Best Solo Microwave Oven in India 2023

Are you looking for the best solo microwave oven in India?

Solo microwave ovens are cheaper to own and can do basic microwave cooking at an affordable price range.

In this article, we’ve listed top 10 solo microwaves in India with price and review.

Best Solo Microwave Oven in India

Brands Capacity Power Warranty
Samsung Solo Microwave Oven 23 L
IFB Solo Microwave Oven 17 L
Bajaj Solo Microwave Oven 17 L
LG Solo Microwave Oven 20 L
Whirlpool Solo Microwave Oven 20 L
Panasonic Solo Microwave Oven 20 L
Best Solo Microwave Ovens comparison table

What is a Solo Microwave oven?

A solo microwave is a more basic microwave oven. It is great for uniform reheating, cooking and defrosting but cannot grill or bake. You can also only use microwave-safe glass or plastic in a solo microwave.

If you’re on to baking and grilling, read our reviews on convection microwave oven from here.

Who should buy a solo microwave?

Today, most people use microwaves for simpler tasks like warming leftovers, making popcorn, or reheating a cup of coffee.

If you want the convenience of quickly cooking and reheating foods without having to fire up your conventional oven, you should consider getting a solo microwave.

How we picked

Our goal is to recommend countertop microwaves in each of the most common sizes, and those with the most useful controls and cooking features, and preferably decent performance and reliability.

Our Top Picks

Best Overall: Samsung 23 L Solo Microwave Oven

If you are searching for a branded and reliable solo microwave oven, then the Samsung 23 litre microwave is best for your family.

Power 1150 watts
Capacity 23 Litre
Cooking option Reheat, defrost, cook.
Starter kit No
Safety Child lock
Warranty 1 year on Product
1 year on Magnetron
10 years on Cavity
Samsung 23l solo microwave unboxing video

Samsung 23 L model price on Amazon.in

It comes with a capacity of 23L; this microwave oven provides you a spacious cooking session.

This microwave oven comes with triple distribution system with three antennas. So that food is evenly cooked or properly reheated.

Samsung solo microwave oven
Samsung solo microwave oven

Its energy-saving mode lowers the standby power consumption by up to 40% and makes this an economical as well as a user-friendly product.

Its ceramic enamel interior works as anti-bacterial protection and provides a safe cooking experience.

Cons

  • Tends to vibrate occasionally

Solo Microwave oven under 6000: IFB 25 L

If you are looking for an affordable solo microwave oven under 6000 rupees, IFB 25 L microwave oven is for you.

Power 1150 watts
Capacity 25 litre
Cooking option Reheat, defrost, cook.
Starter kit No
Safety Child lock
Warranty 1 year on Product
3 years on Magnetron
3 years on Cavity
IFB solo microwave unboxing and user guide

Check price of IFB microwave oven on Amazon.in

This solo microwave oven comes with Flexi power controls, which helps in changing the power level required by the food.

It comes with buttons and a knob control which makes heat and time level settings easy.

For a family of 3-5 people the 25 l cooking space is more than enough.

This IFB solo microwave offers multiple power levels, which provide a suitable temperature for different types of dishes.

Cons

  • Price is on the higher side.

Solo Microwave under 5000: Bajaj 1701 MT

Under 5000 rupees, the best solo microwave model is Bajaj’s 1701 MT model with 17 litre cooking capacity.

Power 1150 watts
Capacity 17 litre
Cooking option Reheat, defrost, cook.
Starter kit No
Safety Child lock
Warranty 1 year on Product
3 years on Magnetron
3 years on Cavity
Bajaj 1701 MT 17 litre solo microwave review video

Check price of Bajaj solo microwave on Amazon.in

Its mechanical control knobs allow you to set the desired temperature and time as per the requirement of different food items.

This solo microwave oven has an in-built alarm that notifies you once the cooking process is complete.

This microwave oven can be used for cooking, reheating, and defrosting the food as per your requirement with utmost ease and efficiency.

Cons

  • Rotary dial knobs feels cheap.

LG 20 L Solo Microwave Oven

Here comes an affordable yet top-quality solo microwave oven to make your life easy. This 20L solo microwave oven by LG can help your cooking skills and take it to the next level with its unique and effective features.

One such amazing feature is its auto-cook menu, by just selecting the dish you want to cook and press the start button for that. This microwave oven comes with Intellowave Technology that ensures fast and healthy cooking.

Its controlled heating options allow you to cook tasty and healthy food evenly. This microwave oven has an anti-bacteria easy clean coating which ensures safe cooking and easy cleaning after use.

