A microwave is the appliance this site’s whole premise depends on. Our air fryer vs microwave comparison ends by saying most kitchens want both, because the two machines do genuinely opposite things: a microwave excites water molecules throughout the food and steams it from the inside, which is why it reheats fast and why it will never, ever brown anything. So this is the page that comparison should have been able to send you to.
Microwaves are also the category where marketing has least to work with, which is why the boxes are covered in preset buttons. Ignore them. Two specifications decide whether you will be happy with a microwave for the next eight years: the usable cavity — does a dinner plate fit and turn — and how the machine produces a reduced power level, because almost all of them fake it by switching full power on and off, and one brand does not. Everything else is presets, and presets are guesses about food they cannot see.
We rank on those two, plus the running-cost arithmetic we publish on every page and one practical reality nobody mentions: a microwave is the least repairable thing on your counter. There is no “buy for parts” argument to make here, because the high-voltage section of a microwave is not a thing anyone should open. That changes how you should buy one, and we say how below.
Cubic feet is a proxy. Turntable diameter is the answer.
Cavity volume is what gets printed, and it is a poor guide, because a microwave’s interior is not a cube and the corners are useless to you. What you actually want to know is whether your dinner plate fits on the turntable and rotates without catching the walls — because a plate that cannot turn reheats in stripes. Sharp publishes 12.4 inches for its 1.1 cu ft Carousel machines; a 0.7 cu ft compact is typically around 10 inches. Measure your largest plate before you buy. If it is 11 inches across, a 0.7 cu ft machine is not a smaller version of what you want, it is the wrong machine.
The watts on the box are output, not draw
A microwave rated at 1,000 watts is describing the cooking power it delivers into food, not what it takes from the wall — the draw is higher, because converting mains electricity into microwave energy is not free. Two practical consequences. First, the reheating times on frozen food packaging are written for 1,000 W output, which is why a 700 W compact takes roughly 40% longer and why people think their small microwave is broken. Second, a microwave is a serious electrical load, so running one on the same kitchen circuit as an air fryer and a kettle is how breakers trip — which we work through in can you plug an air fryer into an extension cord.
How your microwave makes “50% power” (and why one brand is different)
A magnetron has two states: on and off. There is no dimmer. So when you select 50% power on almost any microwave, what happens is that the magnetron runs at full output for a few seconds, switches off for a few seconds, and repeats. Averaged over a minute, that is half power. Moment to moment it is not, which is exactly why defrosting cooks the edges of the meat while the middle is still solid, and why chocolate seizes.
Panasonic’s Inverter models are the exception, and it is a mechanical difference rather than a marketing one: the power supply varies the actual output continuously instead of switching it. In Panasonic’s own words, an Inverter oven cooks “at 100% of the power selected, for 100% of the time required,” where conventional machines “repeatedly turn power off and on in order to maintain the power level.” If you only ever press start at full power, this is worth nothing to you. If you defrost, soften butter, melt chocolate or reheat anything with a cream sauce, it is the single biggest quality difference available in the category.
Sensor cooking is a humidity sensor, not intelligence
“Sensor” presets work by detecting the steam coming off the food and stopping when the rate of change says it is hot. That is genuinely useful for reheating a covered plate of leftovers and useless for anything uncovered, anything dry, or anything in a sealed container — because the mechanism depends on steam escaping. It is a fine feature to have and a bad reason to choose a machine, in the same way that a recipe library is a bad reason to choose an air fryer, which we argue in the smart air fryer roundup.
Running cost: the cheapest way to reheat anything
The arithmetic is the one we use everywhere on this site — kilowatts times hours times your rate. A microwave pulling around 1.5 kW for three minutes uses roughly 0.075 kWh, which is about 1.3 cents at the U.S. average residential rate. Reheating the same plate in an air fryer takes eight to ten minutes at a similar draw, so call it three or four cents; in a full-size oven, with fifteen minutes of preheat, it is an order of magnitude worse. That is the honest hierarchy: the microwave wins on speed and cost for reheating, the air fryer wins whenever the texture matters, and the oven wins on volume. Our running-cost calculator takes your own utility rate if you want the exact number.
The one appliance with no “buy for parts” argument
Everywhere else on this site we rank on repairability — can you still get a bowl, a basket, a sealing ring in ten years. A microwave breaks that rule, and it is important to say why rather than quietly drop the criterion. The high-voltage section of a microwave includes a capacitor that can hold a dangerous charge long after the machine is unplugged, which is why every manufacturer, without exception, tells you not to remove the outer case. In practice that makes a countertop microwave a disposable appliance: when the magnetron or the high-voltage transformer goes, the machine goes. Buy accordingly — which is a real argument for not overspending, and the reason the budget pick above scores as well as it does.
What a microwave will never do
It will never brown, crisp or dry the surface of food, because microwave energy heats water and water caps out at boiling. That is not a flaw to be engineered around; it is the mechanism. Anything that needs a dry, browned surface — chips, wings, reheated pizza, anything battered — is an air fryer or an oven job, and the numbers behind that are in air fryer vs microwave. Most kitchens end up owning both for exactly this reason, and if you only have space for one, the answer depends entirely on whether you reheat more than you cook.
