How To Choose The Best Microwave Oven

Microwave ovens are great kitchen appliance to reheat, grill or even bake. Microwave ovens are helpful in cooking a wide range of recipes and food items including popcorn, chicken grills, kebabs, pizza, muffins, even reheat the frozen food. It cooks in minutes, saving time and energy.

Do you know if you buy Grill type microwave oven then you cannot use it for baking !!! There are several factors to consider before selecting the best microwave oven for your home, based on your family size, food habits and other good to have features. We hope below buying tips will help you in selecting right microwave oven. In fact, you can use our microwave oven selector as well to choose the right microwave oven.

Microwave oven types

Most important decision during microwave oven selection is which microwave oven type to buy. There are three types of microwave ovens are available in the market.

• Solo microwave oven
  Solo microwave ovens are entry level models in microwave oven category for simple cooking. Best fit: for Reheat, simple cooking
• Grill microwave oven
  Grill Microwave ovens are provided with additional grilling accessories. They are best suitable to grill meat or vegetables like Paneer.
• Convection microwave oven
  Convection microwave ovens use a fan and a heating element to create air flow patterns inside the microwave oven. Best for grilling and baking. For example, IFB 20SC2 convection microwave is most popular convection microwave oven.

The decision is based on what you cuisine you want to cook. Based on the cuisine you can choose the right type of microwave oven from the below table.

Microwave oven capacity guide

The capacity of the microwave oven is measured in liters. It is the indicator for how much food you can cook at one go. As said above, Microwave capacity depends on your family size and usage. Follow above section on microwave oven usage and corresponding microwave type mapping. Below we are listing a table to calculate the capacity.

Essentially it says for a small family, for Solo type micro oven, 15-20 liters is enough, But for the same small family, for Grill or Convection type 21-30 liters is sufficient. The large family it requires 25-30 liters for Solo type For other types, it would be 32 liters and above.

Family size	Usage	Ideal capacity
(2 to 4 members)	Solo Microwave Oven	15 to 20 Liters
(2 to 4 members)	Grill Microwave Oven or Convection Microwave Oven	21 to 30 Liters
(4 to 6 members)	Solo Microwave Oven	25 to 30 Liters
(4 to 6 members)	Grill Microwave Oven or Convection Microwave Oven	32 Liters and above

Microwave oven price

The price varies on microwave oven type and price.

• The solo microwave oven price ranges from Rs. 5,000 to 7,000.
  depending on the capacity of the microwave oven.
• Grill microwave oven price is in between Rs. 8,000 to 10,000.
• The Convection microwave oven price varies from Rs. 12,000 to 18,000.

Microwave oven features

Here the some of common words, phrases that are used in microwave description while online purchasing. To know the meaning of each microwave descriptive words, you can refer below list.

Child lock

If you have children in your home, they may accidentally put their hand in the microwave. So these features provide a child lock facility. Generally this child lock is facilitated with the help of code which act like a password to unlock. Convection microwave oven interiors get very hot when you bake and child lock is must feature in that case.

Auto cook

In case you want to simplify the cooking, this option will do the need. Economic or low-end microwaves won’t have this feature. You don’t need to set time, and power configuration, all you have to do is to specify the dish type, that’s it.

Power consumption

Apart from that there is power setting, Higher the voltage, it will be more efficient and quicker. If you like to cook heavy food items or bulk quantities for a large family, consider a more powerful microwave. If you cook food only for one or two people, then a less powerful microwave is enough. The same feature is called as ‘Power Levels’ as well.

Defrost

It is a microwave operation specialized in heating the frozen food. Say you want to heat the yesterday curry from the refrigerator this is the right option to use.

Preheat

Before you start cooking and follow the recipes the oven needs to reach certain temperature. So you need to turn on the microwave oven and wait for some time till it is hot or reached the required temperature. The above process is called as preheating. Look for the preheating time required for the microwave oven in the specifications before you make purchase.

Timer

Allow you to configure the cooking duration. You can specify how long the microwave to operate from 30 seconds to 10 minutes. Depending on the panel type either with knob or with LCD touch you can specify the duration of cooking.