Microwave oven is a common kitchen appliance in any modern kitchen but selection of best microwave oven for your kitchen is not simple. Nowadays microwave oven is available with many functions & features, so any wrong selection may cause of having a less effective microwave oven for your lifestyle. Everybody needs a microwave for different purpose. Some people use it less frequently (only for warming or preprocessing of food) whereas some people use it for daily cooking.

Steps to select best microwave oven

Select correct microwave oven type Fix your budget or a price range Understand your oven capacity requirement Select optimal power rating of microwave oven Choose all required features Consider style & design as per your kitchen Choose a trusted brand or manufacturer Visit traditional shop or buy online

Select correct microwave oven type :

Selection of correct microwave oven is very critical and selection should be done based on your usage, food habit and lifestyle. There are three types of microwave oven in market. These are normal solo microwave oven, microwave with grill function, microwave with convection function.

⇒ Solo Type : Suppose you need microwave oven for normal cooking purpose or to defrost frozen food and reheat cooked food, then solo microwave oven is best microwave oven for you. Here microwave oven emits microwave radiation to cook food. It needs less oil to cook and allow you to cook simple way.

⇒ Grill Type : Now some people prefer to eat grilled food like kebabs, Paneer tikka or tandoori items. For them this type of microwave oven is effective. Here a quartz halogen lamp is used to create heat along with microwaves which will grill food.

⇒ Convection Type :  Now what if you want to bake food like pizza, cookies, pudding etc. So baking is not possible with solo or grill microwave oven. To bake your pizza, cookies & pudding you need convection microwave oven. A convection microwave oven has all three functions (Solo, grill & convection). It uses a fan and that fan circulates air within oven to create convection.

If you are not aware about basic difference in broiling, grilling & baking method for cooking then you can check previous post where it was discussed.  You may share your opinion there by leaving a comment.

Fix your budget or a price range :

Fixing your budget is only possible when you know what type of microwave oven you really need. Once you realized your need, then it is always a smart decision to fix budget and spend right amount on your appliance.

⇒ Nowadays microwave oven is not as costlier as earlier. You can buy a good solo microwave oven at Rs 4,000-5,000 too. Grill micro oven (some people call microwave oven  as micro oven, though meaning are not similar 🙂 ) is little bit costlier than solo. You have to pay around Rs 6,000-7,000 for a good quality microwave oven. Convection microwave oven (with grill) are available Rs 8,000 – 10,000. Though you may need to pay higher if you want to get some advanced features for any type of microwave oven.

Understand your oven capacity requirement :

⇒ Capacity for any kitchen appliance is important. It depends not only on your purpose of usage but also your family size. If you want it for regular use of small family (2-3 members) then 20-22 L is fine. But suppose you want it for 6 members family and you want to cook daily meals with your microwave, then 20-22 L is not sufficient. So you need a full size large (25-30 L) microwave oven.

So your best microwave oven should have adequate capacity to meet your purpose. If you are using a under capacity oven then you can not be satisfied by using that, whereas if you are using over capacity oven that means you have wasted your hard earned money.

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Select optimal power rating of microwave oven :

Higher power rating means higher consumption of electricity. So it may have direct impact on your electricity bills. But if you cook in higher wattage microwave oven then it will cook food faster.

⇒ Based on capacity and oven type (solo, grill & convection), you may need higher power rated oven. So finding best microwave oven is always tricky. You have to look into many parameters to select a most effective one for your kitchen. 600 – 1,200 W is good for solo microwave oven, people prefer 1000-1,500 W  for grill type microwave oven whereas 1,500 – 2,200 W is preferred in case of convection type microwave oven.

Choose all required features :

Normal Features :

Clock : Many manufacturers offer such feature. Clock may be of 12 hours or 24 hours. You need to set clock hour (12 or 24) and time. This is a simple feature what you may have or may not for any kind of microwave oven. Temperature Setting : Based on food type and recipe you may need different temperature to cook food. So you need to know the temperature required to process food. That is why, temperature setting is a tricky part for any user. You need to know it for any kind of recipe. Though in some microwave oven, some preset temperature and time all ready given for some types of food, you just need to touch a button. You can cook meat, pizza, heat milk, tea etc very easily if you have such feature. Timer Option : This is also a normal feature but very important one. Timer option allows you to cook food for right duration. You can set time to process a food at certain temperature or microwave power level. Reheat : People enjoy meal what is served hot. But you can not cook food just before serving it. So you may need to warm it before serving. Reheat option allows user to do so. Temperature is always maintained at a certain level so that bacteria can not survive. So if users have precooked food and want to serve hot, then this feature is very very essential. Some microwave ovens also have  Auto Reheat feature which make reheating easy and faster. There may be different options to reheat food at normal temperature and refrigerated one. Keep Warm : Suppose you have cooked your food little early and you want to serve food hot. So you can keep food inside microwave oven at keep warm condition which helps you to keep your food as warm as you have cooked now. It actually generates low wattage microwaves to keep food warm. Though its not a normal feature but as people’s lifestyle is changing, so now many manufacturers have started providing this feature in many low priced micro oven too.

