This sleek-looking, microwave oven is one in Frigidaire's Professional product line. It is made of genuine stainless steel, with a protective coating to minimize fingerprints and to make cleaning easier. This is a 1,000-watt model, with a 14-inch turntable and an incandescent, interior, 20-watt light. It also comes with a rack for 2-level cooking and reheating, which is superfluous in my opinion. Even the manufacturer recommends using the turntable with the sensor cooking or auto cooking function without the rack as a better alternative.

The Frigidaire Professional Model FPMV189KF has all the features common to almost all microwaves, as well as numerous advanced functions, some of which I will never use and others that I appreciate greatly. It offers the usual 10 power levels. There is also the typical quick start feature, which allows the user to cook from one to six minutes at 100% power by simply pressing the appropriately numbered pad. It has the "+ 30 second" feature that many microwaves offer. One or more presses of the "Start/enter/+30 sec" pad allows the user to cook food at 100% power in multiples of 30 seconds, up to a maximum of 99 seconds. It has a timer, but this functions solely as a kitchen timer; it cannot be used at the same time the microwave is operating. The turntable can be turned on or off, and both the oven light and the vent have high, low, and off settings. The user has the option to turn off audible signals, and there is a child lock feature that deactivates the control panel. The auto start feature works similarly to the auto start feature on regular ovens and is used to begin cooking food at a specified time. Additionally, this model gives the user the ability to select a preferred language and unit of measurement. Language options are English, Spanish, and French, and either pounds or kilograms can be chosen for quantity measurements.

This Frigidaire Professional Series microwave offers three different cooking modes: a manual mode, a sensor mode, and an auto mode. The manual mode operates in the same fashion as it does on most microwaves, with manual cook and manual defrost functions. The sensor cooking feature detects the humidity and moisture of the food as it is heating and adjusts the cook time and power level accordingly. There are 5 functions within this mode: sensor cook--which is used for ground meat, rice, seafood, frozen entrees and chicken breasts--sensor reheat, popcorn, veggies, and baked potato. I've used this mode for frozen entrees and vegetables to my satisfaction. I prefer to use the manual mode for popcorn and baked potatoes, though.

The auto cooking mode consists of 7 functions: auto cook, auto reheat, auto defrost, keep warm, melt/soften, snacks, and chicken nuggets. Like the sensor cooking mode, this mode is designed to take the guesswork out of microwave cooking. The auto reheat is particularly good to use for either fresh or frozen rolls or muffins, and I really appreciate the melt/soften function, which is preprogrammed to melt butter or chocolate and to soften ice cream or cream cheese. The "keep warm" function is also a favorite of mine. It will keep food warm for as long as a half hour. Moreover, this function can be utilized with the manual cooking mode. It allows the user to enter a cook time for an item and preprogram it to keep that item warm for up to 30 minutes after the cooking is completed.

The MSRP for the Frigidaire Professional Model FPMV189KF is $499.99. I found it to be priced competitively with similar microwave ovens offered by other manufacturers. I looked at a GE model with an MSRP of $449, but it didn't have a couple of the features that I particularly liked on this model--such as the keep warm function. There was also a Whirlpool model priced at $369, but, again, it lacked some of the features I wanted. Other competing models were priced higher than this one, and they had a few more whistles and bells, none of which interested me. In short, this microwave oven has more features than I'll ever use--most of which have become commonplace, particularly in the higher-priced microwave ovens. Still, I was willing to pay a bit more to get the couple of features I did like a lot in a microwave that looks stylish and matches my other appliances.