Amana 1.6 cu. ft. Countertop Microwave Oven, AMC2166AS, Stainless

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Price: $226.27 $188.10   

Product Feature

• Sensor Cook monitors humidity and automatically adjust cooking time so food is cooked or reheated, but not overcooked
• Programmed pads offer one-touch cooking convenience for popcorn, pizza, potato, beverage, fresh vegetable and frozen dinners
• Turntable automatically rotates food in the microwave
• Touchmatic Control System lets you program your microwave with ease, with a simple touch-key pad
• With 1200 Watts of cooking power, you'll have the power you need to prepare all types of food

Product Description

Amana 1.6Cu.Ft. Countertop Microwave 1,200 Watts of Power 10 Power Levels, Auto Defrost

Amana 1.6 cu. ft. Countertop Microwave Oven, AMC2166AS, Stainless Review

There are a lot of differences among microwave ovens these days. There are ranges of features, ways to program them, as well as preprogrammed cooking cycles for everything from making popcorn to softening ice cream. But the true test of a good microwave oven is how well it cooks. Some foods are more difficult than others. And having flexible programming cycles is what makes today's microwave ovens so much different from early ones where the only option was cook time.

Virtually all home microwave ovens have a popcorn button these days, and surprisingly not all of them work as well as they should, but if you merely want a microwave oven to make popcorn or heat a frozen burrito for the amount of time mentioned on the package, I can recommend microwave ovens for less money. If you've read my reviews of other microwave ovens, you know that. But that doesn't mean this model falls short when it comes to those tasks. Its strength though is that it does much more.

When you want to go beyond basic reheating, this Amana is worthy of your consideration. And it's no slouch when it comes to reheating either. I've found that among the most difficult foods to get right in a microwave oven are chicken cutlets. It's easy to get them spongy or rubbery and inedible when overdone. And underdone chicken can't be eaten. Even harder to get right is fish. And harder than that is frozen chicken or fish. If you've ever overcooked salmon or tuna, or had a piece that was frozen in the middle, you know what I mean. To test this oven, I tried a frozen Mojito Salmon dinner from Trader Joe's. This oven allowed me to press a defrost button, a time, a cook button, a time, and a start button. The result was perfection. It was tender and evenly cooked, sufficiently hot but not overcooked or tough in any spots.

Reheating used to be a guessing game, but newer microwave ovens such as this one have sensor reheat buttons. That allows you to press a single button, start it, and let it figure out how long to cook things. I tested this by reheating some homemade chicken Marsala. The oven figured out how long to cook, and it came out fully reheated with no loss of texture, or other damage to the food. Aside from a slight caramelized appearance to the sauce at the periphery of the plate, the food itself was perfect. But it could have used slightly less cooking. Reheating meat on the other hand showed why competing companies have multiple programs for sensor cooking. This one overdid things. If I have to monitor how long something cooks, that defeats the purpose of the sensor.

The company's website mentions a "more/less" feature, but that's noticeably absent from this oven or its instructions. It's a feature present in competing models such as those from Panasonic, and it's a feature I miss when using sensor cooking. The limited number of programs also leaves out many non-sensor cooking settings. In all fairness most people probably won't use all the cooking settings on competing brands, but if you want to cook oatmeal or melt chocolate, you will need to figure out time and power settings on your own. If you are big on prepared foods with heating directions, that won't be an issue. But you do get the more important ones such as fresh and frozen vegetables, pizza reheat, potato, soup, and beverage. The beverage function has disappeared from other brands even including a Panasonic Genius with 19 cook programs. But it's one I use more often than the ones that Amana left out. It heated a mug of water to about 180 degrees F, which is a tad above the minimum for Starbucks coffee, a tad below McDonald's coffee and slightly less than the 190 degrees of an InSinkErator Hot Water Dispenser. For me, that's right where it should be.

Another limitation of this microwave oven is two consecutive cooking cycles. You can't program it to wait an hour, defrost two lbs by weight, and cook at 80% for half an hour. Realistically it's rare that I use even two consecutive cycles, but it wouldn't have cost them much to program this one to accept more cycles. On the plus side, the timer function works independently of the cooking functions, which for me is a benefit. Needing to time things while the microwave is running happens far more often than needing to have a timed non-cooking stage.

This microwave oven has nice aesthetics, a clear and easy to read display, an easy to clean finish, and a light that goes on when the door is open. You may take the last three for granted, but it would be a mistake to do that with many competing models from other manufacturers. It's also the quietest microwave oven I've owned.

Overall, this microwave oven is a good buy for the price. It has the features that you need for practical purposes. It can be mounted in a cabinet with an optional trim kit, but has the lower cost of a free standing unit. Its width is identical to Amana microwave ovens from a couple of decades ago, so if you want to mount this in an existing cabinet, you can. The Amana that it replaced lasted almost two decades, and this newer and less expensive one cooks much better. If it's half as reliable as its predecessor it will be a bargain.

And it has a full 1.6 cu. ft. cavity, which is even larger than Amana's more expensive wall mountable model, which I expect to review soon. This microwave might not have all the features I'd like to see, but it has the ones that most people will use day to day.

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