Putting aside the obvious "are they better?"–does anyone have strong opinions on microwaves? I feel like they are fairly reliable, unlike, say, fridges. Some of them have a nicer keypad or something or cook more evenly but I don't think I've ever been super upset by a microwave.
I use my microwave like once a year; I honestly would rather have that space for something else that doesn’t make food simultaneously boiling hot and freezing cold and/or rubbery.
Maybe they should move toward deprecating microwaves for great airfryer/toaster oven combos.
If your food ends up with freezing cold and boiling hot spots after microwaving, it’s probably because of how you’re using the microwave. Don’t use the high setting on completely frozen foods. Set it to medium instead. This gives the food time to heat up evenly. Microwaves mostly heat the surface, so a medium setting works better for even cooking.
Depends on the microwave actually. I used to have a microwave with two knobs: power and time, so setting the first was as trivial as setting the latter. Now I have one with a dozen capacitive buttons and changing power settings requires a sequence of presses akin to some Street Fighter combos.
You still need to take out of the microwave and stir a few times and do it once or twice more until it’s evenly hot. To each their own but I maybe use my microwave once a week.
The entire point of running it on lower power is to avoid any uneven heating and manual intervention. Some really delicate foods I've put on low with plenty of success
I understand not to expect a high IQ from users on this site when it comes to topics outside their areas of expertise, but your comment wins the cake. The truth is that a microwave is the safest form of cooking or heating, especially in the presence of water. In contrast, air fryers and toasters achieve a much higher temperature, which makes food harmful to eat due to the creation of toxins such as AGEs and PAHs, etc.
They’re still good for heating up some liquid quickly or maybe some leftovers. But I mostly use stovetop or oven unless I’m really in a rush for most things.
I suspect that this is something that there’s a lot of variance between people/households. But certainly microwaves aren’t the essential appliance for a lot of people that they seemed to be in their heyday.
I have an oven though. I wouldn’t get a toaster oven/airfryer.
It's funny how I'm close to the opposite. I use the microwave and air fryer extensively because they are very convenient for cooking and reheating unattended with minimal oil and cleanup.
It seems popular to want to suppress them from making a noise when the food is ready, and to be annoyed if there's no silent option - or to prefer ones with mechanical bells that can be removed.
I bought a cheap Whirlpool microwave ($200), to replace my cheap Frigidare that lasted 20 years. It has this silencing feature and I love it. You hold 2 down for 3 seconds and it silences all beeping until the next power cycle. My only gripe with it is that it also silences the timer going off (ie, not using the oven, just the timer), which seems a little boneheaded.
Some models let you do this but don’t advertise it. You have to always check their manuals online before buying. Often it’s a question of hitting a magic combination of buttons at initial configuration (when it’s powered up). Some of the higher end microwaves like from Panasonic or Breville or others are more likely to have this.
I have been thinking of getting inverter one which could control actual power level instead of doing on/off cycle of maximum power. But the probably cheap one that was left in place as slightly annoying to remove(power cable behind shelve) just haven't gotten around to.
I got also top of the line Samsung one with all the features(convection+grill) stored but it was worse as microwave than the cheap one... Can't get that, I buy essentially best model and it does not do main job properly...
The only issue with my current one is with the silicon bowls I use for my kids. Somehow the dish focuses the microwaves and starts making plasma on the food leaving burn marks.
Highly opinionated: Never get one with the twist knobs for setting the time. They work for a while and eventually just do random things. I also hate the push button to open, I want a handle. My last microwave was a Sharp and worked well for about six years and then the entire inside started to flake off. I now have a Samsung that has ceramics coated interior, keypad everything and a handle. I hope this one will last me a while.
Microwave with knobs: put food in and turn the knob to the time you want. maybe turn the power knob if necessary, and wait for the ding
Microwave with buttons: put food in, stare at the keypad for 30s looking for the "just f**ing microwave it" button, give up, start putting in a time, realise you need to put in a power first, work out the appropriate power in percent based on the excessive power of the microwave, put that in, figure out the expected format for the time (60 or 100 for one minute?), put that in, press start, wait for the interminable beeping, have to go and press a button to shut it up when you're busy with something else
An exaggeration, but most button microwaves have at least one wacky and annoying issue in their UI, and i've experienced all those problems separately. The panasonic inverter ones with a convection oven are worth tolerating just for the quick yet crispy baked potato option, though.
