Microwave power

Everyone else here would, AlwaysWrong.

often it's a peelable sticker intended for retail display.

You whatever aged guys are such children when your mental age is examined. Decades of disparity. This is not elementary school, twerp.

Output power which is 15-20% less than input power on higher wattage units.

Not true.

Not true.

When you see the marketing material for a microwave they always declare the cooking power of the magnetron. The input power will often be stated somewhere in the back of the manual, and the current draw will be on a label on unit.

I.e. see page 18:

Power Source .......................................120 V, 60 Hz Power Consumption ................................. 12.7 Amps, 1,460 W Cooking Power* .................................... 1,250 W

This has been a source of confusion for many people, so don't feel bad about getting it wrong. I know that some RVers have purchased smaller, lower-power microwaves, believing that it could be powered by their inverter, not realizing that the input power was significantly higher than the output power. The reality is that a "600 watt" microwave draws far more than 600 watts (5 amps at 120V). You need about a 1200 watt inverter to power a 600 watt microwave continuously.

You're too young to remember when microwave ovens first appeared as consumer appliances, and they all included a temperature probe that usually had a 1/4" phone plug . Once the new owner tested it by boiling water, it was unlikely to ever have been used again.

You'd think with the advent of cheap sensors for temperature, humidity, and pressure, that we'd see new microwaves bristling with sensors.

Sounds like Webvan's problem--they never realized that most people LIKE to go food shopping.

There is one frozen microwaveable Asian product that I purchased at Costco. The instructions were amazingly complex, involving multiple steps of first slitting the plastic wrap on the top, microwaving it for a couple of minutes then removing the plastic completely, adding water, then putting it back in the microwave for a few more minutes. The goal was to ensure that all the ingredients finished cooking at the same time even though they didn't all need the same cooking time.

And as if instant ramen is too complicated (add boiling water, stir), we recently found a microwave instant ramen cooker that must have come from our son's apartment in college, where he inherited all the cooking stuff his roommates, all of whom dropped out, left behind . At first we didn't know what it was, but the shape and size gave it away. Unfortunately, his former roommate did want his Vitamix back.

Indeed. My (old) microwave has them, but why don't the new ones? Can this be only caused by the race to the bottom in production cost?

This is where the new semiconductor microwaves become useful. They can operate on DC power, at least on 24V (Trucks).

because no-one ever used them. (I don't remember the original Amana Radarange having a temp probe.)

One of my nukes has all sorts of buttons for software options including automated timing etc. They're a total waste of space.

NT

not me...

Ummm nope. Many... maybe even most... but not all.

Sears, for one had units with only the timer knob.

One cup of ambient water was the test as I recall. Typical window was about 2 (or was it three) minutes to bring it to a full boil.

There are grounding issues within the 'cooking cavity'.

snip

I'd charge him a storage fee.

There's one in my junk drawer - the microwave it arrived with is long gone.

The UK standardised on 13A - usually a cooker point in the kitchen that gives something like 40 or 80A or threabouts.

But that is at 240V so it requires only half the current compared to the US situation.

Over here it traditionally was 220V/16A but the voltage has been raised to 230V (in the UK it is supposed to be lowered to 230V if I remember well, but that still hasn't happened, right?)

NT

I think the idea was that "we on the continent" would go up from 220 to 230 and the UK would go from 240 to 230 so we would meet in the middle.

It was probably one of those silly EU ideas that nobody really wanted and half of the involved parties did not implement, leaving those stupid Dutchies with only the trouble and no benefit.

I just hear on the news that the EU votes over abandoning daylight saving time... there we go again!

You guys are 240V however. Twice the difference.

Once again the voltages have not changed, only the permissible limits have. 230v is a political description at least as much as a factual one.

NT

they basically just wrote down what already a reality, that for stuff to work across all of Europe it needs to work on any thing from ~207V to ~253V