Panasonic NN-SN68KS 1200W 1.2 cu. ft. Inverter Microwave Oven

I just got the Panasonic Genius Microwave NN-SN68KS without all the numeric buttons and you don’t need them once you read the manual.

This is a 1200 watt microwave with 12.4 amps so you have to have common sense and give it its own dedicated power outlet. I have mine running smooth with a common house lamp on the circuit and it’s doing great. If you have an old outlet be sure to ground it with a grounding screw and grounding wire with the adapter to put it in the wall. A standard 13 amp extension cord will work if you have to use an outlet in the next room like I did. If you try and run this on the same outlet as the refrigerator you’re pushing 19.5 amps and could have some issues. Same goes for a toaster oven which would be 21.4 amps which is a big no no for most common house outlets running at 15 amps max. I saw some guys review on here and he didn’t know much about electricity and was having breaker issues but just needed to use the next nearest power outlet to resolve his issue. This needs it’s own power outlet with maybe a common one bulb lamp hooked at the max.

The food cooks awesome. It is genius!!!

I love how you just have to press 2 buttons and listen for beeps to cook the food and it does everything for you.

Learning to use this only takes about 10-15 minutes reading the manual. The notes are on the inside of the microwave when you open the door so you don’t have to memorize 16 codes.

If you properly read the manual and use common sense you will love this microwave. It is so freaking amazing and my food cooks perfect with the Genius sensor.

Tips: If you go manual be sure to adjust the power settings. If it doesn’t come out all the way cooked use the Reheat button and let the sensor cook your food the rest of the way for you. Works for me.

Listen for the beeps and check the food if the Genius hasn’t stopped cooking it yet and your Frozen Food Entree is still in there and it smells good; check it if the Genius sensor tells you there is 5:30 remaining. I checked mine and the food was done and I stopped it early. If you let it go without common sense after beeps you might overcook your food. So far we haven’t overcooked anything and everything is all smiles and perfect.

For some people it might seem a little overwhelming at first but if you read the manual and forums you understand the idea of how the sensor needs to detect steam and work and how it needs some of your attention sometimes when it’s cooking and everything comes out great.

I literally have chills and goosebumps by how amazing this microwave works and how simple it actually is to use.

Never microwave anything frozen on full power or you can break the magnetron. It needs you to either lower the power or turbo defrost or use the frozen food button.

I think some people didn’t read the manual and freaked out.

You don’t need all the numerical buttons with this microwave because it is high powered with an inverter and cooks fast and evenly. That’s why there are only 3 sets of numerical buttons in logical increments if you decide to cook it the old way manually without the Genius sensor. Anyone who complained is just behind the simple learning curve of a 15 minute manual read. In reward you get a microwave oven that cooks everything for you after you hit 2 buttons and don’t have to guess the times.

F-ing awesome. I love it.

So far so good.

I’ve read about Panasonic microwave ovens for years. They are truly “different” than other microwaves, in that they use inverter technology to modulate (turn down) the microwave energy as needed to cook different types and quantities of food. In most microwaves the power is either on full blast or off. Panasonic microwaves turn down the power from a level ten down to a one smoothly and continuously. This greatly eliminates hot and cold spots in food, cooked and uncooked, ensuring that everything is done evenly and to near perfection. I use mine for popcorn, and it cooks it to perfection with its pre-programmed popcorn button. This unit has a sensor that monitors both heat and the humidity given off by food so that its computer knows exactly where everything is at during the cooking process. A list of pre-programmed selections are printed right inside the door, so there’s no hunting for the manual to tell the unit what you’re cooking. It has a novel keypad, in that there are actual “real” buttons, with a tactile feel rather than the plastic pads that most microwaves have, that often become troublesome as the unit ages. Also, there are only three buttons for entering the coooking time, a 10 second button, a one minute button, and a 10 minute button. If you want 20 seconds, you press the 10 second button twice, if you want 30 minutes, you press the 10 minute button 3 times, and so on. At first this took some getting used to, but I’ve gotten to like it very much. This frees up space on the keypad for other presets which are very helpful. This brings me to my only complaint. The labeling of the keypad is in VERY small print, and because it is black letters printed on a silver background, it makes it quite hard to read without turning on a bright light. I am so pleased with everything else on this microwave, I’ve learned to work around this issue.