Top Features on Offer:

  • Capacity :20L (Ideal for Couples & Bachelors)
  • Warranty: Product – 1 Year; Magnetron – 4 Years
  • Ensures less and safe power consumption with its energy-saving mode
  • Comes with the health-plus menu for health and calories conscious people
  • Equipped with Intellowave Technology for faster and healthier cooking
  • Has a compact design that can easily fit anywhere in the kitchen

Aspects to Admire:

  • Intellowave Technology
  • Anti-bacterial cavity

Aspects to Blame:

  • Relatively expensive solo microwave oven

AmazonBasics 20 L Solo Microwave

Last but not the least, we have on our list is an affordable yet energy-efficient solo microwave oven, which has a capacity of 20L and is an ideal microwave oven for a family of 3-4 members.

This solo microwave oven by AmazonBasics comes with 5 different power levels for different recipes. Cooking, reheating, and defrosting become so easy with this energy-efficient microwave oven and also make it a multi-utility product.

It has high-quality mechanical dials, which are easy to use, and its elegant yet compact design makes it easy to store. Its controlled heating options allow you to cook tasty and healthy food evenly.

Top Features on Offer:

  • Capacity: 20L (Apt for Smaller Families)
  • Warranty: Product – 1 Year; Magnetron – 3 Years
  • Comes with an in-built alarm to notify you once the dish is done
  • Allows you to, reheat, cook, and defrost any type of food in no time
  • Comes with multi-stage cooking arrangements for effective cooking
  • Provides easy temperature and time setting with its rotary controls

Aspects to Admire:

  • Efficient Design and easy use
  • Defrost and Reheat Function

Aspects to Blame:

  • The cleaning process may be tricky

Whirlpool 20 L Solo Microwave Oven

For all those of you looking for an affordable yet powerful solo microwave oven, your search ends here with the Whirlpool Magicook 20SW.

Equipped with the larger 245mm turntable, this Whirlpool Microwave Oven allows you to cook plenty of food at once. Moreover, you can reheat a variety of food items in different dishes without any hassles.

Boasting 10 distinct power levels, this microwave oven allows you to cook different types of cuisines with precision. Furthermore, the LED display will help you distinguish the cooking mode or time selection.

Additionally, the touch foil buttons are quite user-friendly, which turns the cooking experience even more gratifying.

Top Features on Offer:

  • Capacity: 20L (Apt for Small Family or Bachelors)
  • Warranty: Product – 1 Year; Magnetron – 2 Years
  • Offers 5 distinct Indian Auto-Cook menu options for suitability
  • Allows for effortless cooking, defrosting, and reheating at home
  • Equipped with the superior powder-coated cavity for durability

Aspects to Admire:

  • 10 Different Power Levels
  • Suitable Microwave Starter Kit

Aspects to Blame:

  • The heating rate is relatively slower

Panasonic 20L Solo Microwave Oven

Taking about the nutritional value and flavor we expect our food to have, this Panasonic Solo Microwave Oven delivers the precision and power to prepare healthy & fresh meals at home.

Coming with an intelligent & elegant design, the Panasonic NN-ST26JMFDG Solo Microwave Oven aims to deliver better interior capacity. As a result, you get a slim and lightweight microwave oven, which would take up lesser space on the counter.

Suitable for the smaller families and bachelors, this Panasonic Solo Microwave Oven offers uniform cooking power, and the classy exterior matches any décor.

Moreover, owing to innovative Japanese Technology, this microwave oven facilitates healthy cooking.

Top Features on Offer:

  • Capacity: 20L (Suitable for a Small Family or Bachelors)
  • Warranty: Product – 1 Year; Magnetron – 1 Year
  • Offers power and innovation at 800W for uniform cooking
  • Comes with 51 auto cook menu options for convenience
  • Equipped with the touch-sensitive control panel for ease

Aspects to Admire:

  • Automatic Defrost function
  • Vapor Clean Technology

Aspects to Blame:

  • Needs a reset each time after use

Solo Microwave Buying guide

Size

You should get whatever size you need, depending on your cookware and counter or shelf space.

We chose to focus first on midsize microwaves because they seem to be the best-sellers at most retailers. They have enough capacity (1.1 to 1.4 cubic feet) to easily fit a common 12-inch dinner plate or 9-inch square casserole dish with handles, but they have a small-enough footprint (about 2 square feet) that they’ll fit on most countertops.

They usually claim to have around 1,000 watts of cooking power, which is what the cooking directions on packaged foods are calibrated for, so you shouldn’t have to fiddle with the cook times too much.

