The all in one cooking machine! (Panasonic NN-A554W)

Member Name: lilmissmup

Product:	Panasonic NN-A554W
Date:	18/05/09 (190 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Reasonable size, easy to use functions, child lock

Disadvantages: Slightly noisy, Grill can burn food on oven mode

Recently I cleaned the microwave I had purchased when we moved into our rented house nearly 4 years ago and well I got a bit excited with the water and kitchen spray and when I next used our microwave I was greeted by a not very pleasant smell of burning and a light that wouldn't go off and a plate that wouldn't stop spinning until turned off at the wall!

So yes I had murdered my microwave, well lets call it manslaughter and a replacement was needed.

Our grill in our oven had also stopped working about a year ago so I decided that I would like to get a combination microwave as was starting to get severe withdrawal symptoms from cheese on toast.

After looking around the Comet and Curry's website and reading reviews left by purchasers I opted to buy the Panasonic NN-A554W from Comet at the cost of £115.99 although I reserved via Topcashback and made some cashback from doing so.

The microwave when removed from the packaging was about the same size of our previous (RIP) microwave although it does need more space around it as it does get a lot hotter when using the oven and grill functions.

It comes with 112 page manual which we found very useful in setting the microwave up and it describes all the different methods that the microwave can be utilised for and it also tells you how and when to use the accessories that came with it.

You are provided with a round metal baking tray and a metal grill tray on legs, when using the grill you can use the baking tray on top of the grill or underneath and whenever you use the Convection setting you must use the metal baking tray on top of the standard glass plate to protect it.

As with other Panasonic items i.e Bread makers there are lots of recipes in the book as well.

On the highest power setting the microwave cooks at 1000 watts but has power levels to choose from, the grill is set to either high, medium or low and when using the convection oven the lowest temperature is 150c and the highest you can cook at is 220c which is the standard for most normal ovens anyway.

You can combine cooking methods by using the convection and microwave together or the grill and microwave together.

The microwave has 9 auto cook programmes for cooking Curry, Chinese, Pasta, Casseroles, Fish, Vegetables,Jacket Potatoes,Frozen Potato Products,Whole Chicken and Frozen Pizza.

To use most of these programs you just enter the weight of the item your cooking and it works out the cooking time for you.

So far I have only used the auto programme for Jacket Potatoes and as I used larger ones than they recommend we did have to cook it for longer than said but they did taste nice, very soft on the inside and a nice crisp Jacket and it was still quicker than it would have been in a normal oven.

It also has a Chaos Defrost option where you enter the weight of the item you want to defrost, it works out the time and tells you when to turn the item to get it throughly defrosted.

The interior of the microwave is metallic and easy to wipe clean but they do recommend you wipe down after each use and only use a light detergent and not much water (well I won't be risking it again anyway!).

If you have young children you can also put the microwave on child lock to stop them from stuffing anything unwanted in like the family hamster which I think is a good idea.

If you lose the handbook at anytime it also has a demo function which can run you through what you are trying to do and I think this is a nice touch.

For the price it does a lot and I am happy with my purchase, my only negative is be careful when using the oven as the grill heats up too to warm it up and if your not careful you can burn the top of your food, my boyfriend did get a slightly browned pizza so you need to cover the top of your food really but this was mentioned in other reviews I read anyway.

Summary: A reasonably priced all in one for the kitchen.

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