Advanced Features :

Auto Defrost : You can do defrost with microwave oven. Some microwave oven also have auto defrost feature which allow to do defrost very easily. By entering weight of food, it will do all setting itself. Auto Cook : Auto cook is an advanced feature. If you do not know power level or time involved to cook a food, then you can use this setting. It allows to cook food without knowing any settings, you just need to enter weight and dish type. Multi Stage Cooking : Some time a food needs to be processed through multiple stages as per its recipe. So you need  to be engaged throughout the process as you have to take out the food then change setting and keep semi processed food inside oven, you may need to do this multiple times. But what if you can do all settings at first when you put food inside oven and its system does all required changes itself after completion of each stage. Yes, you can do that as some modern microwave ovens offer such feature too. Rotisserie : If you love meat, especially chicken then you definitely like this feature. It helps to roast chicken properly. It gives best result when you use both heaters (upper and lower). Steam Clean : Cleaning of any kitchen appliance is very very important. Its for keeping desired performance level of your appliance for longer period and hygiene for your family. Steam cleaning feature makes it easy and faster. Deodorize : This feature is useful when you want to remove a strong odor inside oven. After cleaning of microwave oven’s interior, you just need to press Deodorize button to remove all such strong odor. It may take several minutes but still you can set time for it.

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Safety Features :

Child Safety Lock : Child Safety Lock may not very much important for you. But if you have child at home then you may feel requirement of such feature. Your child may operate microwave oven and that too in absence of you or while you are not noticing your child’s curious activities. So this feature will not allow your child to open or operate microwave oven. Its just a simple setting like you need to press button for few seconds to operate the oven. Sensor Malfunction Protection : This is very very important for high range products. If you are paying a lot for just a kitchen appliance then you must check this feature. It will work when sensor circuit will be shorted. Then it will protect your appliance. So you can understand why it is important. Overheating Protection : Over heating protection will indicate or warn you when temperature will reach a beyond a certain level. If it reaches beyond that level, your oven will show an error on display screen or some alarm will be ringing.

Consider style & design as per your kitchen :

Color : Color is totally personal preference. If somebody hates a particular color whereas another person loves that. So nobody can say that this is best microwave oven’s color. Still silver color is preferred by most people. But it is always expected to select best microwave oven’s color according to your kitchen color and design.

Design : You should always try to avoid any such design which has sharp interior corners. It always creates problem to clean those corners. So always try to get microwave oven what has smooth corners. Simple design is always preferable for cleaning and maintenance point of view. You can buy a great looking stylish design, only if you have enough time to maintain and clean that appliance.

Weight : Weight varies  based on microwave oven type and capacity. A medium size convection type oven can be 10-15 kg.

Dimension : Dimension of any microwave oven depends on capacity and design of that.

Choose a trusted brand or manufacturer :

Selection of a brand (or manufacturer, though these two are not same things) is important for any product. For any product two things are directly associated with brand. These are trust and post sale services.

Trust : Every brand has a trust level in potential buyer’s mind if it is a known brand. A particular brand may enjoy very strong trust level as you have used any product of that brand or somebody else whom you know very well, used it. Sometime this is built due to strong presence of that brand through exhibitions & advertisements. So it is always advisable to read customers reviews and ratings as much as possible before buying any product. If it is not a known brand then you must do your own research, read customers reviews and expert’s opinions and make your own opinion based on that.

Post Sale Service : Even if you have done extensive research, studies many reviews but then also product may start malfunctioning just after few days or months. Not only that, to maintain its performance you need periodical servicing of appliance. So post sale service is very very important. But suppose you have purchased a product from a manufacturer in a particular city but that manufacturer has only one service center and that too far away of your premise. So what will you do? As it will be very hectic if any reason you need to visit that servicing center and they may take long time to serve their customers. So it is always good practice to check number of authorized service centers in your city.

Warranty is another part of post sale services. Generally most of the manufacturers offer warranty for at least one year which may extendable once you have paid certain extra amount. If you are buying expensive appliance then you should go for extendable  warranty. Three years warranty is good for any such warranty. For microwave oven,  manufacturers offer warranty on Magnetron and Cavity.

Popular brands of microwave oven are IFB, LG, Samsung, Morphy Richards, Kenstar, Bajaj, Electrolux, Panasonic, Prestige, Whirlpool, Haier and many more.

So if you have decided on your favorite brand for your best microwave oven then let us know by leaving a comment below.

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Visit traditional shop or buy online :

Once you have done enough research to find best microwave oven and have chosen best microwave oven for you then its time for buying it. So for buying your best microwave oven you can visit local traditional shop for home & kitchen appliances or you can prefer to buy it from online store like Amazon, Flipkart etc.

Many people prefer to buy kitchen appliances online whereas a lot of people also prefer to buy online. Nobody can deny that offline stores have certain benefits but it is also true that there are so many advantages if you buy kitchen appliances online.

Conclusion

So now you have found best microwave oven for your kitchen. So please let us know what you have selected (which brand do you prefer and features of which model is effective according to your usage?) by commenting below. Though some people also say that it is unhealthy to eat microwave cooked food. But many people like me do not believe in that. If you do not want to buy microwave oven then you can think of OTG oven (find best OTG instead of best microwave oven) what is also a very useful kitchen appliance to cook (toasting, grilling, heating) food.