I also have strong opinions on microwaves and while I agree with the 'handle to open' not push button, I am 100% about a knobs for setting the time. Just one knob, twist and push to start.
I do actually have a strong opinion about microwaves, specifically about the keypads. I have a perfectly good microwave that's a few years old, and the keypad is a cruddy, worn-out mess that's harder and harder to use every day. The microwaving part is fine, but the cheaped-out UI is making a solved technology unusable.
Seriously, though - I think microwaves are pretty much a solved problem now. Even the full-blown combos that include a convection oven are reasonably priced now. As long as you don't buy a shoebox and there's not some commercial regulation, where it's made probably isn't that important.
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.
It's interesting that the label was introduced in Britain to discourage consumers from buying products imported from Germany. Only then Germany managed to turn it into a brand associated with high quality.
Reading economics should help someone realize that there is something called competition and in order to be successful you should be competitive, do research and development.
A few Spaniards conquered a continent in a few years because they were more competitive than the natives.
Complaining is never going to help, hard, focused work will.
It's not that they are "bad guys for making good stuff cheaply" it's that every dollar sent to China is another dollar used to oppress and abuse innocent people. It is another dollar in favor of an inhumane dictatorship. Everyone who buys products made in China must certainly know this on some basic level. By the size of the American-Chinese trade deficit consumers are largely ok with this.
Some of us are not ok with supporting dictatorships.
Much like America before it, and vietnam/india after, manufacturing is great for building an economy but your time is limited before you price yourself out of it.
This list is missing some very prominent (and dare I say, expensive) European brands like Bosch, Miele, Gaggenau, Neff, Electrolux, Liebherr, most of which are still made in Europe.
I have mostly Bosch home appliances in Chile, but at least the integrated microwave was made in China. They're quite good at hiding the country of origin from all descriptions and manuals, although according to my searches, some devices are made in Poland or Turkey.
I’m glad to see this website shared! It’s good to divest from China, a country that has been supporting Russia and openly calling the US “the enemy”. I wonder why online stores like Amazon don’t have a country of origin filter.
Fun fact, most microwaves and microwave components are made by a single company called Medea and just rebranded by various companies. Even brands that you wouldn’t expect, like Panasonic, allegedly use Midea parts inside. That’s why they’re all interchangeable. The higher end models like Panasonic’s “inverter” microwaves might be different.
The lack of competition leads to a lack of choice. It’s very hard to find microwaves that operate quietly or that let you turn off beeping sounds for example.
> It used to be that all companies made microwaves in China.
Really? When? It looks like Amana have been making microwaves in the US continuously since 1967.
> These types of electronics were lost to china manufacturers for one reason or another.
"Lost to" is an ambiguous phrase. Compare "their match was lost to the other team" with "he was lost to the world". So I can't tell what's being said here. I guess the Chinese manufacturers are doing the losing, but it might be the other way round.
I wonder what language this was translated from, and who's behind the site. Maybe it could be somebody disgruntled in Hong Kong, whose first language is Chinese. Whois yields no clues.
So the question to ask is: what is better for an individual long term, having access to cheap goods or have those goods manufactured locally? You can even have both if you are living in Asia.
That's unavoidable for anything even slightly complex. The FairMouse project (https://www.nager-it.de/en/maus#language) shows the full graph for a plain computer mouse. Microwaves are more complex.
I completely understand wanting to support products made in countries that have treat their workers or citizens better. If I can buy something from Sweden, for example, instead of China count me in.
However the all Chinese products are crap meme needs to die. All our MacBooks and iPhone are made there. Your high-end hard shell rain jackets are all seam taped there. Arcteryx, the undisputed champion of seam taping, has successfully moved products to China. The list goes on. If anybody has weird quality problems it’s the automakers out of Detroit.
I think a lot of “crap” comes out of China because it’s easy to. It’s not worth paying American wages for garbage that falls apart. And with real wages falling in the long term, junk has supplanted quality for affordability reasons.
I don't fall into this category of people you're referring to. I'm an antipodean digital nomad, and traditionally very globalist, and fairly left leaning in my views.
Having said all that, even I can see the problem with the amount of power that China has accrued manufacturing everything. It's not so much that it's "China" so much as any giant country that doesn't hold the same democratic views (for some value of democratic).
