Help me buy an inverter

smkettner wrote:

Almot wrote:
Mr Wiz - I haven't seen MW smaller than 700W "cooking power", i.e. about 1000W input power. Make it 1,100W after inverter losses. There were some reports on very small MW that uses a different wave length. It takes very low current but it's tiny, you can barely fit a cup of milk in there.

I have read some new microwaves now can cook at a lower power setting and draw less power. The old style would just cycle the magnetron on full or off to create lower power settings. Can't say what models do this or what to look for.

I think you're referring to the Panasonic "inverter" microwaves. These use a different sort of high-voltage power supply than the traditional microwave (namely, a high voltage switching power supply, as I understand it), which has a number of advantages particularly for RVers. They throttle down the power, as you say; they're more efficient at converting input power to microwave energy; and, perhaps most importantly, they are much less sensitive to the peak AC voltage and so will run off of a MSW inverter and produce full output power.

I wouldn't be too surprised if more microwaves use a similar circuit over the next few years simply due to economics—I suspect it will become cheaper to build vs. the relatively large and heavy transformer required for the traditional design. But, as Mr. Berra put it, it's tough to make predictions, especially about the future.