Breville QuickTouch Microwave, Silver

Worth the price. It is refreshing to actually like your microwave. We had a panasonic SE782S for a year before the door latch failed. The Breville is $50 more, and infinitely more enjoyable to use. I was enamored with some of the technical things about the Panasonic like the inverter tech to reduce the amplitude for heating on low setting as opposed to varying the duty cycle. After a year of use, I actually rarely used the low settings. On the other hand, features of the Breville that I expected to be somewhat hype and not really that useful turn out to be really nice: + instant on with the 30 second button (many brands have this, but still nice) + being able to add or remove time by twisting the dial AFTER your start cooking is actually useful + the units is really quiet. I think this is part because the fan doesn't move air out of the oven that fast. After cooking something, you can often see quite a lot of steam when you open door + the door open and close mechanism is nice, soft touch but reassuring latch (WAY better than the panasonic) and I like not having to push a button but just grab the hand and pull + display is a bit to get used to, but I like it.. it dims to an unlit LED after a time (maybe 30 second), so at night you don't get any glow from the panel, but when you use it, the panel lights up and is large and easy to read. When in 'active mode' you don't see the clock, so you can only tell what time it is when the backlight is off + seems to do a great job cooking, most things take the same amount of time as the Panasonic did (same wattage). On a totally qualitative note (haven't done any tests), it seems to be about average in terms of even heating. I suspect the Panasonic was slightly better, but that is what they are praised for. The Breville is no worse than any other microwaves I have used over the years, and not a problem at all for reheating or oatmeal or defrosting. I don't cook eggs in a microwave, so it serves my purposes well. + it looks nice. + Slightly smaller than the Panasonic, and fits our counter space better. I haven't used the advanced functions yet even though it has been 2 months, but in the end, I mostly use a microwave for 30, 60 or 90, or 120 seconds at a time. I could probably handle 90% of my usage with a single button microwave that just adds multiples of 30s, and this unit makes that button the really easy to use. The rest of the capabilities are just nicely out of the way, but there when you want them. The 'advanced' buttons are all hidden just inside the door resulting in a clean simple look that still has lots of options if you want them.