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(More customer reviews)We bought this microwave as a replacement for our old Sharp Carousel II, which finally quit working after more than twelve years of trouble-free daily use. With such a stellar track record, we naturally chose to replace our old oven with the nearest current model of the same brand. Unfortunately, during those dozen years or so that we were enjoying our little workhorse of a microwave, the engineers at Sharp were busy "improving" the design of the carousel II, evidently under the guidance of some ill-advised focus group or warranty questionnaire data. The end result of this re-engineering is a miserable failure; let me ennumerate:
1. Despite having the same wattage and internal dimensions, the new model has substantially larger external dimensions; thus our new model hangs over the edge of the same shelf which accommodated our old microwave with room to spare.
2. Numerous "features" have been added to the controls (melt, soften, warm) which seem at first glance like they would be useful, but in actual practice are needlessly complicated. If you buy this oven, you will want to have the owner's manual laminated, because you will need to refer to it often if you want to use these "features."For instance, to soften cream cheese, you press the "soften" key, then the "2" key (for cream cheese), the the indicator next to "Qty" begins to flash in the display, at which point you indicate the quantity by pressing "2" once for 3 ounces, or by pressing "2" twice for 8 ounces! Confused yet? Read on! To use this thing to melt butter, press the "melt" key, then "1" for butter, then "1" once for 2 Tablespoons, or "1" twice for 1/2 cup. In the time it takes to do key in the sequence to melt two Tablespoons of butter, you could just hit "start" and watch the butter till it melts! Actually, that was the old model; this one has a separate button marked "minute plus" which does the same thing, but has the added advantage of being a separate button.
3. Power levels are no longer easily adjustable; on our old model (remember, same manufacturer, same price point), to cook food for two minutes at 50% power, I would enter "200" then "power" then "5" and hit start. On the "new and improved" model, I have to enter "200" then press the "power level" key SIX TIMES (or press and hold "power Level" and wait for the display to slooowly count down to the desired level) then hit start! I used to occasionally run our old microwave for a few minutes on zero percent power after cooking something like a casserole that produced a lot of steam; it was an easy way to dry out the interior of the oven and remove lingering food odors. With the asinine design of the new model, though, this procedure requires 15 keystrokes instead of the 6 used by the old model. Needless to say, I don't consider this to be a design improvement.
4. FOUR settings for POPCORN?!? Give me a break! You stop the oven when the corn stops popping; it's not rocket science!
5. Quality assurance on this thing is (how can I put this diplomatically?) sub-par; within three months of purchase, our oven has become possessed, and will randomly start running without being touched, and without any keypad entry. Careful experimentation has shown that gentle upward pressure on the closed door will cause the oven to start and run until the pressure is released. We just leave the oven door open now.
In summary, had I known what a POS this thing was going to turn out to be, I would have just put a new magnetron in the old microwave! If anyone in the product development dept. at Sharp is reading this, please tell everyone at work to dig up the design from 1990; you had it right back than, and you shouldn't have messed with success! My next microwave will be an Emerson.
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Sharp R-308KW 1100 Watts White Microwave
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