Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

This is a terrific oven: * Huge on the inside, very space-efficient on the outside. The turntable is 16.5" (42cm), and has 9.5" (24cm) vertical interior clearance. I was even able to mount this above our 24" built-in oven by modifying the trim kit. * The "Inverter" technology really works. Everything cooks evenly without hot-spots. Consumer reports gives top marks for similar Panasonic ovens, and I can see why. * The "Sensor" technology (measures steam) is usually reasonably accurate. So far we have not burned anything. Popcorn is perfect. * The controls are intuitive, and the dial simplifies use. * The front panel is uncluttered, and does not show fingerprints. Issues: * Expensive * You can't "add time" once the oven starts (though this would seem easy to implement with the dial). (see below for update) * We have owned this for one month of heavy use, but some reviews indicate long-term reliability problems. (see below for update) FYI: * The description is incorrect: the dial is fixed, and does not "pop-out" on this model. (description was later corrected) UPDATE March 2010: 1) After >2 years of heavy use, this oven is still working great. Some of the text near the knob has worn off, but otherwise it looks just like new. At least for us, reliability has not been an issue, and we use it constantly. 2) The comment on this review is correct. You can add 1 minute while the oven is in operation with the "Add 1 minute" button. However, our previous oven allowed you to simply rotate the knob and add an arbitrary amount of time (say, 5 seconds). This was more intuitive and flexible. In any case, this is not a major issue. 3) We stumbled across an easy way to set a series of cooking steps if you don't want to use the 'sensor' function: set the power level, set the time, set the power level, time, etc. When you press 'start', the oven will step through the each of the power settings in sequence for the times specified. This is useful if you want to run at full power for a few minutes, and then step down to a lower power. For instance, this is how I cook oatmeal, and now I rarely get an over-flowing bowl. Bottom line: We *definitely* would buy this model again. This is an excellent microwave oven. UPDATE October 2011: Almost 4 years of heavy use, and still going strong. Based on our experience, this microwave is highly recommended! UPDATE January 2013: 6 years of heavy use, and no issues. In 2010 I was concerned that the front panel text would *all* eventually disappear, but it is about the same as after the first two years. UPDATE January 2016: After 8 years of heavy use the oven finally died with the "H97" error message. We plan to replace it immediately with the same model, but from a different re-seller since Amazon no longer offers this directly. The current prices on Amazon are not even competitive with local retail stores.