I don't really have an answer. Both Russia and China are demonstrating that the foreign policies of the last 30-40 years are flawed (and full of hypocrisy at times).
If you’re referring to Israel-Gaza, it’s most definitely not a genocide and just a war of self defense. If Israel wanted to commit genocide, they could bomb the area indiscriminately. They haven’t. Instead they announce targets, drop leaflets warning civilians to leave, and take many other measures to reduce civilian deaths. Remember, Hamas is who committed mass murder and rape on October 7th, and they’re who are hiding among civilians and increasing collateral damage. Don’t be manipulated into victim blaming by their propaganda. Genocide looks very different - certainly not like the exponentially growing population of Gaza.
So, how does it work when 30k people are simply dead? Are they all Hamas?
Do the leaflets worked at the early start of the "war" when palestinians tried to flee to the south of gaza and were bombed there, or when they try to flee to egypt and are bombed in the border?
What about the widespread destruction where everything is turned into rubble? Was it due to having hamas below all buildings?
I tried to be as concise as i could: All countries seem to me as ignoring how irresponsible the three main perpetrators of widespread violence in the current major conflicts are responsible for. China perpetrates it indirectly in some way.
I don't. As Finn I have big enough country in between. And they have not yet done global terrorism with things like drone strikes. So to me they are at this moment the good guys.
Your "good guys" use slave labor and harvest organs from prisoners. Their people suffer under censorship as they instigate domestic conflicts abroad. They are just as imperialist as anyone else you can imagine, but they are still challenged by the US. If they get into a dominant position, prepare to be censored or disappeared in your own country because of what they think of your online comments.
Bad guys loved slavery so much they enshrined it in the document they value the most. Maybe if they got rid of the entire thing I might trust them even tiny bit...
And about prisoners weren't there just post in HN how organs got harvested as well from prisoners? Some that end up dead by "suicide" if they might have something against people in power. Or how some whistle-blowers about to criticize important part of their terrorism-complex end up dead... One makes wonder just how good and moral the citizenry are if people behind that sort of stuff keep getting elected...
The US had slavery over a hundred and fifty years ago, at a time when it was common practice. Over 600k men died fighting to end slavery. When China has such an uprising over its slavery, then you can lecture us about it. Ok?
As for the other stuff you mention, it is well-known that there are sketchy things done by people in power in virtually every country. So in some sense, there are no good guys. But to say China is on par with the US on human rights is ridiculous on the face of it. People are silenced constantly in China over mundane stuff that makes the government look bad. If you won't submit to thug tactics, they will put you in prison.
There are like a million people working to censor the Chinese internet. Just yesterday I heard about a bus crash in China involving the death of a little girl, and the government was threatening the parents and witnesses, and stealing flowers from the site of the accident. If you want to live under that kind of oppression, go move to China. I think you're probably a Chinese propaganda agent but I say it anyway.
Let me get this straight. You don’t like the US because we removed slavery from our Constitution instead of just removing the Constitution? What were we supposed to do instead?
No you put it in there. Slavery is now part of the document it is explicitly approved and glorified part of that document. Only way to really fix that sort of thing is to get rid of such evil document entirely. Correct way would have been total and absolute ban. But instead it was chosen not to do that. But to add only tiny clause against it.
Can you point me to the part where it says that? I’ll be sure to vote to change it and/or call my representatives, something I do every so often.
In the meantime while we’re working on that, do you know of any countries where I couldn’t do that? Perhaps places where the state sponsored social media would censor these words I’m typing before they made it to you. I want to keep a list and avoid buying microwaves from those places
Paraphrased the 13th amendment says slavery or involuntary servitude shall be used as punishment for crime. That if anything in my reading is absolute support for slavery. Which should be clear looking at how high ratio of people in the USA is punished for crimes.
That's not a reasonable paraphrasing. There's no directive that it "shall be used", there's an exception to the statement that it isn't allowed to exist.
I can understand objecting to penal labor, but you are over in "words don't mean things" territory.
Sure, let’s assume that’s a problem. The wording is not great, I don’t like it, let’s get rid of it. I’m still not sure how that requires re-writing the whole thing?
Gives 3.3 people per thousand in slavery. If the people there were good human beings should it not be zero? They have had much longer time to fix this, but have done absolutely nothing clearly. So they must be the bad guys, don't you agree? At least we can agree that they are comparatively worse guys. As they have had much longer to fight against slavery but have not done it.
