Logitech G203 LIGHTSYNC Mouse Review

Okay, so inverters are useless, but you know what would be really cool? A dial to adjust the wattage. Then it would be a real cooking appliance. Instructions would say “5 minutes at 700W” and then you put in those settings and the food comes out as perfect as it could be. Very similar to how an oven works.

Nov 19, 2024 01:00 PM By  Michael John Wood

Hi Charles2025, Good catch! You are correct that PWM is still being used to control the output power in inverter microwaves. The way that section of the article was written made it seem that input DC power to the magnetron was being adjusted to control output. I’ve edited those two paragraphs to be more accurate - that the inverter circuit imparts very rapid switching of the DC power input to the magnetron, resulting in a standing wave which is effectively constantly on with power that is controlled by the duty cycle within those very short periods. Thanks for taking the time to comment! I really appreciate the input :) -Mike

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Nov 18, 2024 10:54 AM By Charles2025

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Hi, your description is incorrect, you cannot significantly reduce the output power of a magnetron by reducing the voltage applied to it. Inverter microwaves still switch the magnetron on and off at full power, however, rather than swiching at, for example 10 seconds on then 10 seconds off, because they use a switched mode power supply they switch on for 30 milliseconds and off for 30 milliseconds (or thereabouts), which as far as the food is concerned “feels” like half power.

Hi Charles2025,

Good catch! You are correct that PWM is still being used to control the output power in inverter microwaves. The way that section of the article was written made it seem that input DC power to the magnetron was being adjusted to control output. I’ve edited those two paragraphs to be more accurate - that the inverter circuit imparts very rapid switching of the DC power input to the magnetron, resulting in a standing wave which is effectively constantly on with power that is controlled by the duty cycle within those very short periods.

Thanks for taking the time to comment! I really appreciate the input :)

-Mike

Hi, your description is incorrect, you cannot significantly reduce the output power of a magnetron by reducing the voltage applied to it. Inverter microwaves still switch the magnetron on and off at full power, however, rather than swiching at, for example 10 seconds on then 10 seconds off, because they use a switched mode power supply they switch on for 30 milliseconds and off for 30 milliseconds (or thereabouts), which as far as the food is concerned “feels” like half power.

Sep 23, 2024 02:33 PM By uwman

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Thanks for the detailed review of inverter microwaves and comparison of heating evenness. Your review makes a point that the better power factor of an inverter doesn’t make a difference to a consumers power bill. I agree, but the better power factor allows for a higher real power delivered to the food (faster cooking) on the same household wiring.
The other benefit of an inverter microwave is the reduced weight, when it does finally break its easier to move and replace than the same size microwave with conventional supply.

Hello uwman,

Thanks for taking the time to read and comment :)

You’re absolutely right that inverter microwaves are considerably lighter than their traditional PWM counterparts, and this might be an important consideration for some shoppers!

I would not, however, put too much emphasis on higher power factors leading to faster cooking times. You need to remember that a fraction of the power output from the magnetron (about 60%) ends up being absorbed and ultimately heating the food. That <10% difference in power factors is rather minimal in comparison. And we see this a bit in our test results (with all the microwaves yielding essentially the same reheating results). So, again the food is much more important than the appliance!

-Mike

Thanks for the detailed review of inverter microwaves and comparison of heating evenness. Your review makes a point that the better power factor of an inverter doesn’t make a difference to a consumers power bill. I agree, but the better power factor allows for a higher real power delivered to the food (faster cooking) on the same household wiring.

The other benefit of an inverter microwave is the reduced weight, when it does finally break its easier to move and replace than the same size microwave with conventional supply.

Aug 02, 2024 05:27 PM By Epsilon

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Hi Mike, thanks for responding and lending some insight! For the utility of presets, I totally understand how that’s a fuzzy test and certainly difficult to assign an objective number to. But you did a great job qualitatively evaluating a lot of those in this article (which is still valuable!) and I still think some amount of sanity checking on the built-ins would be helpful, like how long it takes to melt a set amount of chocolate. And there are some opportunities for objectivity; for example, if you took a bag of popcorn, weighed it, popped it, then weighed the bag, corn, and not-fully-popped kernels, I think that would produce an objective metric about what percentage of the popcorn is getting popped. There are always gonna be some confounding variables but I’d be curious to see if there’s a detectable difference between microwave models or manufacturers. Side note, since I was re-reviewing the article and forgotten that this stuck to me before: this article seems to gloss over the fact that the inverter microwave evenly melts chocolate fully 25% faster than the PWM model. That seems to contradict the headline and is the kind of thing I would like to know about as a consumer.

Hi Epsilon,

It is true that the Breville the Smooth Wave melted the chocolate faster than the Insignia NS-MW09SS8, but that is due to the difference in their overall power, not due to the method of power attenuation! The Breville is a 1200 W microwave and the Insignia is only 900 W (the 25% difference in required heating time indeed corresponds with the 25% difference in power). Here, I chose to rigorously follow the 30% power recommended in the chocolate melting recipe. But obviously it is important to consider 30% of what… (the answer is that microwave recipes are usually written for 1000 W models).

This highlights two important points:

• The only meaningful performance differentiator we have seen in all our testing of microwaves is their power. More power = faster cooking times. This is the reason we opted for our reviews to include only a “Power” score.
• Truly, all models are able to perform all “microwave” tasks. What changes from model-to-model is the aforementioned magnetron power, the UI (presets, button/dial, sounds, etc.), and the physical design (handle, colour, lighting, size, etc.).

But I do understand that some users want a more “hands-off” experience with their microwave. In which case, presets are super important to them. We’ll definitely consider that in any future test bench updates!

Thanks again, Mike

Aug 02, 2024 12:02 PM By  Michael John Wood

Hi Epsilon! It is so nice to hear from a fellow “microwave afficionado”! I really appreciate you taking the time to read and comment with your suggestions. I have noted them and we will definitely keep them in mind for any future updates to the test bench. I am especially interested in your suggestion about UI and the number of button presses to get the appliance running (to 50% power for 1 minute, for example). I could definitely see this making it into future versions. Regarding the utility of the presets, this is a much trickier test to meaningfully engineer. There is always going to be some variability in food (even processed, factory prepared foods), so expecting great, hands-off results every time from what is effectively a pre-programmed timer is unrealistic. And therefore there really is no such thing as an “accurate” timed preset. However, I would like to dive a bit deeper into those functions which rely on some measured feedback (like humidity and audio sensors); I can see this as a potential feature with real added value. Thanks again for the input. And please keep making suggestions, we really do note them for future updates! All the best, Mike

Hi Mike, thanks for responding and lending some insight! For the utility of presets, I totally understand how that’s a fuzzy test and certainly difficult to assign an objective number to. But you did a great job qualitatively evaluating a lot of those in this article (which is still valuable!) and I still think some amount of sanity checking on the built-ins would be helpful, like how long it takes to melt a set amount of chocolate. And there are some opportunities for objectivity; for example, if you took a bag of popcorn, weighed it, popped it, then weighed the bag, corn, and not-fully-popped kernels, I think that would produce an objective metric about what percentage of the popcorn is getting popped. There are always gonna be some confounding variables but I’d be curious to see if there’s a detectable difference between microwave models or manufacturers.

Side note, since I was re-reviewing the article and forgotten that this stuck to me before: this article seems to gloss over the fact that the inverter microwave evenly melts chocolate fully 25% faster than the PWM model. That seems to contradict the headline and is the kind of thing I would like to know about as a consumer.