5 cheap microwave ovens under $300 we love

When you’re short on time, a microwave oven can be a blessing. With the push of a few buttons, you can reheat a meal. It’s also good for defrosting – a bonus if you’ve forgotten to take out the meat for dinner!

You don’t need to spend big money on a microwave oven. Our test of 55 microwave ovens found 5 models that cost less than $300 and are excellent performers. One of these cheap models is actually our highest scoring model.

All these models are standard microwaves. We’ve also tested microwave ovens that can grill and convection microwaves that can bake too. However, because of their versatility, these microwave ovens tend to be more expensive.

We test the performance of standard microwave ovens by cooking broccoli, defrosting mince and a whole chicken, and reheating quiche. For microwave ovens we’ve recently tested, we also melt chocolate.

Best microwave ovens for less than $300

What about a convection microwave?

The microwave ovens we’ve profiled are standard microwaves. But we’ve also tested 4 microwaves that can grill and 9 convection microwaves (also called combination microwaves) that can both grill and bake.

Convection microwave ovens may be good in smaller kitchen spaces, such as in studio apartments or caravans. They can also be useful in a full kitchen if you often use more than one oven at a time. A convection microwave oven is more versatile than a benchtop oven because a benchtop oven cannot microwave.

To find out how these versatile microwaves performed in our tests, visit our microwave ovens test results.