People really don’t know how to use a microwave.

They think the timer is everything.

That is like cooking everything in the oven at 450F.

Tbf most microwaves are designed in a dumb way where half power means turning on the magnetron to max power anyway just for half the time, with something like 20 second on cycles.

Pretty sure that is how all of them work and it is perfectly fine. Stopping the blast of energy frequently lets the heat evenly distribute while cooking to keep any part from overcooking.

Panasonic owns the patent for an inverter microwave that can actually do 50% power.

With inverters being common in solar installations and electric cars, it would seem that someone else could just put that part in a microwave, but fortunately the patent prevents that.

It’s nice to know that although I can’t buy the model of microwave that I want with the features I want, at least a single company can prevent everyone else’s progress and even make a tiny bit of extra profit at the same time.

But my microwave does this?

This is real data from my LG microwave just now. The first peak is at 100% power, the second peak is 30% power, the last three peaks are 10% power.

You can see that under 30% it has to cycle the inverter on and off like old microwaves, but still it’s way better than doing that at 100%.

I love my inverter microwave, I feel like I’m living in the future. Bought this thing like 4 years ago 🤷‍♂️

Panasonic does sometimes licence the patent to other companies. I would love an inverter microwave, but they aren’t made with the other features I want.

What app is that?

Fair enough.

It’s the emporia app, I installed whole home monitoring in my breaker panel. It’s occasionally useful, expensive, but I’ve had it long enough to make it worth it in my mind 🤷‍♂️

Very fancy.

I’ve been using Home Assistant with data from a house battery, but that does look to be a much cheaper option if you don’t have or want a house battery.