No, I don’t agree and your argument makes no sense. Slavery has historically gone down in American but is going up in China. Clearly we have not done “absolutely nothing”. I don’t know what you mean by “a longer time”, slavery has existed in China since well before the current Chinese regime.
America is not perfect (maybe not even good) but your attempt to portray them as “worse” than China is nonsensical, the Chinese NK and Russian governments are as bad as it gets in 2024
I'm Brazilian and I couldn't care less. Do not see the same advocacy in IT against American imperialism and financeirization of the whole world or against the cartels of american companies products preventing me of having a job due to no significant industry in Brazil.
As someone living in the Eastern Europe I don't care if something is manufactured in US or China. I would rather have things manufactured locally so our economy grows and there are more jobs.
Know plenty of eastern european manufacturers who went bankrupt because they couldn’t compete with cheap chinese workforce. At this point it’s fait accomplished and past tense. But this trend continues to erode local indistries
Brazilians don't care because they largely live in poverty, and China is promising the country and its people economic salvation. It's an easy choice for Brazil against America, whom they see as an economic oppressor.
do not see anti Big Tech advocacy? where are you looking? every week there's at least one submission about EU vs Big Tech; every time there's any post on US law enforcement, healthcare, other cost(s) of living, compensation, etc. about US startup and software/hardware development culture or industry people rightfully say the words, fuck Google/Meta/Amazon/etc.
The main thing is that i do not see practical efforts by the workforce (us, as yes, i worked for an american company before going jobless) to sabotage these efforts. Everyone is happy getting their bucks and doing the dream of their lives in amazing projects while other people with enough talent who could at least contribute but were born outside of the spectrum watch with even their life being on the line due to having acquired the skills in the wrong place.
I agree it’s bad for a few companies in the west coast of America to have the power they do. However, America is a lot more trustworthy and less dangerous than the CCP, who are currently committing a genocide against some of their own citizens, jailing political opponents, suppressing democracy in Hong Kong, bullying other countries in South China Sea, threatening invasion of Taiwan, attacking other countries with cyber warfare, stealing through industrial espionage, and more. They’re powerful and hostile, and should be shunned by the free world until there is political change.
If this was the case nowhere outside the US would have significant industry. Australia, UK and EU would be wastelands with no opportunity.
This is a drastic oversimplication, and blame game. There are plenty of internal problems with Brazil preventing industry. Taking just one -- Corruption is a significant damper on economic opportunity.
The book "Why Nations Fail" has some amazing insights into why corruption amongst other things has a massive impact on dampening opporunities. The TLDR is that you need confidence of a level playing field, that your hard work won't be taken away from you.
Brazil rates very badly on the global corruption perception index[0], 36/100 compared to say Australia at 75/100 and Germany at 78/100.
It is the OECD[1] view that corruption is one of the significant limiting factors on Economic growth and opportunity within Brazil.
This[2] gov.uk page has some fantastic reading about the problems with doing business with Brazil. You need look no further than this for the things that will need to be solved if you want Brazil to be competitive on the world stage.
Always the accusation we are doing something wrong. Industrial espionage, outright "selective" prosecution of corruption cases against national companies while sidelining foreign companies who did the same things, forced assimilation/buyout of our rare startups are always ignored. Suspicious cases where governments are simply "removed" in impeachments due to not having favourable foreign policy to the US or economic policies which are developmentalist and not of the non-interventionist kind not considered in the analysis. This is exactly what our local media says, which gives us two options
1- You are right and reality is simply reproduced in distinct social stratums around the world
Don't get me wrong the US absolutely misbehaves. China misbehaves. Russia misbehaves. Europe is suffering from Russian and Chinese industrial espionage, Australia has definitely been the target of Chinese espionage. (Leaving the Ukraine war to the side for the purposes of this discussion)
Brexit is almost certainly linked to Russian influence. The difference is Australia, UK and Australia have strong institutions and firm anti-corruption mechanisms.
Brazil can't succeed until it deals with it's internal problems. Media that blames everyone but internal problems is just serving interests that would prefer the people to look elsewhere.
Brazilian here that welcome a multi polar world. Here we had much worse experience dealing with Europe and USA than with China, which at least did not colonized our country, did not implanted a dictatorship, nor enslaved or tortured people here.
