It combines 3 appliances in 1 with a microwave, grill and convection based oven with a flatbed base (no turntable). The flatbed base gives you much more cooking capacity than a standard turntable microwave– great for those large or awkward dishes. Quality is another important element when shopping for a new product, particularly if you’re looking for products like Microwaves. However it’s really worth setting your expectations and needs right up-front so that you’re not expecting the world’s best quality products from the cheapest products in the range. Using the convection oven to cook a slice of frozen pizza on the supplied baking tray was interesting. The weight options for auto cooking pizza are 150, 300 and 450g, with 18-, 19- and 20-minute cooking times respectively. To be fair. though, this includes the time it takes for the oven to warm up. If you do then find that Sharp 900W Combination Flatbed Microwave R861 isn’t exactly as you thought it would be, you can easily return it.

Panasonic NN-DF386BBPQ Combination Microwave Review Panasonic NN-DF386BBPQ Combination Microwave Review

Your microwave is pre-programmed so food can be easily defrosted by simply inputting the food's weight. Alternatively, you can manually choose the defrost time.A raw, fridge-cold 350g potato took 9mins of microwaving altogether. After 6mins of initial heating (having flipped it over and rotated the plate halfway through) and standing for a further minute, the potato’s inner temperature was 98°C. However, when cut open, some harder bits became apparent. These were also visible as slightly cooler patches on my thermal camera. It took another 3mins to reach an appropriate level of softness, by which point the edges of the potato were starting to look white-hot on the thermal camera. A flat turntable-free design accommodating all of your dishes, big or small and it's also easier to clean. As you would expect with a flatbed design, cleaning the machine is quite easy as you can access the base with no trouble.

SHARP R861SLM 25L 900W COMBI TCH SLV FB (548/8555) SHARP R861SLM 25L 900W COMBI TCH SLV FB (548/8555)

Noise level: This may or may not be important to you as all microwaves make some level of humming or buzzing when in use. If it sounds noisier than normal, this could be an indication that its time to replace your model.Turning to Auto Cook programmes, I used the A-06 rice pre-set to cook 300g of rice with 600ml of water. This took 23mins and the rice came out perfectly cooked, requiring no extra standing time or further heating.