Comment by r00fus
1 year ago
I migrated our house to a "commercial" variant of the microwave oven [1] as I was tired of all the over-engineering and annoying patterns in modern microwaves.
This microwave has exactly UI element other than the door - a digital dial that goes from 10s-6m. No start/cancel, no power level, no defrost, no program mode. I don't "cook" using the oven, only reheat or very rarely heat/boil small quantities of water.
The microwave beeps only once after complete and it's not incredibly loud.
Despite my kids literally abusing this device, it's been rock solid for 7+ years. Amusingly my company started putting these same exact models in our office break/kitchen areas a couple years after I bought mine.
The thing is, the superior way to reheat something would usually be a lower power level. But not the standard "turn on - turn off" cycle that most microwaves do. Actual lower intensity microwaves. You need an inverter for that. The food would heat more evenly, which is especially useful for things like butter that are prone to splattering.
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.
I once used a very expensive wolf brand microwave that would always run the magnetron for at least 10 seconds regardless of the power level setting. So if you set it to do 10% power for 10 seconds it would actually do 100% power for 10 seconds. I'm kind of shocked that their QA didn't catch this, if nothing else it should refuse to run at reduced power settings for times under ~100 seconds.
Inverter microwaves are also more energy efficient than conventional ones (though more to go wrong).
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...
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.
If the power level buttons were an old school radio button that would be so cool
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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.
If it doesn’t say, it’s not inverter
Pick it up, non inverter models will be really heavy on the control panel side.
> the over-engineering and annoying patterns in modern microwaves
I walked into our office tea room one morning and saw three engineers standing around trying to work out how to use the new microwave.
No joke.
Quite why a microwave needs anything more than cooking time and power level knob is beyond me. (This thing probably has options to ping my phone if my jacket spuds go soggy).
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 actually... for me, a single button "+ 30 seconds" is sufficient for all my needs, like forever.
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I mean, almost certainly you press "cook time", not "cook power" to set the time, but other than that this is exactly how every single non-dial microwave I have ever used works.
It's so limited without a power level feature. It needs to be able to cycle power to heat food evenly.
It does heat food as evenly (possibly more evenly) than my other microwaves.
Some microwaves have a wave deflector which causes the wave to be less uniform in the cage and thus heat more evenly and not with 12.5cm standing wave intervals.
I opened my microwave and cut the piezo buzzer out with wire cutters.
I have never regretted doing my "silent microwave mod".
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.
My Breville toaster oven has three beep settings: incredibly loud, ear-splittingly loud, and off. It still runs the fan when the timer is done for a while too, so there’s no good indication there. So annoying.
Maybe a dumb question, but why do consumer microwaves have all these power settings (600W, 800W, 1000W) if apparently they are useless? I don't really know how microwaving works on a physical level - do I achieve the same effect by microwaving something for 30 seconds at 1000W or 1 minute at 500W?
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).
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).)
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.
Alternative take: don't reheat chicken in the microwave. A good toaster oven reheats (non-sauced) meats a lot better.
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.
Great minds think alike. That is exactly the microwave I have, and for the same reasons. Such a brilliant tool.
A good example of "pay more, get less" being actually nice.
Porsche does this with special stripped-out models that cost more (less unnecessary stuff, less weight).
Similar thing here, "simplify and add lightness".
Well, they use also tons of carbon instead of iron/aluminum to lower weight, so that price may be justifiable. Maybe.
There's probably less carbon on the base models, than on the heavier high end models.
That's "add lightness".
Well sometimes yeah, and then there is the nylon strap instead of a handle on the door for your $300K car.
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I inherited my Moulinex microwave from my mother thirty years ago. Apart from the internal lamp failing it is in perfect order. No electronic controls just a power dial, clockwork timer.
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.)
Normal fluorescent lights will glow in a microwave.
Mr. Wizard demonstrates:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_iQ54aQ_-I
I have this experience with so much equipment in the kitchen. The retail variant has features and knobs etc but is otherwise somehow flimsy, but the commercial variant is rock solid and only does one job.
An example is the atrocious slow cooker that I somehow ended up with that has so many settings on its terrible display I can never remember how to run it. Oh and it maxes out at 6 hours, when my work day is typically 8+ hrs. The old one had two settings with a physical switch - high (for saute) and low (for slow cooking). Perfection.
"Dumb" microwaves (knob for modes, big knob with mechanical winding spring for the time) in general easily last over 20 years, we had to dispose of ours only because the plastic became disgusting from standing in a sunny spot for all its life
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).
Do you know what happened? Or was it just some cheap components failing?