R-21LCFS Medium Duty Commercial Microwave (Dial Timer, 1000-Watts, 120-Volts) (Update of R-21LCF),Silver

After our previous two microwaves had their plates break or chip, and one of them started randomly burning food, I decided to see if there was anything out there that would be more reliable. We ultimately settled on this one, because even though it's more expensive than even the fancy consumer microwaves it has three important advantages that none (or very few) of them have: 1) It is built to last. Everything on this microwave is purposefully simple and apparently designed to minimize the possibility of breakage. Instead of a plate that will get dragged out with the food and shatter on the floor, it has a glass floor that's fixed onto the body of the microwave. Instead of a push-button control panel whose buttons will inevitably crack or get desensitized, you have an "infinite rotation" wheel that is solidly attached; and because it's not calibrated physically it won't get out of alignment. Instead of a clock that you will continually have to reset, it has ... no clock. The interior is metal all around and all surfaces are easy to clean and seem resistant to scratching. 2) You can intuitively and freely modify cook time while the food is heating. Just spin the wheel, and it does exactly what you'd expect. I can't understand why almost no digital microwave will let you do this, but now that it's easy I do it all the time. 3) Instead of a carousel it has a different kind of heating mechanism that ensures even heating without actually moving the food. This means you can heat larger or odd-shaped dishes without hotspots and without knocking your plate out of alignment. I was surprised at how well this works in practice -- food consistently requires less stirring and has less temperature variation after heating than with any other microwave I've ever owned or used. Naturally you should still be cautious about checking your food before shoveling it in your mouth or feeding it to a small child, but it's nice not to have so many frozen-in-the-middle burritos or ice-cube-like tofu chunks in your leftover chinese food. If you'd like to use variable temperatures or auto-cook, or presets for popcorn, or have another clock or timer, or have something that's also a convection oven, or do anything other than heating food or food-like stuff in an intuitive and foolproof way, look elsewhere. If you are willing to pay more for a microwave that does one thing and does it better than you'd expect, this is the one.

After hours of research, we found that this microwave fit our specific needs. What prompted us to replace our old microwave was the presence of rust in the interior. The Sharp R-21LCFS has a sealed surface, no turntable and stainless steel interior - making it so easy to clean and impervious to the potential for rust to form. It is so very simple to use and has the power that we need. The only drawback is that it can only go to 6 minutes at a clip. But then it is pretty easy to dial up another 6 minutes.

We bought this as a second microwave because we have five kids who were breaking door push button springs on expensive microwaves from overuse. We were breaking microwaves once a year in our house until this model. We don’t use it for more sophisticated defrosting or sensor cook of vegetables- it really only reheats stuff. If I have a large cold casserole dish it will reheat it when set to the max of 4-6 mins but it’s not super powerful. But it’s perfect for basic reheating, big households, kids- for drinks, soups, oatmeal, potatoes, recipe ingredients, smaller simple stuff. Today it finally died. It may be an internal fuse or a door sensor issue but I feel that getting almost 5 years out of a smaller microwave is probably pretty good for nowadays and we are going to buy a second one before my kids break the door button in the expensive built-on model we have. I like that this sharp doesn’t take up a ton of counter space but still has a large reheating chamber. I like that it has clean brushed stainless steel exterior that looks good in our kitchen and is easy to maintain. The inside is easy to clean as well. It is very simple to operate but gets the job done.

Purchased for elderly parent with failing vision moving to assisted living. Needed a device that is simple to use and possible to use by someone with very limited vision. This device is as simple and easy as it gets. No fussy flat-screen buttons with tiny labels, no clock to set, just twist the knob (which is very easy to turn) and it works. Simple and safe. I believe this would be usable for someone who is blind (however there are ovens that actually talk for those who are blind, but those are quite costly). One concern with conventional keypad-controlled ovens is that the timer could be accidentally set wrong (60 vs. 6 minutes)....have personally seen this happen and it started a small fire. This has a maximim time you can dial in of six minutes that makes it much safer to use. I expected a twist-knob to be some sort of wind-up timer, but it's a slick zero-effort control that lights up the bright LEDs as you rotate it, and the LEDs flash and show visually the time counting down. When the door is opened, the timer resets (so it does not run if you close door after taking the food out). (Note it does not show number counting down, just flashing lights on dial). From the photos you would expect a cheap knob, but the overall fit and finsih looks very upscale. The knob appears to be metal, the handle is chrome-plated metal, and it just has a real simple yet high-quality feel to it. Since this is a commercial-grade model, it is made to meet more stringent requirements. - Commercial grade units must be able to withstand a much higher duty cycle (regular units are expected to be used no more than ten minutes per day, while a commercial one can be used non-stop). The door hinges, for example, are more rugged. - Commercial units have no turntable and have stainless steel interior and exterior for sanitation (to meet NSF standards). On this unit the interior and door is stainless steel and the outer case is gray painted steel. The bottom of the cavity is white...looks like ceramic, but not sure. Note that there is no turntable, but that's not needed for most smaller items. Turntable is one more thing to break and clean. Our need was for a microwave to heat up a cup of water for tea, or a bowl of soup, and one of the small frozen entrees...it works perfect for that. One very slight gripe is that the door unlock is a bit stiff--it's like a car-door handle where you have to squeeze it to open, and it took enough force that the device slid a bit on the counter. I was worried that someone with limited grip strength could not open it, but it was no problem for an elderly person (she used both hands). The handle is metal with good quality chrome plating, there's no way it could break.

Perfect office microwave - easy to use, no plate to clean and cooks well.

Good

Simple to clean and almost anyone can figure out how to operate it.