This was actually my old microwave which has recently been replaced but as we used it for such a long time I thought I'd do a review. Before this microwave I had never used Sharp before but as it was such good value at £55 and seemed to have good reviews I thought I'd give it a go.

This particular model is designed for solo users and is one of the more basic and affordable models available. The microwave comes packaged along with the turntable and instruction manual. The appearance of the microwave is a fairly modern, sleek design. It comes in two colours; white and black. I picked the black as I think the white looked slightly tacky. It is well-made and has a power of 800W. This is one of the higher powers and means that food is able to cook faster. It has a relatively large capacity of 20L and I was always able to fit meals in easily. The high power combined with the capacity means this microwave does a brilliant job of cooking just about anything making it very versatile.

It is very simple to set-up by pressing the start button once. This puts the microwave onto an automatic countdown of one minute while pressing the button adds a minute to the timer so that food can be rapidly heated in one minute blasts. The simplicity of this microwave is one of its best attributes and makes it incredibly easy to use. Another benefit is that it is fairly quiet and I have gotten so used to the sound now I don't really notice it much.

The features are fairly basic and include a total of 10 different power options which allow you to find the ideal level for different types of food. In addition the microwave has 8 auto-cooking menus such as pasta, pizza, jacket potato, vegetables and frozen meals. These are really convenient as you just find the one you want and then press the button without having to guess and keep checking the food. I get quite a lot of use out of these, especially when I am tired and just want a quick, easy meal. There are also 3 quick-cook settings. The microwave is capable of keeping food hot if it is ready to soon although I've found this can dry out the food a little. As with pretty much every microwave there is a defrost function. This stops halfway through the time so that you can stir and even it out rather than having to manually stop it. A nice touch is a setting specifically for reheating tea and coffee which I use quite regularly. If you forget to take the food out it will make a beeping sound every minute or so until you remove which I find a little annoying sometimes. There is also a timer I often use for other cooking as well as in the microwave

Cleaning is very straightforward as the large size of the interior makes it easily accessible. The turntable can be easily removed for washing although can be a bit of a pain to position it correctly on the wheels when putting it back in.

One of the only drawbacks is that the microwave does not possess a clock although this is only a very minor concern as I have a wall mounted clock in my kitchen anyway. Throughout using this microwave I never had any problems with it and it was very reliable. The only reason for replacing it was to upgrade to a more expensive model with more features. I would definitely recommend.