stove looks like part of a sin­gle whole, takes up a min­i­mum of space, but costs more. If the kitchen inte­ri­or is already formed, then it is bet­ter to take an ordi­nary free-stand­ing microwave. It is placed on a work sur­face or on a spe­cial­ly fixed shelf, so as not to take away use­ful cen­time­ters of the coun­ter­top.

If there is very lit­tle space in the kitchen, then take the most com­pact stove. By the way, any microwave oven, if desired, can be built into the kitchen set by build­ing a box frame for it.

Experienced advice

Any­one who has changed more than one microwave oven will tell you that:

• You do not need a large vol­ume of the oven — the size should be such that a large piz­za plate fits, and that you can freely put it in and take it out.
• Grill — you don’t need it, as the con­stant turn­ing of food and wash­ing the walls of fat will dis­cour­age you from grilling in a microwave oven! (In the oven, every­thing is much more con­ve­nient).
• Always heat food with uten­sils so as not to splat­ter the walls of the oven.
• Wipe down and wash the oven.
• Do not close the door imme­di­ate­ly so that there are no smells in the oven. Let it ven­ti­late.
• Set the radi­a­tion lev­el to the max­i­mum, and the warm-up time to the min­i­mum (1 — 3 min­utes). So the food heats up faster.

And a few more tips

Please also con­sid­er the fol­low­ing when pur­chas­ing:

• prod­uct col­or does not affect func­tion­al­i­ty, but affects per­cep­tion. Choose a mod­el that will not become a black sheep in the kitchen. A win-win option is a white stove, and a metal­lic-col­ored prod­uct will also look good in almost any kitchen;
• among lead­ing man­u­fac­tur­ers Sam­sung, LG, Goren­je, Midea, Bosch can be not­ed;
• the price strong­ly depends on the func­tion­al­i­ty, pow­er and man­u­fac­tur­er. Sav­ings are sav­ings, but it is bet­ter not to take too cheap mod­els.

Our TOP 11 rat­ing: the best microwave ovens 2021 will help you find the right mod­el.

For added con­ve­nience, you can pur­chase a book­case to put two plates in the oven at once. It is also bet­ter to take a spe­cial plas­tic cap that will pro­tect the walls from splash­es and make it eas­i­er for you to care for the stove.

Control

There are 3 types of set­tings and modes in microwave ovens:

1. Mechan­i­cal.
2. Push-but­ton.
3. Touch.

Mechanical control

The advan­tage of this option is reli­a­bil­i­ty.

Adjust­ment of timers, heat­ing pow­er, as well as a door lock — all these are mech­a­nisms with­out elec­tron­ics. The chance of break­age is min­i­mal. But visu­al­ly it looks “out­dat­ed”: 2 han­dles, as well as a mas­sive door open­ing but­ton.

push-button

Instead of mechan­i­cal han­dles — but­tons, more often — with a rub­ber­ized base (pro­tects against the ingress of water, grease, dirt inside). Also reli­able, func­tion­al option.

It rarely fails. But if a break­down occurs, then you have to change the entire con­trol pan­el, and such a repair will cost about 30 — 40% of the cost of a new microwave oven of the same mod­el.

touch

As a rule, there is either an insert made of ABS plas­tic or heat-resis­tant glass on the case. A touch film and mark­ings of “vir­tu­al” but­tons are applied on top.

Out­ward­ly, such microwave ovens look the most attrac­tive. In terms of reli­a­bil­i­ty, there are at least com­plaints, but if a break­down occurs, the repair will be expen­sive. Because it is impos­si­ble to change the sen­sor base itself, you have to install a new con­trol unit. And this is 50 — 60% of the cost of a house­hold appli­ance.

Grill, spit and convection

The sim­plest microwaves are able to per­form only one task — to heat food at a set pow­er. More mod­ern mod­els are able to par­tial­ly replace the oven, tak­ing on some of its func­tions. Thanks to this, it becomes pos­si­ble to ful­ly cook a wide vari­ety of dish­es in the microwave.

