NOTE: I bought and tested the General Electric JES2251SJ in April 2005.
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I decided to take a shot of healthy tomato juice today. Why tomato juice in particular? Because of its perfect viscosity for my purpose: testing the cooking evenness of my new General Electric (GE) JES2251SJ microwave oven.
I wanted to buy the GE JES2251SJ because, not taking price into consideration, it was the best microwave oven listed by the popular product rating site www.ConsumerReports.org. I'm a lazy guy and I don't want to baby-sit the microwave, stop cooking, stir the food around, resume, and the like. I want to press a button and have the food cooked acceptably well. I'm not pretentious either (I do eat microwaved leftovers!). And I'm not a Utopian either. Various versions of the Sharp Carousel are reported on
http://www.epinions.com to do just what I want, but unfortunately Sharp microwaves seem unreliable (many break after one year).
So for me, the microwave selection criteria were:
+ must sit on the countertop
+ must have a cooking sensor (it detects the humidity in the air and adjusts cooking power or stops cooking)
+ must heat food as evenly as microwavably possible. I hate heating up frozen chicken and ending up with hot parts mixed with frozen bits.
+ should have many presets, but at least "Heat beverage" and "Reheat leftovers"
+ should be easy to clean
+ should have some decent capacity, so compact models are out
It took me quite a while to find a store in the San Francisco Bay Area that carried this microwave. I've search the national chains (Home Depot, Sears, Costco, Target, Expo, Lowe's), some independents, authorized GE dealers, and finally found that University Electric carried my microwave for $210. Must be a rare gem, huh? :-)
Oh well...
You can't get much of a first impression from a microwave; they all look pretty much alike. However, this one, besides being green, only comes in "stainless steel", which means all your fingerprints will show up nice and crisp on the door opening button.
The power cord is only 4ft long but that seems to be a common trend among microwaves.
Another issue is that the cramped LCD display is viewable only from below its level, not from above, so you must place it at eye level or above, or crouch to distinguish the display. If you place it above eye level, though, you won't see the state of the food inside the microwave.
What else can you tell without cooking anything? The user manual is surprisingly scarce. This oven does have presets for some sorts of foods, but somehow for most things I wanted to heat, there was no preset: chicken/poultry, beverages, lasagna (there is a preset for pasta, though). Then, most of the sensor cooking presets are extremely restrictive: for example, pizza must weigh 8oz, canned vegetables 15oz, white rice 0.5 to 1.5 cups etc.
The first thing I wanted to do was heat up some milk. As I said, there is no "Beverage" function (something I've seen on, I think, all microwaves).
So I went on and heated a side dish of white rice from a Chinese takeout place. I'm European and I despise the US measurement system, but I went ahead and calculated that 1.5 cups = 354ml. I think the bowl had more like 600ml of white rice but hey, I paid $210 for this microwave, it should at least do a decent job. I'd be left hungry if I had only 1.5cups of rice to eat :) (really)
The short of the "sensor cooking" of this "white rice" "side dish" (to use the terms from the manual) was that after the sensor sensed around for about 4 minutes, it displayed there were 12 minutes left. At that point, I took the rice out and sampled from different places in the bowl. It was warm enough, but I put it back and let it cook for 12 minutes. Guess what: no difference whatsoever! 12 extra minutes was just a waste of my time, and
the sensor apparently didn't work!
In a similar experiment, I sensor heated some Rosemary Chicken with white rice, using the "white rice" "side dish" preset. I left it running and went minding my business, until I sensed a strong chicken with rice smell in the room! I dashed into the kitchen (the smell was even stronger!) and the microwave read "7:12" left. What for ?! I took out the casserole, and the chicken and rice tasted just fine and were hot enough.
So what exactly does this sensor do?!
OK, let's say I can live without the sensor and punch in the times before cooking. But how about the "very good"
heating evenness that ConsumerReports reported?
I have no idea how they determined this "very good" evenness. They don't detail their test procedures, which sort of makes the results useless. As far as I know, they could have heated water in a cup and marveled at how evenly the temperature was. So here is how I tested:
I bought a big bottle of tomato juice. Tomato juice is thick enough so it won't circulate inside the container and equalize the temperature, but thin enough you can suck it through a straw and see how hot or cold it is. I kept the bottle in the fridge a whole day.
Here's how I tested
vertical heating evenness: I poured tomato juice in a plastic cup, placed it off the turntable center, so it will be even more uniformly exposed to the microwaves, and heated it at 100% power for 90 seconds. Then I sampled with a straw the temperature of the tomato juice in various places. I was careful not to let any juice flow back from the straw and mix in with the surroundings (that means I drank half a liter of tomato juice :-)
The results for heating evenness: SURPRISINGLY POOR! There were hot and cold zones throughout the glass, without much of a discernible pattern. The surface was generally warmer than the bottom.
OK, maybe actually you're supposed to place things dead in the center of the turntable. So here's how I tested
horizontal heating evenness:
I cooled the tomato juice in the freezer for half an hour, poured it in a paper plate, placed it in the center of the turntable, and heated it at 100% power for 1 minute, then sampled with a straw the temperature of the tomato juice in various places. Again, I was careful not to let the juice reflux.
The results: POOR! Temperature dropped as you went from the rim to the center. The juice at 1" or less from the rim was warm, the rest of it was colder, and the center of the plate was coldest.
OK, so maybe it just needs more cooking time (and somehow the already hot areas won't get hotter...)
So I decided to go for 2 minutes, and back to vertical evenness (or lack thereof). I poured the juice in the plastic glass, then placed it in the center of the turntable and heated it at 100% power for 2 minutes.
The results: POOR again. Unacceptable, in fact. The juice at the surface was hot, and the juice at the surface near the rim was super-hot, while the center was cold and the center bottom was coldest. Generally, along the rim the juice was about twice as warm as in the center. I know it's a subjective opinion, but I didn't have a thermometer, and a subjective opinion you'll have when you drink the stuff, unless you get your thermometer to drink it for you :-)
OK, this is pretty alarming. I paid $210 for an item that was supposed to be among the best at heating foods evenly, and whose sensor is practically useless.
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Today I tested the "Omelette" "Breakfast" preset, with liquid Egg Beaters, ham and cube cheese, in a 500mL paper bowl.
The results: FAIR. The sensor was active for about 4 minutes, then displayed 1:30 left, but when it was done cooking, 30% of the liquid eggs was still liquid.
Maybe no microwave is doing a decent job of heating my concoction or omelette, and you can surely learn the times for your favorite foods, but then I'll just pay $50 for "any" microwave, not $210 for a supposed "best in its class".
So much for my trust in ConsumerReports. I didn't have a very good opinion about them anyway: if you are knowledgeable about some topic, their recommendations are often naive. Take PDAs, for example. I did a lot of research on PDAs before I bought my i-mate PDA2K one year ago, then discovered ConsumerReports. Their ratings and recommendations were very amateurish.
And it looks like I'm not the only one distrusting ConsumerReports. Here is another microwave user who had lots of bad experiences with ConsumerReports' recommendations:
http://www.epinions.com/content_217943805572
So do yourself a favor and take ConsumerReports with a grain of salt.
As for the GE JES2251SJ, it's not worth it.
US Appliance
