Quick Start - One Touch Express Cooking

Great Microwave! I recently remodeled my kitchen. A new stove and microwave were part of this remodel. I wanted my kitchen to look clean and bright. This General Electric XL1600 was my choice because it had all the features I would need at a very low cost and it looks terrific.

The best feature, in my opinion, is the one touch express controls or the Quick Start Features. Since we are basically lazy or simple people in this day and age, this microwave is ingenious. You can pop in a bowl of leftovers and instead of having to press 5 buttons to get 1 minute, you only need to press one -Express cook 1, meaning one minute. There is also a 30 second express cook, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 minutes. I know this sounds funny, but it truly is a very convenient feature. The very time in our house is 30 seconds, while heating up hot chocolate. Open the door, place the cup in, shut the door, press 30 seconds express and walk away. This button has gotten a lot of wear and tear in a year and still is working fine. You can also just add 30 seconds to anytime with this button also.

Incidentally, my husband and I installed this microwave by ourselves and we are not handy people. Very easy installation! We installed it with minimal fighting. The microwave is not too heavy either.

This microwave does have a turntable that allows the food to rotate automatically. Nice feature, no more stopping and turning the food. The turntable is easy to remove and clean. There is a rack above the turntable, that is removable, we usually keep it in the microwave. It is somewhat of a pain to remove. With this rack you can have two items cooking at once. If you cook a hot dog on it, it will come out of the microwave with little seared lines that look bar-b-qued!

There are many power levels. The microwave itself is 950 watts. You can change to 10, 20, 30 and so on power levels with one touch buttons. There is also automatic defrost.

I like the convenient feature of being able to push the popcorn button, or reheat or beverage button (etc.) and the microwave automatically times it for those foods.

This microwave is digital and has a help button. You can press help and on the display there will be a list of helpful hints to choose from. The owners manual is also a very good resource with lots of microwave cooking tips and ideas; easy to read and understand.

Another handy feature is the delay start button. You can program your food to cook up to 24 hours later. If you want to program it to cook a casserole in the afternoon and only your children will be home, you can program the microwave, they can pop the food in when they get home and press start and it will cook it the way you programmed it.

A great feature is the child lock button. You can program the microwave so that it cannot be accidentally turned on.

The entire microwave is easy to keep clean on the outside and inside. The food seems to brush right off the non-stick interior. The outside is designed not to have any hard to clean nooks and crannies.

Great Microwave, I love it.