Description
- CONVENIENT MICROWAVE: Prepare quick and easy meals in a snap with our powerful microwave. It packs 1000 of output power and features a range of settings for press-and-go speed.
- POWERFUL SETTINGS: This microwave has ten power levels with multi-stage cooking. You can fully customize your cooking with six one-touch options, including popcorn, potato, and pizza. Defrost by weight or by time settings to make quick work of any task.
- PERFECT SIZE: Measuring 1.1 cu ft, this microwave is the ideal small-space solution that offers full-sized cooking in a compact space. It features an easy-to-clean interior and exterior and is perfect for the home or office.
- ALL YOU NEED: This microwave has a clear LED display with a kitchen timer and clock that lets you easily keep track of time. Easy-to-view interior lighting lets you keep an eye on your dish, and a child safety lock adds additional security.
- FARBERWARE: From weeknight favorites to family feasts they’ll never forget, Farberware helps today’s families craft the meals that make memories and bring everyone together.
CC –
First of all, this Farberware microwave oven is Farberware only in name/branding, which Farberware licenses for the purpose to Englewood Marketing, which gets the ovens made mostly in China, and then markets, sells, and warrantees them. Itās not really up to Farberware traditional standards, but still probably among the best in a large, really crummy field of available microwaves.
This oven comes in 4 or 5 different ācolors;ā mine is āstainless steel,ā and calling that the ācolorā is pretty accurate, as thereās a thin veneer of what probably is really stainless on/around the front face of the oven, and thatās it, thatās about all the stainless on or in this oven, āmost everything else is plastic and cheap, painted steel. The very first bullet point of the product description falsely says, āStainless Steel exterior and Stainless Steel interior,ā but thatās just a big, bad lie. (Itās generally easy to tell, as a magnet isnāt attracted to stainless – and stainless is almost never painted or coated, ācause itās fine without.) Nonetheless, from the front, it actually looks good, handsome. From the top and sides it looks like what it is, plastic and cheap painted steel. But still itās probably about as good or better as any other at the price.
(There is another available color, ācopper,ā which is also handsome, but, ironically, reminds me very much of Revere Ware cooking pots, Farberwareās long-time traditional rival.)
This oven consumes 1500 watts electrical power, by actual measure, same as advertised. I havenāt yet bothered to measure/test the microwave radiative power delivered into the cooking chamber, to see if it matches the advertised 1000 watts. (The difference, the missing 500 watts, is lost in the process of converting from electrical power to microwave.)
This oven, so far for us, cooks well and evenly enough. There are a lot of reviewers here reporting various hard, early failures with this oven, but so far at least weāve been lucky, ours works. Time will tell.
Reduced power levels, e.g. 50%, as/when requested by the user, are achieved, not by actually running at 50% power, but by cycling between full on and off at somewhere around 10 second intervals with a 50% (or whatever) duty cycle. (Do all microwave ovens work this way, is it too hard to really ādimā the microwave generator?) I suppose this is mostly okay, but if you want say 50% power for a short period like 10 seconds, perhaps to soften a small amount of butter, youāre quite out of luck.
The power cord is 3 feet long – rather short, too short for our situation, weāre forced to get and use an extension cord. Our previous microwave cord was 4-1/2 feet, which worked perfectly by itself.
The ovenās operational noise is a bit loud, certainly a bit louder than our previous microwave.
The ovenās audio beep signaling sound is produced on way too many occasions; and way too many beeps for less than no possible purpose – like itās beeping to notify you at the end of a cooking cycle – which is pretty ridiculous in the first place, as the oven is noisy enough in operation that youād have to be deaf not to hear it stop – and youāve opened the door and it obviously knows that too but still continues to beep regardless; and it (the beeping, still) is too loud; and is especially sorely lacking a way to just turn the whole darn beeper off (i.e. *OFF*). A super nasty, irritating fault in my view, believing firmly that machines should be seen but not heard. Especially egregious since the makers of this oven invested so much in hardware and firmware for cheesy gimmicks like dedicated Pizza and dog-food buttons, but couldnāt be bothered to simply add a small bit of firmware to allow the owner/user of the oven to tell it to just be quiet, do not beep at me!
Occasionally this oven requires two or more presses of a button before it registers. This is probably just some flakiness in the (always cheap) membrane button switches, but might also be a bug in the firmware, I havenāt lived with this oven for long enough to know which yet.
The oven interior light is needlessly ridiculously dim; and the oven interior surface is needlessly dark, medium-dark grey (could as easily and better been lighter-colored); and visibility through its front-door window is very poor (heavily obscured by some kind of presumably protective masking, but also needlessly dark); so overall visibility of whateverās inside is triply-needlessly extremely poor. My mate sarcastically called it ātheatrical.ā I call it nearly useless, almost impossible to see into. They could just as easily install a light bulb with 10 times the light output.
The Instruction Manual is written in rather broken english, presumably by a Chinese, sometimes understandable, but often not. Fortunately the oven is not so complicated that you canāt generally bumble around and figure it out.
Customer service – by Englewood Marketing, in Green Bay, WI USA – is remarkably quick, nice, knowledgeable and helpful, at least for answering operational questions. Didnāt try āem on any more substantial matters.
