Panasonic NE-1054F Countertop Commercial Microwave Oven Stainless Steel with 10 Programmable Memory and Touch Screen Control, 0.8 Cu. Ft, 1000W

Replaced a 5+ year old Panasonic that had heavy use daily. On some weekends with family over at our house, this is used to cook several 1 pound bacon packages, which repeatedly runs the unit 10 minutes at a time. Definitely the stress from longer operating times are harder on the microwave generating "magnetron tube" and electronics. Most other namebrand household duty microwaves lasted us only a year or so. The reason we love this panasonic inverter/vari-wave: It uses an inverter, which is like an accelerator pedal in a car. It lowers the output power by reducing the output of microwave energy. Most other standard brands just cycle 100% power using an "on and off" method. (at a 50% setting - half of the time 100% power is turned on, then half of the time zero power off - in a 10 to 15 second window that repeats to vary the power over time). Imaging driving your car this way; pressing the accelerator pedal all the way to the floor to hit 100 mph, then coasting back to zero and repeating again. You may average 50 mph, (like a 50% setting) but the repeated cycling on and off tears up your vehicle, simarly the 100% to zero then back on to 100% cycle on your food in a microwave is not the same as food cooked in a Panasonic inverter controlled at a reduced power over time. The turbo defrost works really well. You select type of meat, weight and load food into the microwave and hit start. It follows a programmed power setting that starts off high, then reduces, and beeps to remind you to turn (or flip over) the food item abouth 1/2 way if you choose to do so. Or you can ignore and let it continue to defrost. By comparison, this model does not overheat and cook the outer edges like other brands of microwaves have in our experience. If you ever have foods that are rated for lower wattage microwave, like 1,000 watts, you can run this Panasonic on a power setting of 8 and perfectly cook your food to match the manufacturer's test kitchen results. Or you can let it cook on the full ~1200 watt power setting but definitely at a reduced timer setting. When using the pre-programmed Popcorn button, you select the ounce size of bag you are popping and hit start. As others have pointed out - you may find that it has burnt your popcorn. BUT the next time you cook popcorn, after you press the Popcorn button, select your size of bag - THEN before you hit start, you can adjust the time shorter or longer using the "More/Less" button to adjust to your preferences. This allows those who like slightly burnt to add more time. Most of us wanting that just right cooked bag find that using less time pops a perfect bag. Be aware that Popcorn cook time varies slightly among brands of popcorn. The Sensor Reheat works extremely well, considering it does not use a probe. The "quick minute" button allows you to place food in the microwave, press this button once, then hit start. Also nice feature- while it is cooking, let's say that you realize the cheese is not melting, so you need to add more time. You could wait for the timer to run out and then restart then oven for another minute. But you also can hit the "quick minute" while it is cooking and it adds one minute to the running cook time. Our primary uses for a microwave are reheating foods, defrosting frozen items, cooking bacon (on special microwave bacon trays lined with paper towels, be sure the bacon is not flat, but humped in the middle off of the paper so it doesn't stick to paper), melting butter on LOWER power level, & boiling water

Over the years, I've owned a few microwave ovens. Big, small, underpowered, enough RF emissions to fry a cat at 50 yards - you name it, I've owned it. But boy howdy does this one purely rock. First off, it's black. And not just black, but BLACK. I've seen grand pianos with far less lustrous finishes. If it weren't for the fact that its darkness practically sucks in every photon in the kitchen (in turn making it difficult to see), it would have a lacquered appearance to rival Japanese furnishings. I did once manage to catch just a glimpse of its depth, and the experience was not unlike seeing through both space and time. Aesthetics aside, this sucker cooks - and I literally mean *cooks*. In the space of twenty scant seconds, it will heat a tepid cup of tea from near-room temperature to a level of scalding fury strong enough to send you to the emergency room for skin grafts on the roof of your mouth. Further, it can also take the freshly-unearthed foodstuffs of primitive peoples from the permafrosts of Siberia and thaw them with an efficiency that can only be described as purely nuclear in nature - and I must admit that this is absolutely fantastic for dinner parties where eight-thousand-year-old bear meat has been put upon the menu. I do have my concerns that its epic powers may have actually been responsible for a rift in the space/time continuum that led to the Tunguska Incident in 1913, but as yet that remains only a suspicion. It also has a rotating turntable and LCD display that does stuff, which are neat to watch. There are a great many benefits to purchasing this microwave oven beyond those which I have outlined here. Unfortunately, to reveal them in this tawdry of a forum would be a terrible disservice to their magnificence, so I can only implore you to purchase this microwave and discover them for yourself. Trust me: this is a voyage of wonder, excitement, and steaming Bagel Bites that you will never regret having undertaken. Do it. Do it now, and never look back. Take that first step on the road to freedom from inferior kitchen appliances, and you'll truly wonder how you ever heated sauerkraut in any other massively-inferior device once this one is in your possession. Your life *will* be better for it.

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