Microwave recommendations

Pick your favorite Chinaman and get his. It would not shock me if they said there were only a couple of factories cranking out all of them, only changing the label and slight changes in the sheet metal can.

Consumer Reports sez

Best Buys:

LG NeoChef LMC1275SB Panasonic Genius Prestige NN-SD681S

Recommended:

Panasonic NN-SA651S

I did read that LG, Samsung, Sharp makes quite a few brands but yes, only a few actual manufacturers

Pick what looks pretty and is reasonably priced. At work we had a couple of cheap GE from WalMart and they held up for years.

My Monkey Ward 1972 microwave is still chugging along

Thanks for looking it up on Consumer Reports.

Andy

That's incredible. 36 yrs.

Slight math error. :-)

My GE cheapy is still going strong. It came with a set of knives 'Designed in Germany'. Chinese stainless holds an edge fairly well. iirc the whole mess was under $40.

Another Core Curriculum victim...

That is a very racist comment about your microwave : )

I agree. Microwaves have become like toasters, fairly inexpensive and tossed every few years. My wife got rid of our last one, maybe 5 years old, because of rust on the bottom of the chamber.

My Whirlpool quit after only 8 years (magnetron). As it was a built-in, I wanted to keep the really expensive bezel, which actually cost almost as much as the oven itself. After researching, I really liked the Panasonic because it uses an inverter to get lower powers, rather than just cycling on and off like most of the ovens. But it required the expensive Panasonic bezel. I bought the oven and am very happy with it. You can even melt butter without explosions of water, like with traditional oven. I found a company selling damaged box goods for the bezel at really good prices, however they were out of stock at the time. I used the oven sans bezel until they replenished the bezels ... just a few months. The box for the bezel was damaged, but the bezel itself was perfect and for less than half price. (How many times can you use the word bezel in one post?)

Totally aside, I also mounted a 10" exhaust fan behind the microwave oven (it's on an outside wall). It sucks air through the grills on the microwave's bezel. The microwave is mounted above the wall oven. The exhaust fan can be used for removing smoke from the wall oven below when accidentally burning something or when the wall oven is in self clean. Plus in the air conditioning season, it pull out the extra heat.

I've been quite disappointed with the Frigidaire Gallery over-the-range unit I've had for several years.

It doesn't vent worth a flip, it has started making a clunking noise, the turntable base that rotates the glass tray is needlessly uniquely designed and overly expensive to replace, the timer-setting control logic differs from that of the paired Frigidaire Gallery range it sits over so I often hit the wrong touch pad buttons. And BTW, the range has it's own set of performance issues...don't get me started.

When I sought help from Frigidaire Customer No-Service about these problems back when the units were new, not only did they blow me off, but did so impolitely!

About all I can say good about the microwave is it heats stuff up OK.

Before anyone goes out and purchases the recommended item, just for another perspective, look at the reviews on your favorite Bezos owned conpany's web site.

On Fri 07 Sep 2018 05:47:16a, Art Todesco told us...

We love our two Panasonics!!! The inverter technology blows everything else out of the water.

I ended up ordering the Panasonic NN-SD681S after reading a lot of good reviews.

My Oster only lasted 6 years.

Andy

Panasonic here, maybe 20 years old now, still works fine. Only problem is the bulb went out a few years ago and I never got around to putting a new one in. Seems you have to take the whole thing apart to get to it. IDK if they are all like that or if you can even tell without looking up what it takes to change the bulb.

It not that hard to take it apart. Usually a few screws, though you may need a special bit for some of them.

Andy