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tikhonjyesterday at 3:34 PM1 replyview on HN

I have a commercial microwave with exactly one dial[1]. It's great. It's more expensive than a "normal" microwave, but the UI is great, the construction is really solid and it's easy to clean. There's no external moving parts—no annoying rotating tray on the inside, and no visible latch on the door. It's clearly meant to take some abuse.

At first it was a bit annoying because frozen meals sometimes want you to run it at lower power and this microwave has no power setting. If that's a problem, I imagine there's some other similar model that does. But in practice, just running it at full power for shorter seems to work just as well.

It would look much nicer if it didn't have a cooking guide printed on it.

In Europe, I saw some consumer-grade microwaves with similarly minimalist designs, like these Gorenje microwaves[2] with two dials. I'd have gotten one of those, but I couldn't easily find them in the US. But I also did not look especially hard.

[1]: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00ZTVIPZ2?ref_=ppx_hzsearch_conn_...

[2]: https://international.gorenje.com/products/cooking-and-bakin...


Replies

miki123211yesterday at 5:42 PM

How does a microwave without a rotating tray even work?

Most microwaves only have the magnetron (the part actually producing the microwaves) on one side. The rotation is needed to cook your food evenly.

This is why food in the middle of the tray often ends up undercooked. No matter how the tray rotates, that part is never particularly close to it.

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