The real, actual weight of this oven, including the turntable, excluding all the packaging, is 29lbs, 14ozs., i.e. 2ozās. under 30lbs. The Instruction Manual says the āNet Weightā is āApprox 31.0Lbsā – but Iām pretty certain thatās just not currently accurate, over by a pound. Given that they specified the ostensible weight down to the tenth of a pound, Iād guess that their scale is accurate but that they have lightened/cheapened the oven by āapprox.ā a pound since they earlier put it into production and weighed it. And this ovenās weight is perhaps a little bit light in the field of similarly priced ovens. This might be somewhat the cause of the weight of this particular oven being so rarely noted – and so all over the map, anywhere from 24 to 36lbs., when it is mentioned.
The warranty on this oven is nominally for 1 year – but, like pretty much all current microwave warranties, effectively worthless by the time you get done navigating its terms and conditions. In almost any case of a problem, youād be better off just biting the bullet and getting another oven.
So why, out of the hundreds of microwave ovens available, did we get this one? Because it appears to me that they are all pretty crummy, badly flawed, a number of them even severe fire hazards; of those that will fit our strictly constrained space, this Farberware seemed and still seems to be the most-capable/least-awful, at pretty much any price.
If I were rating on an absolute scale, considering this Farberware ovenās many faults, I would give it only 3 stars. But, considering the large field of its mediocre competitors, grading somewhat on a curve, Iāll give it 4 stars for now.
Denise –
I love that itās more of a burgundy colour as it matches my room even better and it matches well with a keurig coffee maker in rhubarb colour I bought too.
Roberto SastrĆ© –
No lo pude usar y lo tuve que cambiar porque hacĆa mucho ruido
Techman –
Itās rather odd, but the top criteria for my selecting a microwave oven to replace our old one that broke was how it would fit into the decor of the kitchen. I needed something that was black with stainless steel offset. It basically came down to a choice between Black and Decker and Farberware. The second criteria was power. I previously had a 900 watt microwave which I was used to but was looking for a compact unit that was just a little bit more powerful. As far as versatility is concerned, I liked the layout of the Farberware controls better., especially having the Time Cook and Power buttons right there on top. So I went with the Farberware,
The microwave was not that noisy. Yes you could hear it running. With all the comments on how noisy the microwave was, I was expecting it to be noisy. It was quieter than the last microwave I had.
If there was one criticism I would have, and itās entirely a personal one, itās the fact that it has 5 beeps when it finishes which is the same as my coffee maker when it finishes brewing so I canāt hear the difference between the two. Other than that, the five beeps are perfectly fine.
It does exactly the job I want it to do as a microwave oven. It cooks the food thoroughly and evenly, better than my previous microwave oven. So itās exactly the appliance I was looking for and does exactly what I want it to do.
I use the microwave heavily on a daily basis so my hope is that it holds up for at least a few years or hopefully longer. Replacing a microwave oven is an inconvenient and painful event. Inconvenient because you lose the cooking appliance you are dependent upon on a daily basis for cooking and reheating a lot of your food. Painful because you have to transport a rather heavy piece to a facility where it can be processed.
Daisey –
My microwave stopped heating so I went on amazon and ordered this one. I love my new microwave has a higher wattage and heats up food fast. It works really good and I recommend this product.
AnnCatherine –
My other microwave suddenly died & had no choice but to find one online, as I got injured & could not get out to shop for several days. This was the only model that I liked the look of that also fit into the exact cabinet space we’d had custom-made for the now-dead one, so a no-brainer.
It also had good reviews, so was hoping to just kind of like it. Instead, I am very very happy with it.
First worry was that it has a lower wattage than my other one did, but so far, no problem or appreciable difference in the speed of cooking. This one is very used friendly (other one was never that) & took almost no time to learn the new methods and buttons. I was worried I would not like the grey interior, having always had white ones, but it, too, is so much nicer than expected, and I doubt I will ever again buy one with a white interior. It cleans so easily, and looks beautiful. I’d buy this one again in a flash!
And yes, as other reviewers have said, it is not a silent one! Noisy, yes, more than my last two were, but who cares? The stove, the regular wall oven, the blender, freezer, and mixers all make noise in use. I never expect to be cooking or working in a quiet kitchen! š
Zeus –
I canāt say anything about this microwave. Itās beautiful, works nice, quiet. We love it and are very happy with our purchase. The black stainless is a nice look with the black inside.
abcain813 –
I needed more countertop space so I sold my big microwave and opted for this smaller one. Thought Iād be sacrificing capability and features but this little microwave is impressive. It heats evenly and the buttons are easy to use. The inside is easy to clean and the dark color hides splatters if you donāt have time to clean. It runs very quietly compared to my last microwave and has more safety features for kiddos. I donāt use it a lot for frozen stuff (just melting butter) but it does warm up a dinner plate or a cup of coffee well.
Esmeralda Gongora –
El color era que buscaba y su funcionamiento
The Anonymous Buyer –
The breakroom where I work had an older microwave with about ten year’s worth of old splattered food… I’d bet money that no one EVER cleaned it. If you ever want to be grossed-out just search the net for possible health dangers of using a dirty microwave. Anyway, I took it upon myself to replace it but I didn’t want to spend a lot (I wasn’t going to be reimbursed). I took a chance on this microwave as it was being sold as an Amazon’s “like new” item, which are like scratch and dent item in retail stores. This isn’t my first “like new” purchase from Amazon. These are usually items that customers return when the outer packaging arrives damaged, but the contents are actually fine. Sure enough, the microwave worked perfect, it was just the outer box that was damaged, and I saved about fifty bucks. There’s no reason not to buy a “like new” item, especially when they’re sold by Amazon with free returns… who doesn’t need to save money in the days of Bidenomics!! I’m very please with this purchase!