Physically, this unit is much smaller than my previous unit, but it is still plenty big for everything I want to cook. The upside is that it takes up much less room but still cooks at a full 1200 watts, which is the maximum allowed for a household microwave oven. The interior is finished with a charcoal color, which unlike white, shows almost nothing, so it looks clean all the time. I have to remind myself to clean the inside, because nothing shows. It also has an interior LED lamp, which could be a little brighter, but does illuminate the interior well, and should last the life of the microwave. I’ve purchased some microwave accessories (available here on Amazon), a small grill for making paninis, grilling steaks or hamburgers, and even hot dogs, and a roaster that does everything from steaming vegetables to poached eggs, baking muffins, chicken, and they work great in this microwave. All in all I would highly recommend this microwave to anyone looking for a compact high power unit that does a great job on anything you would ever think of cooking in a microwave, and even things you normally wouldn’t.

First off I will be keeping this microwave despite several obvious flaws. The inverter technology is good, plus I’m replacing a sub standard microwave with this so anything is an improvement. It just seems these days no one beta tests prior to launch.

Pros….
Inverter technology
Door latch is smooth and closes easily.
Plenty of power, heats quickly and nice size at 1.2 cu. Ft.
The buttons are a big bonus over a flat keypad.
I thought at first the operating system would seem flawed. To change time or power you punch the same button several times. As opposed to hitting numerical buttons to enter time values. But now I like this system.

Cons….
The interior light is useless along with the dark interior.
Opening the door requires right hand to press the button and left hand to open the door. A handle with a release button would have been one handed and so much easier.
Noisy when running.
Twenty buttons, half of which will never get used. Kind of a gimmick. Could have had six larger buttons that were easier to use.

Prett good microwave. Nice and compact on a counter. Wish the cooking time buttons were illuminated and that the interior light was a bright incandescent, instead of a dim LED bulb. You can barely see the food inside when opening the door to check on the food. Other than those two limitations, on the whole, a good microwave. I hope the manufacturer makes these two adjustments. I think the ratings would be much higher then.

So, first the good news. It “nukes”, it’s relatively powerful for its size, and it has a good amount of interior space considering its compact footprint. That being said, the buttons, logic, and programming functionality are a design fiasco. Does one really need 5 loud beeps after each cycle – all the beeps are always loud and can’t be turned off. It’d be nice if the beeps would cancel when I open the door so I don’t wake the rest of the household when heating breakfast at 5 a.m. How about some backlighting for the barely legible buttons? There’s no indication of power level short of pushing and holding the power level selector for 2s – that could have been easily integrated into the display. Why does it require one to hit reset before adding 10s/1m/10m? Seems like a lot of arbitrary non-customizable programming design decisions made by some circuit board programmer that had his/her idea of how a microwave should operate.

You know, I have to say since replacing our not-that-old white Panasonic microwave with this newer also by Panasonic, I’ve noticed my food is indeed heating more evenly! Hot and cold spots are no longer such an issue. Also, our previous Panasonic microwave was psychotic. The thing heated TOO well and we had to be very careful not to burn foods, I’d always turn the power level down but was never sure if I was actually doing it.

This microwave is a lot more intuitive and easy to use than our previous model. Though I’ll also admit, and this amuses me, it was a good few days of having this new microwave before I noticed–gasp!–it doesn’t have numbers! No more putting in specific times. Huh. It’s sleek looking and there are lots of buttons and features. I have figured out how to do time increments by pressing the 10 or 30 second buttons multiple times. Same goes for the minute button, obviously. And unlike our previous one also, the power level feature is much more clear! I feel like I know what I’m doing, no vague settings. This is much better designed.

Also, we haven’t managed to burn popcorn with it yet, as it really does seem to sense foods better than any microwave we’ve owned before. The clean up is easier and I’m very happy with this new microwave in just about every way. It is compact and fits in our old 1950s kitchen nicely, we don’t have the counter pace for it and don’t have the type of oven where the microwave can go over it, so we store it above our built-in cabinet oven. It’s great and the perfect size. No complaints, and I’d recommend this microwave to anyone. If anything changes or breaks, I’ll be sure to update this review.

So after a few weeks of testing and using the Panasonic compact microwave, I’ve determined that the microwave does the basics well but these other sensor oriented features aren’t quite fine tuned. First of all, Panasonic has decided to remove the keypad with numbers in hopes that you’ll use the sensor oriented shortcuts and features. The buttons they decided to leave for setting timed heating are 10 mins, 1 min, and 10 seconds. Additionally there’s a quick 30 seconds button as well. I found this to be a bit disconcerting because when you buy frozen foods, the microwave instructions generally tell you to set an allotted time. For example, if the instructions on my frozen pot pie is 4 minutes and 30 seconds, I’ll have to hit the ‘1 min’ button 4 times, then ’10 seconds’ 3 times. Total amount of buttons pushed would equal 7. Guess how a keypad would reduce those steps? I’ll let you figure that one out on your own. Overall, user experience is worse than one with a keypad.