This solu­tion seems to us quite ade­quate in sev­er­al cas­es:

• if we are talk­ing about small-sized apart­ments in which there was no place for a full-size oven, or if the microwave oven acts as the only avail­able kitchen appli­ance — for exam­ple, it is installed in a con­struc­tion change house or in the coun­try;
• if quite often there is a desire to cook a por­tioned dish, which involves cook­ing in the oven, but at the same time it seems imprac­ti­cal to “fire up” the whole oven for it (for exam­ple, hot sand­wich­es for break­fast) — in this case, a con­vec­tion microwave will act as a small oven.

In mod­ern microwaves, in addi­tion to microwaves, sev­er­al solu­tions are used, and often they can be used simul­ta­ne­ous­ly with each oth­er.

Freestanding and built-in microwaves

When choos­ing a microwave oven, the first thing you need to decide is whether your microwave will be built into the kitchen set or free­stand­ing. Built-in microwave ovens imply the need to cal­cu­late kitchen fur­ni­ture in accor­dance with the dimen­sions of the appli­ance (includ­ing, pos­si­bly, order­ing cab­i­nets of the right size).

Such microwaves are usu­al­ly pur­chased at the kitchen design stage, since sub­se­quent­ly an attempt to “embed” the device in the wrong place can turn into a rather sig­nif­i­cant invest­ment of time and effort.

Free-stand­ing devices are sim­ply placed on the table or in the niche pro­vid­ed for them. They are easy to move to anoth­er place or put away for long-term stor­age (for exam­ple, if the microwave is rarely used, and free space is required to accom­mo­date oth­er kitchen appli­ances).

We also men­tion that at the stage of choos­ing a microwave oven, you need to under­stand whether it will be con­ve­nient to use it, name­ly, to decide on the design of the door. The hinges at the microwave door can be on the side or at the bot­tom. The door, thus, can open side­ways or lean back on itself (like a clas­sic oven). The choice is deter­mined by per­son­al pref­er­ences or design fea­tures of the kitchen set.

Traditional and inverter microwaves

In tra­di­tion­al microwave ovens, the mag­netron can be in two states — on or off. Accord­ing­ly, var­i­ous modes of heat­ing pow­er are imple­ment­ed by peri­od­i­cal­ly turn­ing on and off the mag­netron. The longer it is turned on, the hot­ter the food gets.

The longer the paus­es between the inclu­sions, the more time the heat­ed prod­uct has to even­ly dis­trib­ute the heat inside itself. It is clear that a mis­take with the choice of mode can lead to the fact that some parts of the heat­ed prod­uct will be too hot, while oth­ers, on the con­trary, will remain cold. It is also often pos­si­ble to encounter overdry­ing of the prod­uct.

The invert­er fur­nace is designed to par­tial­ly solve these prob­lems. Its main dif­fer­ence from a tra­di­tion­al microwave is the pres­ence of a spe­cial elec­tron­ic pow­er con­trol unit for the mag­netron (invert­er).

Thanks to such a device, the microwave gets the abil­i­ty to work not only dis­crete­ly (on / off), but also at an arbi­trar­i­ly set pow­er with uni­form heat­ing of the prod­uct.

As a bonus, the invert­er microwave does not have a trans­former, which takes up a lot of space in the device case, as well as some ener­gy sav­ings, which may be more (or less) rel­e­vant, depend­ing on the elec­tric­i­ty tar­iff.

Power

The more pow­er­ful the microwave, the bet­ter. Sounds healthy? In fact, the pow­er of the microwave is a rather impor­tant, but far from para­mount para­me­ter.

Despite the fact that on the mar­ket you can find both tiny microwaves with a microwave pow­er of only 500 W, and pow­er­ful built-in appli­ances that con­sume 1500 W, in most cas­es the pow­er of the device is select­ed in accor­dance with its size. That is, it will almost always be suf­fi­cient to ful­fill the tasks assigned to it.

If you still decide to take an inter­est in this para­me­ter, then do not for­get that the pow­er indi­cat­ed on the box is often the total pow­er of microwaves, grill and con­vec­tion. It is these val­ues ​​​​that you need to focus on if you select a microwave based on the load that your elec­tri­cal net­work allows.

If you are inter­est­ed in the pow­er of microwaves direct­ly, then in search of this infor­ma­tion, you may have to use the instruc­tions that came with the device.

