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.
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.
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.