Now let’s talk about the sensor reheat. I decided to reheat a bowl of rice and left a microwave cover on top. The microwave ended up burning the rice and the bowl as it wasn’t able to detect the temperature of the rice. When it came to heating up soup though, it had better results. That being said, i’m gonna stick with 2 minutes and a stir going forward. I no longer trust the sensor reheat button. This is the same with the popcorn button which comes in 3 levels. I’ll stick with starting out with 90 seconds and see how it goes from there. Too bad the smell of burned rice hasn’t quite gone away.

Another gripe I have is with the light that’s inside. As with most microwaves, the light turns on when the door is opened on or in use. But with the Panasonic, the light is outrageously dim when looking from the outside. Older or people with vision problems may find this an issue.

I’ve attached images of the keypad and the microwave. I hope this helps you decide on whether this microwave will work out for you. If I had to choose, I’ll keep looking.

I was wanting a smaller microwave, but the few smaller ones that I tried also lacked power and it was taking so long to get anything done. I also wanted one that the door was more quiet when opening and closing. I was SOOOOO tired of hearing the kids slamming the microwave door 10 times to open and check their food what seemed like every 3 seconds. Even when I would open and close the door like a normal sane person, my old one was just so loud. So I just wanted one that closed more softly and quiet. This here microwave meets my needs in all aspects.

The door is so much more quiet. No clanging or banging when opening and closing it. It is nice and smooth and just softer.

It is slightly smaller than my mammoth one that I had, but I can still fit a full size dinner plate inside it.

It cooks very quickly. The presets are so convenient.

You cant enter the cook time with numbers, but you can hit the one minute, 30 seconds, 10 seconds, to get what you need and just hit start. I dont miss the numbers at all.

The interior light isnt very bright when cooking and doesnt come on when the door is open. But I quickly got used to it. It’s a reliable and efficient appliance, so you learn very quickly that you dont need to sit there and stare inside as things cook. At first I didnt like that the light was so dim. But after a few times using the microwave, I just felt confident enough with it that I just didn’t need to look inside there anyway. I can set it and let it run.

It cooks more evenly than my previous microwaves. It doesnt get the center done and leave the outside frozen or vice versa. It’s just more evenly cooked.

It doesnt have annoying sounds and chimes.

The stainless steel finish looks really food and is easier to keep clean than I thought it would be. Honestly my past several microwaves were black and they were harder to keep looking clean.

This is just simply an excellent microwave. It may cost a little more than other models/brands, but I assure you it is worth it. Just to get rid of the annoying sound of the darn door is enough for me to justify the cost. Then when you factor in the efficiency and the power it has, without actually taking up as much space as other models, it’s just a no brainer. It’s the right choice.

I have an older Kenmore microwave made in 2000 that puts out 1100 Watts and worked better than most other microwaves that I have seen. I swore I’d never get rid of it as long as it worked and I still won’t but I did put it into storage as a backup to this unit.

What drew me to this was the inverter technology. In older units like what I have the power pulses on and off to reduce total power output. As an example, 1 minute at 50% power just runs the magnetron for a total of 30 seconds of 1100W output pulsed on and off during the minute. This unit can actually reduce it’s output to 600W for the entire time.

This unit weighs significantly less and is physically smaller but the turntable glass is larger. So I get more plate room but less height. I’m not cooking towers of food in my microwave so this isn’t a problem. I’d rather have counter space back.

The controls are fine, they are all push button. I wouldn’t say that it is easier to use than my old Kenmore. It had buttons and a pushable wheel that you could turn to select the time and adjust other settings.

In use, I do find that this unit warms food quicker and more evenly. I tried the sensor reheat and am not totally on board with it. It seemed to want to go too far with a plate of fettuccini alfredo that I tried to reheat. I think it will take more experimentation to find what works well with that setting and what doesn’t. I found the quick 30 button works well for reheating a slice of pizza. I don’t typically use a microwave for this but it did work better than my old unit. The slice was more evenly heated. That is what I find with most things at any power, the food seems to be more evenly heated. The old unit worked well but this is better. Overall as its core function of being a microwave, it works well.

I do have a couple of complaints. It is a fingerprint magnet. You are working with food so your fingers are going to probably get a little oil on them from time to time. The plastic should have been textured. I see this all the time on electronics and I don’t know why they keep doing this. It only looks good when brand new and untouched. The door button and door areas show fingerprints really well.

The light inside is a LED. It works but could be brighter. If they had made it a brighter LED or added another LED on the other side it would have been better.

