Does a Microwaves power decline with capacity ?

rgodard80a

We had an old 800w 20L Samsung microwave that we just replaced over the weekend. (the selector wheel to adjust times etc was dodgy)

I replaced it with a Sharp 900w 25L Sharp ( R374SLM ).

But it's clearly lower power / taking longer to cook, despite us upgrading from a 800w to a 900w.
Standard stuff we knew the cooking times for like soup, rice etc... were luke warm after the same time.

Does anyone know, whether the microwave power goes down as the microwave size ( 20 --> 25L ) increases?
Maybe because the microwaves are spread over a larger area?
Or did I just buy a dud / not easy to compare power ?

jmBuildExt

The extra space should have no/little effect. If the volume of space was full of something you were trying to cook then it would require more power to cook 25 l of "stuff" than 20l - obviously.

Are you sure its on the full power setting? Microwave in my mothers works at 80% power by default.

rgodard80a

Thanks, need to recheck.

Am sure I had the power @ 100% but might be a weird default program being used when I set the timer on its own.