Panasonic Cyclonic Wave 1.6 Cu. Ft. Countertop Microwave (NN-SE785S)

OK... So, the interface is completely alien, like something from the way far off future and that takes getting used to, BUT... This is THE best microwave I've ever owned. It's covered in what seem like marketing terms, GENIUS SENSOR, CYCLONIC WAVE, INVERTER TECHNLOGY.... But after reading up a lot about the technology I wanted a unit that has all three. Truth is, Panasonic only makes like 2 units with this combo and this is one of them. Sadly... Cyclonic wave eliminates the cold spots, inverter heats the entire time at various power levels which means less cooking time overall, and the genius sensor bit basically senses how hot and humid the inside of your microwave is, so it knows when your food is ready. BUT WHAT DOES THAT ALL MEAN???? What it means is the weird alien control panel is actually way easier for you to get better results (if not to use) than the old style poke, time, poke start, cross fingers, method.... Cold pizza you want to reheat? Normally would never do that in a microwave yeah? Hit the upside wifi looking button (sensor heat) hit your up down slider till you get to pizza, press the flashing button... wait... receive pizza. It is that easy. Each function you select will darken out any of the irrelevant keys, just walking you through what you do next.. The only thing to remember is what the initial buttons are which honestly only took me a couple of days. I don't think Panasonic promotes this interface because people generally fear change. people also don't generally read instruction manuals, but do yourself a favor and at least go to the page that explains what the buttons are. That said, this microwave is very big inside, just as big as my monster over the range unit, but without all the over the range bloat. To put it in perspective, I can put two large Pho bowls, side by side on the turntable and they do not hit the walls! What?? And again with the sensor bit, I just hit sensor cook > soup > start. Heck, you can even just do sensor cook > reheat > start... Gone are the days of guessing and being disappointed. I eve test with an infrared thermometer. Before I had pizza where it is nearly 200 degrees on the outer edges and maybe body temp on the inside, now there is maybe a 20 degree difference. Edges will always be a bit hotter because theres nothing to the side absorbing the heat, but gone is the let it sit for several minutes then reheat and end up with inedible concrete crust... Ok enough before (too late you say?) this turns into a rant. I love this microwave and wished I had made the switch earlier.

I had a previous Panasonic microwave and liked it a lot, so when it finally died, I bought another. This appears to be the updated equivalent of my previous model, with a significant improvement--the door latch is fixed! You no longer have to slam the door to get it to latch. A fairly light push with close the door. Otherwise, seems to work as well as my previous model. The only thing keeping me from giving it 5 stars is the function panel. It's confusing to use at first. I've kept the instruction book nearby so I can look up the various icons and how to use them. Also, at first I thought that the microwave wasn't working. It took me a while to figure out that there was a protective film over the panel made to look like the actual panel. There was a small note at the bottom of the film stating to remove it, but it wasn't easy to see when standing in front of the microwave and looking down at it.

We got this expecting to have a bit of a learning curve, based on the other reviews. However, it's SO much more simple than we realized. For basic heating (ie, leftovers or a mug of cocoa or a donut or frozen dinner) which is what we use this for 95% of the time, you don't need to remember anything crazy. There are 2 simple options: -Use the - + bar right below the clock. Either hold down the plus/minus, tap it, or swipe and hold in either direction and it adjusts the cooking time to what you desire. You can do 1 second increments up to 10 seconds. Then it does 5 second increments up to 1 minute. Then once you reach a minute it does 10 second increments. Then press start (the bottom right button). I use it this way every time I use the microwave and find I do not miss the numbers at all. Super simple and easy. -The other option is to use the "+30" button, which as you may have already guessed, will bump up the time in 30 second increments. Press start and you're done. My husband uses this function primarily, and it's how he also used our old microwave that did have number buttons so this has had no adjustment period for him. For the less often used functions, there is a very useful legend right on the inside behind the microwave door. So if you're wanting to do something you don't usually do like set the cooking timer or the popcorn setting or power levels, etc, simply glance at the inside of the microwave when you put your food inside and you'll know what you need to press. No need to keep the physical manual and flip through pages every time you want to figure something out. Again, super simple. As far as the inverter cooking technology, we both notice a difference in how our food is being more evenly cooked. My husband likes to heat his food to boiling hot temperatures so he notices it more than I, who prefers my food lukewarm. But something I really noticed is that when I cook my steel oats in the morning, it NEVER boils over. In our old microwave (which was also Panasonic but not with this new inverter technology), I'd have to put a plate under my oatmeal bowl so when it boiled over it would at least make cleanup easy and I'd just eat out of the sticky, oatmeal covered bowl. To prevent it from happening I'd have to constantly be opening the microwave and stirring the bowl and keeping a very close eye on it once it got hot. With this, the oatmeal boils but it never ever boils over. I don't know what kind of sorcery this is, but I LOVE not getting my hands coated in oatmeal when I eat in the morning. It's definitely doing something special. The other thing I want to note, which may seem really silly to everyone else, but I really love this: if you take your food out before the timer is done, after 5 minutes the screen will automatically reset to show the clock. I use the microwave as my primary clock in the kitchen and sometimes it just really drove me crazy to see the leftover cooking time always on our old microwave instead of the current time of day. This may not matter to everyone, but I personally was just thrilled with this “feature” and it pleases me to no end to simply glance over and see the clock - without needing to grumble to myself about people not pressing the cancel button when they were done with using it - as I walked over to press it myself to see the time. Do I overreact to the time not being on the screen? I'm sure. But now my personal shortcomings don’t matter as much since this fixes that one problem for me! Overall, after using this for the past 3 weeks I can say we are both extremely pleased with our new microwave. We were expecting some initial frustration while we got used to it, but there really has been none of that and from the first day we both found it very intuitive and easy to use. And the fact that it cooks more evenly than our old microwave is another nice bonus. And I think my husband likes that the buttons make this look like something more futuristic like something he'd imagine on the star trek enterprise. We also got some microwave brackets (from amazon, of course) to mount this under our upper cabinets to make countertops feel more spacious and less cramped and are very happy with that decision. We would definitely recommend this microwave - don't be intimidated it's really easier than you'd imagine! Hope this helps you make a more informed decision.

Excellent product

Functionality is adequate. Entering cook time is cumbersome as I use the 30 second button the most for that. I bought this microwave for the dimensions it had. The dimensions should also be better defined as I used the microwave as a built-in to an existing oven-microwave oven combo utilizing the existing trim piece and the height dimension was off for the enclosure - it included the extra height of the feet creating a gap of an extra inch causing me to have to build an extra fill-in panel to hide that gap.