Overall though so far I’d recommend this unit. If I have any reliability issues I’ll come back and update. I’m definitely not getting rid of my old unit just yet.

I have a nice kitchen, but have a hood over my stove (which I prefer for better exhaust while cooking), so I have to use my counter space for a microwave. But I don’t want something huge and imposing, or taking away precious counter space. I have long-since continued using my small (and cheapest) little microwave intended for college & small apartments, used in my wife’s first apartment, and now in our kitchen to save counter space. We have looked at nicer looking microwaves from time to time, but never found one that didn’t seem bigger or more imposing, or that wasn’t just another college & small apartment microwave aimed at being low-cost. We wanted it all, more power and features, nicer looking, and just as compact. Behold, we are thrilled with this serious upgrade on all aspects, and taking the exact same counter spot as our little one!

COMPACT LOOKS & POWER:
This one really looks great in our kitchen, matching other stainless appliance finishes (as shown in my picture). It takes the same space (maybe the tiniest bit taller) and looks so much better than our old microwave (as shown in my next picture). It is huge inside (shown in my next picture), more than my old microwave. Plus it delivers 1200W cooking power versus my old 700W. In my last house, I had an 1100W over-the-stove microwave, so I really missed the faster cooking times (and look), but honestly, we got used to 700W and was normal to us again. But beware, you could be cooking at 70% more power than before, so it timings you memorized are no more, and you probably do need to use a lower power setting for anything but liquids (as the manual states). You will also have to be more careful with what else you are doing on the same electrical circuit because it is going to nearly max out what a single circuit should be running before it trips the circuit breaker or GFCI on the outlet, which is usually about 1500W / 15A max. Some kitchens have dedicated circuits for things like this, and usually always the case when it is mounted above the stove. In this case, you are trying to have as powerful of a microwave, but at counter-top level. Don’t toast and microwave on the same circuit at the same time 🙂 .

BUTTONS:
I really like the physical buttons versus texture-less press buttons. I was worried about the limited visibility of the labels above the buttons being smaller and less contrast than a usual all-touch-pad interface. They can be hard to read without bright lighting. This used to be a BIG deal to me, and something I picked microwaves by. But honestly, you really only use a few buttons, and you just know where they are after the 2nd day of use, and I don’t even look at the labels except for infrequent use of other settings. I’m glad I took a chance on this style, because I actually love it.

But there is no number keypad, another thing that used to be a BIG deal to me, and I picked microwaves by how easy the number pad was to use. This one has 4 time buttons — 10 min, 1 min, 10 sec (in sequence on the upper-right that you memorize), and a 30 sec button on the bottom right just above the start. It turns out that is mostly all you need to quickly enter a time, almost easier than dialing on a keypad. However, there is no 5 sec or 1 sec, so you can only time things in numbers rounded to 10 sec. For example, I used to know that my reheating my hot cocoa would take another 22 seconds, or warming a cookie took 7 seconds. They are short enough you can just stand there and stop it early, or use another power setting to compensate. But the reason is likely because of all the other sensor buttons! They would say you should be using the reheat liquid button, and it will stop it when it is ready, whatever random number of seconds that happens to be, when it senses it as hot. I only very slightly miss the option to add individual seconds below 10 sec.

SENSOR HEATING:
You will have to pay attention and pick the right option and setting referenced from the label just inside the door to pick the right food type, such as Omelette. It is basically going to tell when food lets off enough steam. You pick the closest food, and weight, and it is supposed to do a better job than you just guessing how long to put it, which will vary by current temperature of the food, container, weight, thickness, etc. Things like liquids are easy because it really will not make a mistake and overheat those. For dinner foods, we are still experimenting with how to use it properly, so you’ll have to risk a few before you learn to adjust. We made an apple baked item with egg and batter (a big apple pancake) in the oven, and had to reheat, so we guessed it closer to omelette and used sensor heat. It really heated it super hot, hotter than we would have done on our own, but honestly, it turned out fine but not perfect as over-heating can change the density & texture of some foods. So it takes some experimenting to match your food items right, or just learn your own timing & power settings which also takes experimenting anyway.

DRAWBACKS:
There are few, minor drawbacks that don’t diminish my happiness with this microwave: (1) The plug really should have had a wall-hugging right-angle connection to not sick out (see my picture), but you can buy a wall hugging plug adapter yourself to change the angle. (2) Interior light is a very daylight-white and not as bright or warm to light up your food. (3) No option to add 1-9 seconds other than to stop early. (4) Button text is small and harder to see (but realistically you don’t need to see it much), (5) It uses most of your electrical circuit’s capacity while in use (the only way to be as powerful as it is).