We also looked closely at several compact microwaves, which have 0.7 cubic feet of capacity. They have a physical footprint that’s about 25 percent smaller than that of a midsize model, but they still have enough room inside to fit most dinner plates.

Compact microwaves are popular with people who have a small kitchen or live in a dorm room, and also with those who don’t want to spend much on a microwave. The downside is that they have only 700 watts of cooking power, and we’ve found that you’ll usually have to cook for about 30 percent longer to heat food as thoroughly as with a larger, stronger microwave.

Bigger models are widely available, too—as large as 2.2 cubic feet, with twice the physical footprint of a compact model and plenty of room for a 13-by-9-inch casserole dish with handles.

Most people won’t need such a big machine, and as such, most brands don’t use their best-looking designs or coolest features for these extra-large monsters. But these microwaves typically use the same core components as midsize models and will perform similarly. (Larger models tend to have higher advertised wattage, though they often use the same power supply. We’re not certain why this is the case, but it could have something to do with the fungible nature of power ratings in microwaves.)

We didn’t have a chance to test many of these models before the coronavirus pandemic shut down the office. But where it’s relevant, we’ve linked to some large and extra-large versions of some of our midsize picks.

Controls and design

Since most microwaves perform very similarly, we put greater importance on a microwave’s controls and design, particularly these four features:

Express buttons: We found a wide consensus that the most important, must-have feature on any microwave is an Add 30 Seconds button. For some people, it’s the only button they ever use. Nearly every microwave has one, but a few don’t, and we didn’t seriously consider those models.

Buttons that automatically start longer cook cycles, usually from 1 through 6 minutes, are also common and well liked. We favored models that started their express cycles with a single press, rather than the ones that added to the timer and then waited for us to press start.

Door handle: Handles are easier to clean than push buttons (which can get gunk stuck in the gaps around the edges), and they aren’t as susceptible to jamming or breaking over time, so we preferred handles when we could find them. (We still recommend some models that have the push-button design, for anyone who’d prefer that.)

Mute option: This was an essential feature in our main pick—some of us inveterate midnight snackers have faced the ire of housemates jolted awake by the piercing beeps at the end of a microwave cycle. Unfortunately, and surprisingly, this is an uncommon feature, and not all of our picks have it.

Sensor reheat: It’s far from a must-have feature, but sensor reheat is a handy shortcut that takes some guesswork out of reheating your leftovers. The sensor works by measuring humidity, so when your food starts steaming, the microwave knows it’s warm enough to eat.

In our experience, sensor features usually overshoot the ideal eating temp, but by the time you grab a fork and sit down, it should be tolerable. A sensor cook option (for things like cooking vegetables, baking potatoes, or heating frozen entrées) is fairly common as well, and a few have sensor defrost settings, though we didn’t pay much attention to either option.

A child lock, turntable memory (which returns the tray to its original position so your mug handle is in the right spot), and eco mode (which turns off the display when it’s not in use) can all be handy, too.

But they come standard on most microwaves now and didn’t affect our picks. Likewise, nearly all microwaves let you adjust the power level. Some of our readers have strong feelings about how timers and interior lights should work, but they weren’t a factor in our picks.

There’s nothing wrong with food-specific presets or defrost modes, and if you find them useful, that’s great. But we wouldn’t recommend picking a new microwave based on its presets.

They don’t make the microwave do anything special—they’re just shortcuts for pre-programmed time and power-level settings, and those programs vary from model to model, so they might not work quite like you expect. You can always manually input your ideal cook times and power levels.

Cooking performance

Cooking performance did not play a big role when it came to making our picks. We found that any (non-defective) microwave was perfectly adequate for warming drinks and leftovers, cooking frozen meals, or popping bags of popcorn.

The strongest, most consistent microwaves aren’t substantially better for those common tasks, and they don’t make microwaved food taste any better. So for most people, any run-of-the-mill microwave will heat stuff just fine.

But we did pay more attention to performance for our upgrade pick, so that’s the better choice for people who want or need faster, more even heating and are willing to pay extra for it.

In our testing, we found that most models had a predictable heating pattern (hot spot in the center, cool inner ring, warm outer ring) that was imperfect but adequate for most of the common microwaving tasks. Some higher-priced models do heat more evenly across the turntable, which can be useful for cooking larger trays of food.

We also found that the heating speed basically tracks with the advertised wattage. In our two-minute test, all of the 1,000-watt models raised the temperature of a bowl of soup by a similar amount, and each of the compact, 700-watt models raised it noticeably less, while a 1,200-watt model raised it noticeably more. Your individual results may vary for a few different reasons, though most people will just learn to adjust their cook times to suit their particular oven.

