Nuclear Escalation Has Led to This

I can remember when Microwaves were new, and my Mom was afraid of having stray radiation in her home. Fortunately, someone in my family gave Mom a microwave before her paranoia had slid to the tinfoil-hat stage.

This original microwave was just a dial, a gauge that resembled an old-style radio dial, and a button to open the door. Even so, we started realizing that this was the greatest invention since sliced bread. A couple of upgrades later, my parents and I were using the microwave for everything from scrambled eggs to baked potatoes - what a wonderful accessory! Finally, we could multitask in the kitchen; the microwave was picking up the slack where the oven and range-top left off.

When I got married, my wife was of that same old-school camp; a food purist who really didn't care for the idea of cheapening the gourmet experience with molecular bombardment.

If I had any doubts about whether my wife liked using microwaves, they're gone now. After trolling through Consumer Reports and finding that their summary was, "They're all pretty much alike", we have been more than happy with the Sharp R530C series Full Size Microwave. I wanted to get something roomy because that old 2-potato model we had was just annoying: if you had anything hanging off your plate when you heated it, it would clunk against the wall and stick like a disagreeable candy-bar in a vending machine. This model offers 2.1 cu ft. of space. It is also very tall inside - be ready to trade off some counter space for this one, and you might even check to see if your kitchen cabinets hang high enough before you buy! Carousel microwaves just don't work as well propped upright on the kitchen floor where you have to drop the food in from the top.

What really floors me about this model, though, are the technological advances: I can very easily beep my way through the menus to find a pre-set program to do what I want. I can do this for food, beverages, and defrosting frozen items, from entrees to prepared dinners like Lean Cuisines. If for some reason I don't remember the manual's instructions, that's okay; pausing at any stage along the way gets me flashing reminders (in English!) of what I need to do to pick the next step.

Of course, who would want to do that every time? I need simplicity! If I have an exact time in mind, I punch it in like all the zillion other microwaves before this one. However, let's say I'm even lazier than that: if I just want "Hot enough to eat", I press the "Sensor Reheat" button, and moisture sensors built into the machinery automatically reheat the entire plate ready-for-the-table!. Sensor Reheat does a great job. Every once in a while, I break the rules - put a frozen burrito next to room-temperature beans and I might end up with a burrito that's done "Medium" in the center. No problem - just press "Minute Plus" and the Sharp R530C automatically fires up, runs for a minute, and you get it the way you wanted.

As for the rest of the features, the carousel turns the food and even though we got a white model, the surfaces clean up relatively easy, provided you don't let that cheese blob stay on the wall too long and let it get cooked into the surface every time you use the microwave - then you'll have to use some elbow grease.

My only complaint is that about a month after we got it the door started sticking. I have yet to do "the man thing" and tinker with it to see if I just need to clean or repair the mechanism, but it's also not enough of an inconvenience to send me shipping it back to Sharp; it just pauses for a moment before it swings open, and I don't know if this is a common problem for the model or if we're just lucky.

Overall, many microwaves may be the same. But you'll never convince me to put that to the test; this Sharp R530C series Full Size Microwave is exactly what my family needed, and I'll give up nuking my food 'til it glows when you pry my cold, highly-irradiated hands from the Microwave...