Panasonic NN-SE792S

Panasonic fail for me – It worked for about 3 years I’ll a light bulb blew, then around another year till the turntable stopped rotating. Was never particularly good. Uneven heating. The swipe dial was really awful always and worse with damp or oily hands meaning you would fumble to set the time. The time increments are 10 seconds as a minimum so accurate heating was always difficult.

Interior is not the easiest to clean with all the angular surfaces.

Never will I buy a Panasonic again with this sort of terrible experience.

Great Microwave but poor support – Our family enjoyed Sharp microwaves for a long while. Our last one was running for a gd 4 years until we had to look for a new one. We did our research for a bigger one and settled for a Panasonic. It functioned well and we enjoyed the features. However, it stopped working after 9 months. We called support and that's where the nightmare began. 2 weeks after sending in for repairs, we are still waiting for an update from the service center on status of repair.

So far so good – Ahh Microwaves!!! They are ubiquitous, every lunch room, dorm & servo's got at least one. Every one sells them - for example, whilst pondering this purchase Aldi had them on pallet for $125 ea! So how did I justify to myself spending $528? Easy - Looks. The Tony Stark cold fusion look dial and all that stainless steel. It did go into an upscale kitchen so this was important.

But you want to hear about the function aren't you? How did it go? It heats food. You can start it up real easy without reading the instruction book. Hit the Quick Start for the number of minute intervals then hit start. Easy.

Now - having said that, do not use any other function without reading the manual. You will need to do this to understand the difference between the other three main cooking functions.

1) Micropower - each hit of this the button subtracts 10% of the power delivered. Then use the Stark Industries Cold Fusion Touch wheel to dial in time (which I found easy to manipulate) & hit the Start button. Like any other microwave you say & that is true. Here is where it starts to differ.

2) Sensor Reheat - You can muddle through this without reading the instructions but to get the best you will need to have a set of scales & some glad wrap or similar handy.

3) Sensor Cook - You will need to read the instructions. You will need to do exactly what they say or you are merely doing a science experiment gauging the carbon content of your food. This cooking mode works on moisture and temperature sensors and will keep going until its smoking charcoal if not set up right. (From personal experience - Child No. 3 put two meat pies in then wandered off to watch TV, only coming back when the kitchens smoke alarm went off.) I can relate that severe use will stain the internals yellow but it will keep on ticking.

There are other handy typical functions like defrost etc that once again you will need to have scales and cling wrap or a seal-able container handy or heaven forbid read the info on the package to use well. (For me that means faffing about finding the reading glasses & maybe a magnifying glass, like I could be bothered.)

We now have the instruction manuals tables for typical cooking times and powers photocopied and stuck to the wall next to the unit with the scales and cling wrap. Whilst this seems finicky it’s worth it because the microwave works really, really well when you use it as intended. Evenly heated through etc.

Now for the love / hate cooling function - a bit of getting used to, as you panic at first that you have accidentally turned it on again with nothing in it. Not good when you are a little tired and emotional. However given that they nolonger make the Magnetrons like they used to as large rare earth magnets cost a bomb, it will extend the life of your efficiently built unit and that's got to be a good thing. (Still bought the extended warranty though as the scuttlebutt on the net says the typical Microwave Oven struggles to make a three year life span.)

UPDATE at the 6 MONTH mark. The Good - It's still going strong and the smell of the charcoaled pies has gone! The Meh - Tiny black labels for the buttons on the silver stainless is illegible in anything but strong lighting. The Bad - The door latch has become stiff and is now slammed shut as pushing it shut twists the door upwards.

UPDATE three weeks past warranty end of THREE YEAR warranty - H98 fault code - new magnetron required - $199.50 - went ahead with repair. And a solution to the stiff door latches - lubrication.

In conclusion; Buy if want a good looking Microwave with large capacity that will reward the effort put in to learn and use as intended. Don't buy if you want an inexpensive unit that you use mostly for the quick minute reheat of that stagnant coffee or to punch in the power and time to heat your post pub midnight snack.