At first it was a bit annoying because frozen meals sometimes want you to run it at lower power and this microwave has no power setting. If that's a problem, I imagine there's some other similar model that does. But in practice, just running it at full power for shorter seems to work just as well.
It would look much nicer if it didn't have a cooking guide printed on it.
In Europe, I saw some consumer-grade microwaves with similarly minimalist designs, like these Gorenje microwaves[2] with two dials. I'd have gotten one of those, but I couldn't easily find them in the US. But I also did not look especially hard.
[1]: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00ZTVIPZ2?ref_=ppx_hzsearch_conn_...
[2]: https://international.gorenje.com/products/cooking-and-bakin...
Most microwaves only have the magnetron (the part actually producing the microwaves) on one side. The rotation is needed to cook your food evenly.
This is why food in the middle of the tray often ends up undercooked. No matter how the tray rotates, that part is never particularly close to it.
For a visual aid, these are pictures of the replacements parts: https://www.partstown.com/panasonic/PANA010T8K10AP https://www.partstown.com/panasonic/PANF202K3700BP
Power, time, start, stop.
It turns out that luckily there is one like that made. The Y4ZM25MMK. Also as bonus no clock.
That said, I realized only very late that the function dial actually has a marker to show which function it selects. An extremely shallow colorless groove.
The 1967 Amana Radarange (https://media.npr.org/assets/img/2017/08/28/microwave_custom...) had two dials: short duration under 5 minutes and a long duration out to something like 30 minutes.
My parents still have theirs. It needs some resto love, but it’s still fully functional. I’ve already put my foot down in terms of who’s inheriting it.
I stab a potato and cover it in butter and salt, put it on a plate, press "potato" and it's cooked just perfect every time. Doesn't matter if it's big or small, it's just right.
When I have a plate of leftovers I just press reheat and it's perfect pretty much every time. Could be pork chops and Mac and cheese, could be a spaghetti with marinara sauce, could be whatever. Toss it in, lightly cover, press reheat, and it's good.
When I want to quickly thaw out some ground beef or ground sausage, I just toss it in, press defrost, put in a weight to a tenth of a pound, and it's defrosted without really being cooked yet.
Back when I microwaved popcorn, just pressing the popcorn button was spot on. Didn't matter what the bag size was, didn't matter the brand, the bag was always pretty much fully popped and not burned.
Despite being the same age it's still in excellent working order while yours with the dials fell apart.
My previous one lasted more than 20 years, from when my parents bought it for me when I went to study until some time in my 40s. It was still functional, but its dial had become loose and it didn't look that great anymore.
The one I bought after that follows the new pattern, it has buttons up the wazoo and who even knows what they do? To be honest I just need one power setting with a time and maybe a defrost option?