Customer Reviews

Sharp R-520KS 2-Cubic-Foot 1200-Watt Microwave Oven, Stainless Steel

5 star:		(21)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(9)

 

 

This is my 4th Sharp microwave and I'm really happy with this oven. Like others have said, it is loud, but with 1200 watts that really should be expected. It's fast, plenty big, looks great, and easy to clean. One concern is in the door button. This is a stainless steel microwave but the button that opens the door is made of very cheap plastic. It's not been a problem for our family of 2, but a family with more people opening and closing the microwave might want to pay particular attention to how flimsy it is. All in all, though, I certainly recommend this product.

I bought the Sharp R-520KS Microwave to replace my old White Westinghouse that stopped working after Thanksgiving. I did alot of research before I bought this one. I was worried I wouldn't find a microwave that worked as well as my last one. The good thing is that I could finally replace my white microwave with stainless steel to match the appliances in my new house. Now I had an excuse to replace it. I was looking for a powerful 1200 watt microwave large enough to fit large dishes in, and this one had some of the best reviews, a decent price, and the stainless steel look I wanted. I also needed a counter top model since I have no under cabinet space to put one. This microwave works great! I also like how the control panel doesn't have elevated buttons making it easy to wipe clean with no chance of food or anything getting stuck in the buttons. It has some nice features like the hot water button (you tell it how many cups to heat), minute plus button, keep warm setting, and many others. I've probably used the hot water and minute plus features the most. There are sensor heating buttons, reheat buttons, and defrost buttons, although I haven't had a chance to use them as much yet. The ones I have used so far work great! My only minor complaint is the same as everyone else's, the buttons all look the same and the start/minute plus button and stop/cancel button are located in the midst of all the other buttons making it difficult to distinguish them quickly. Not too much of an issue, but it would have been nice if those features were located on the bottom or the corner of the display and were different than the others. It wouldn't keep me from purchasing this microwave since everything else is great and I'm sure I'll get used to them soon. The microwave is also pretty large, so you can fit alot in there. I've heated a cup of water and a dinner sized plate of food at the same time. All in all, this microwave works great, looks great, and was reasonably priced. I would definitely recommend it to anyone looking for a nice looking, powerful, counter top microwave.

Microwave is powerful, but noisy vibrations emanate from its right side. It sits in a nook, so we were able to solve the problem by putting some foam padding between the right side and the wall.

After too much research, I settled on this terrific microwave. Every brand of microwave seems to have a malfunction-no help horror story. So in the end, if you chance having a microwave at all, this one seems better than most, if not all. It works splendidly without any problem with noise or mechanical parts. My experience with Sharp Carousels has been 5 stars. At home and work they have been dependable, efficient, good looking, and inexpensive. Both the 2.0 and 1.4 cubic foot Carousels are commodious enough for large casseroles. When I designed my kitchen twenty years ago, I made two below-counter cabinet spaces to tuck in a medium and a large "countertop" microwave. I bought Carousels and have used them simultaneously almost daily. They have been great workhorses. The smaller one lost some of the digital display to no effect a few months ago, then made nasty little arcing noises last week and promptly was sent out to pasture. Last year I bought new stainless steel appliances (including Bosch dual fuel slide-in range-- the dream machine), and so I chose the stainless steel Sharp R-408LS Carousel 1.4 cubic foot/1100-W with a 14 inch turntable from BJ's ($99) as a replacement. The match with the other appliances was so good that I replaced the 2 cubic foot/1200-W with Sharp's R-520KS microwave as well. The display pads are lightly different, but better than losing size in the 1.4 cu. ft. The Carousels match the Bosch oven door design remarkably, including the rounded window corners. My kitchen looks better than when it was totally new with this addition. Knowing that these two new appliances are untried in the long term, I can only say they are 5+ stars as week-old additions to my kitchen. The microwaves do everything I want powerfully and quickly. The cost, especially with Amazon Prime shipping, closed the deal.

We got this microwave when our Panasonic broke down. It is a loud unit. Our old panasonic was a lot quieter (that was also a 2.0 cubic foot unit). The defrost feature on this unit is almost useless for me, and that is one of the main things I use it for. I cannot put something in and set up the defrost cycle and then leave and go do something else. It stops 3 or 4 times requesting that I turn it over, separate, etc. That is incredibly irritating. There is only 1 to 3 minutes between the stops so you really have to stand right there for the entire defrost cycle. Recently it started making noises, some are from the turntable gearing, and we just figured it would be a good time to replace with another brand. We don't know if these noises are a precursor to it breaking down, and we have no extended warranty and no backup unit to use. So this will probably become our backup for the micro we just bought. The nightlight is a nice gimmick, but we never used it. I would have to turn on the light (or open the micro door) to find the button to turn on this light. I kept expecting the button that opens the door to break, but it never did. It has a lot of play in it and I think it is plastic. Just didn't seem solid, but to it's credit, it held up fine.

Why just 3 stars?

The start and stop buttons are inconveniently placed in the center of all the various sensor cook function buttons. I hurriedly tried to stop the oven once, and pushed the night light button instead, and was momentarily blinded.

As already mentioned, the night light is so bright and glaring, that it does nothing to help see the sensor function buttons better. The interior light is rather dim too, so opening the door didn't provide much illumination. Heck, these function buttons are hard for me to read even with my glasses on.

The sensor defrost cooked the outer edges of my block of frozen ground beef after only 1.5 minutes. I decided to defrost manually, with the power level set on 20%.

The sensor cook setting for frozen entrees overcooked my TV dinner.

So, what's there to like? The three baked potatoes I made came out perfect, and all I did was push the baked potato sensor cook button.

This microwave was to replace our old 10 year Sharp Carousel. The new panel is more user friendly than our last one. It has a very quiet operation. I found the night light amusing but could come in handy if you don't want to turn on the kitchen lights at 3AM for that midnight snack.
The operation is very streamline. There is no guessing or calculating time. You press a selection and the unit starts. You can't go wrong with this one. I just hope it lasts 10 years like the last one. And by the way the last one was still working. It was just rusting at the seams.

This appliance works much better than my last sharp. As for noise complaint I didn't find it to much different than my old microwave. Only bad part about stainless steel is that you see all the fingerprints everywhere. Really liked the speedy service.

After our old Microwave died we started searching the market online and in stores. I purchased Consumer Reports for microwaves and then searched for them on Amazon to read the customer reviews. The top ten rated had horrible customer reviews. So then decided to search from the bottom of the list up, and this is when I found our next microwave. Loud was the only beef with this microwave. Now in our house "loud" with all our kids is nothing compared to a microwave. Basically if your trying to sleep near by this microwave then maybe it would seem loud. But the 1200 watts cooks everything super fast, even heat with the turning tray is awesome! This is used several times a day and after a month no complaints!

Earlier Sharp microwaves have been great, but this model beats the others we've had in features and speed--and this newer model cost a lot less. We haven't yet used all the features this microwave affords, but we know we're going to be saving a lot of cooking time