A few brands sell models with a supposedly superior power-regulating mechanism called an inverter, which changes the way that power-level settings work. Basically, inverter microwaves can deliver continuous cooking when set to lower power levels, as opposed to regular transformer-powered microwaves, which cycle between periods of full power and zero power.

Purveyors of inverter microwaves claim the technology helps preserve flavor and nutrients, and makes them better for delicate tasks like defrosting meat. After some tests and talking to experts, we’re not convinced inverters are very impactful in microwaves.

An inverter model we tried did as poor a job of defrosting meat as any other microwave, and its food still tasted like it had been made in a microwave. It’s fine if a microwave has an inverter (our upgrade pick has one), but don’t expect it to change much.

Convection cooking is available in some pricier microwaves, but these combination ovens are quirky, niche appliances that most people don’t need. We’ll cover them later in this guide.

Reliability and longevity

We can’t promise that we’re recommending a reliable, long-lasting product. Sorry.

After looking at user reviews, reliability data (there’s not much of it), and class-action lawsuits, as well as talking with some experts, we’ve concluded that you can’t count on any countertop microwave to last for more than a handful of years before a crucial part breaks and it becomes unusable.

One paper claims that the average lifespan of a microwave has shrunk from 10 or 15 years in the ’90s down to six to eight years today. It’s not uncommon for them to break down even sooner. “The manufacturing has gotten really crappy,” said Schiffmann, the microwave expert who has worked in the industry for 50 years. (Though, for what it’s worth, professor Aaron Slepkov told us that his students do “terrible things” to microwaves in their plasma experiments, but have found that they’re harder to destroy than you might think.)

Since one company (Midea) assembles most microwaves, all of the brands it supplies are likely to be similarly reliable. If you have a bad experience with a Sharp, you’re just as likely to have a bad experience with a Toshiba, certain GE and Panasonic models, and loads of others.

There’s no sign that the microwaves from other manufacturers are any better. The average user ratings for Panasonic and LG ovens are the same or even a bit lower than those for Midea-made models. Galanz and Samsung models have lower ratings and more complaints about reliability than the others.

Pricier models like a Breville or GE Profile could be more durable; we need to do more research on this. But what we know so far makes us pretty skeptical that spending more on a microwave today will ever turn out to be a better long-term value. Schiffmann said that even if you spend hundreds on an oven, “it’s not a guarantee it’ll be all that much better” than the cheap, run-of-the-mill models.

The higher-end ovens do have higher-quality mechanical parts, like the door latch and turntable motor, and probably stricter quality control, so fewer duds may make it out of the factory. But it’s unclear whether the electronic components and craftsmanship at the core of the microwave—power supply, wiring, magnetron—are any different than those of the cheap models, or subject to the higher-quality standards.

On top of all that, most brands are hit-or-miss when it comes to honoring their warranties. Repairs are possible, but it’s usually cheaper to just buy a new low-end oven.

(Though microwaves aren’t really built to last, they’re generally safer than other types of cooking appliances. So when we say they aren’t reliable, we don’t mean that they’re hazardous to own.)

Easy-to-use interface

Microwaves should have controls that are intuitive to use. We stayed away from models with dial or knob controls, opting for the membrane-covered buttons, which are both faster to use and easier to clean.

Useful cooking functions

Microwaves come with a slew of cooking functions, but Franke told us, “There are so many features on microwave ovens and people just don’t use them. And I’ll admit that I use the minute-plus feature on mine more than anything else.” Though other cooking functions may not get used frequently, we still put them through their paces on the models we tested.

Here are the essential functions every microwave should have:

  • Time cook allows you to manually set the cooking time.
  • Express cooking lets you press one of the numbered buttons on the control panel (usually 1 through 6 minutes) for instant cooking. Say you want to reheat something for 2 minutes—simply press 2 and the microwave immediately begins heating.
  • An add 30 seconds button tacks on 30 seconds to the cook time.

These functions are nice, but nonessential:

  • Preprogrammed cooking functions use sensors and/or preset power levels and times to cook a variety of foods, including popcorn, potatoes, beverages, vegetables, and frozen meals. The sensors detect how much steam is emitted from the cooking food, but they aren’t always accurate. Franke said, “A lot depends on the skill of the person who’s programming it.” In our tests, the accuracy of these functions varied from model to model.
  • defrost function defrosts frozen food at a lower power setting and can be programmed by weight or time.

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