In medi­um-sized microwaves, microwave pow­er is usu­al­ly in the region of 1000 watts — and this is per­fect­ly enough for all tasks.

Which company to choose a microwave

The unequiv­o­cal answer is no. Each mod­el has its own advan­tages and dis­ad­van­tages.

But if you believe the sta­tis­tics, then some of the most pop­u­lar are (accord­ing to sales sta­tis­tics, accord­ing to experts):

1. Sam­sung ME83KRW-
2. LG MS-20R42D.
3. Goren­je MO17E1W.
4. Hansa AMG20BFH.
5. Can­dy CMS 20 W.

Samsung ME83KRW‑1

One of the advan­tages of the mod­el is the increased vol­ume of the inter­nal cham­ber up to 23 liters. At the same time, its exter­nal dimen­sions are the same as those of oth­er microwave ovens for 19 — 20 liters.

A great option for those who have a min­i­mum of free space in the kitchen.

The main advan­tage of this mod­el from Sam­sung is its low price. At the same time, the man­u­fac­tur­er gives a guar­an­tee for 3 years, as well as an addi­tion­al 10 years for the inter­nal cam­era.

Of the short­com­ings, only not the most attrac­tive exter­nal design can be men­tioned, the col­or of the enam­el is black.

Spec­i­fi­ca­tions:

• modes — solo (with­out grill and con­vec­tion);
• con­trol type — using but­tons;
• Has a dig­i­tal dis­play
• pow­er — 800 W;
• coat­ing — enam­el.

LG MS-20R42D

Bud­get mod­el from LG, cham­ber vol­ume of 20 liters.

The coat­ing is enam­el, there is an ener­gy sav­ing func­tion (at first, the max­i­mum or aver­age pow­er is turned on, then it auto­mat­i­cal­ly decreas­es to the min­i­mum). Pow­er — 1000 watts.

Grill and con­vec­tion are absent. There are over 10 inte­grat­ed cook­ing pro­grams.

Of the short­com­ings men­tion:

• but­ton labels are quick­ly “erased”;
• very short pow­er cord.

Gorenje MO17E1W

One of the best-sell­ing mod­els of this man­u­fac­tur­er. The most tech­ni­cal­ly sim­ple microwave oven.

It is pro­duced only in a sin­gle col­or — white (the inner coat­ing is sim­i­lar).

Of the short­com­ings — only 12 months war­ran­ty, as well as a short pow­er cord. And one of the key advan­tages is low cost. But there are no com­plaints about the qual­i­ty of tech­nol­o­gy in the reviews.

Char­ac­ter­is­tics:

• 800 W;
• coat­ing — enam­el;
• con­trol — only mechan­i­cal (han­dles, door open­ing but­ton).

Hansa AMG20BFH

It is a built-in mod­el with a grill, the vol­ume of the inter­nal cham­ber is 20 liters. Pow­er — only 700 W, but due to the inter­nal coat­ing (stain­less steel), the dis­tri­b­u­tion of microwaves is more uni­form.

There are 2 col­or options: black and white. Man­age­ment — touch. Grill — quartz (longer ser­vice life).

Among the short­com­ings: low pow­er, spots form quick­ly on the inner sur­face.

Candy CMS 20W

Mod­el “solo” with­out grill and con­vec­tion.

Man­age­ment — mechan­i­cal (rotary knobs), pow­er — 700 W, cham­ber vol­ume — 20 liters. There is a quick defrost func­tion.

The main advan­tage is low cost. Inner cham­ber mate­r­i­al — heat-resis­tant enam­el. If you believe the reviews, then it does not fade even after 3 — 4 years of active oper­a­tion. But stains col­lect quick­ly, so you have to clean often.

Of the short­com­ings, only a short pow­er cord is men­tioned, as well as a very sim­ple design.

Man­u­fac­tur­er’s war­ran­ty — 12 months.

In total, when choos­ing a microwave oven for the home, you need to focus on: the vol­ume of the inner cham­ber, the spray mate­r­i­al, pow­er, sup­port for addi­tion­al cook­ing modes (if nec­es­sary).

And even before going to the store, you should decide for what pur­pos­es you plan to use the equip­ment. This will allow you not to over­pay for addi­tion­al unused func­tion­al­i­ty.