Washers Dryers

I purchased the Warm and Toasty upon moving into a small apartment in April 2004 (it’s April 2005 now). It was a new product and I thought the whole concept was very cool! It is… Unfortunately, the execution is cool as well. This machine will not even pop popcorn! It pops a few kernels and burns the rest. It takes a long time to heat anything and is used basically to warm soup and leftovers. For toast - it simply dries and warms bread. Previously, I used my microwave to thaw frozen foods, cook vegetables and boil hot water as well as other things. I now have purchased a stove top pot, a steamer, a toaster (I was trying to save counter space with one appliance but that didn’t work) and try to plan better for thawing. The toast feature leaves crumbs that are very difficult to clean up. I’ve had it about a year and will probably replace it within another year.

By the way, for the edification of the Leads in this area, the wattage rating is 1000, not 100.

My wife and I owned a Garage Sale Special Sharp Carousel from 1987 to 2002.

We then bought a Samsung– mother-in-law’s Samsung was 4 years old at the time and had given no trouble, was very quiet in operation, had easy-to-use, intuitive controls, and had a “key silence” feature.

Unfortunately, Samsung quit after not quite 3 years’ service.

Since it costs $35 to just get a microwave opened up and looked at,and you can buy one nowadays for $59 on up, we went microwave shopping, settling for this Haier annoyance.

WOW - we replaced a very old Whirlpool with this model in Stainless steel. The unit is ultra quiet we can watch TV in the kitchen again (not that we do, but we could!)

The things that attracted me to the LG was price, stainless tub and door, built in disposal, cycles for pot scrub, normal, and delicate, hidden controls, and a child lock.

We were using our old microwave(a very good Sharp model, which we won in a grocery lottery about 15 years prior), when some of the buttons stopped functioning. This prompted us to look for a new microwave as a replacement. So, we were looking at different models from a price range of about $50-60. Other features that we were interested in were: (1) carousel (2) digital clock (3) reasonably large size, no more than 1 cubic foot (4) counter-top feature. So, basically we were looking for nothing to fancy. We weren’t necessarily focusing on any particular model, just something that would serve our basic needs of heating up that breakfast muffin to go on a Monday morning.

To tell you the truth, I think I was prejudiced against General Electric products. For some reason, I always thought they were the low-end models to buy. I must admit at this point that I should be flogged, stoned and sent to microwave penitentiary. These things rock.

We had such a good experience with our previous Sharp microwave, that we wanted to buy another Sharp.

This one is larger and more powerful than the venerable 14-years-old-and-still-works Carousel II that we had.

We have not been disappointed yet.

The new one is wonderful. Very roomy, can fit a large dish easily, and the preset defrost and popcorn features work extremely well.

The only problem with it is that it has 300 watts more cooking power than our previous oven, so I have to adapt cooking times accordingly. Most microwave cookbooks that have been around awhile, like my old Betty Crocker, were meant for use with 500-700 watt ovens. With this one being a 1200 watt, I have to shorten cooking times and lower power settings. It takes a bit of trial and error, but it works out fine in the end.

When we remodeled our kitchen, my wife didn’t want a microwave on the counter, above the range, or on top of a built-in oven. That pretty much left us the Sharp Microwave Drawer as the only alternative then to having a 24″ regular microwave installed under the counter. The drawer means we don’t have to swing open a door or stoop quite as far to get the food in and out of the microwave compartment. You have to use Open and Close buttons rather than the handle (in this size Sharp model, at least), which is a minor nuisance but not as inconvenient as I expected and helps to control the speed so soup, etc. doesn’t spill. We haven’t tried all the bells and whistles (sensors, etc.) but it seems to heat our food just fine. I really just have two surprises/complaints: (1) the display window is ultra-bright, illuminating the whole kitchen at night, and I can’t find a way to dim or turn off that LCD window, and (2) I can’t find a way to turn off the sound alerts that nag me to open the drawer if I leave the food there a bit after it’s finished heating.

I’ve never owned a Sharp R530 Microwave before, you see I’m a loyal Kenmore person or should I say I was. My Kenmore microwave had died and left me without. I was eating out the next day and planning to take a doggy bag home when I suddenly realized, NO MICROWAVE! So the food would be wasted. My husband said, let’s go buy a new one and that’s what we did. The discount store we selected didn’t have a wide choice of microwaves and basically the Sharp was the largest one they had. That’s how our purchasing choice was decided.

I replaced a GE microwave oven (identical to the JVM1653) exactly 2 years ago and now this one exhibits the same problem. Flickering interior lights (magnetron power supply problems) the popcorn button no longer works, yesterday we put in a cup of coffee to rewarm for 30s and it counted down to 19 and did NOT turn off. It continued for another 5 minutes until we came in, noticed it was still on and opened the door. We could not clear the timer (with the door open or closed) so we had to pull the plug. Now, the microwave electronics get set to where they will not respond to the touch pad so we regularly unplug it to reset the electronics. Today, I have unplugged it for a long time (30 minutes) in hopes of resetting the electronics. I know this will not work as these are the same symptoms my last oven exhibited before it too died.

This had to be one of the smartest buys I have made all this year!

The small size, attractive look and manual controls (I’m digitally challenged) this little varmit just warmed my cookies!

The low power use and 6 different temp/power ranges were very cleverly executed.

Taking the same power level, what they have done is to reduce power by turning the power off and on for longer periods of time to produce more or less cooking power… I thought it was pretty slick.

Power use on full is still only 1100 watts with 700 cooking watts.