For the last few decades, digital technology has played a huge role in our lives. In partnership with Panasonic, we’ve written a few odes to some of our favourite pieces of home tech. Here, Ben Gracewood on his inverter microwave.

You don’t understand how good my microwave is.

You almost certainly don’t understand how excited I was when asked to write 500 words about it. For the longest time, there have been facts about microwaves living in my head that I’ve desperately wanted to tell anyone who will listen. Finally my time has come.

Most people don’t understand microwave ovens. You probably consider a microwave the same way you do a kettle: turn it on to get the job done. You probably reckon all they do is cook food fast and the $85 K Mart special works just as well as the $489 high-end microwave from Harvey Norman, and that you’d only pay more for a microwave if you were rich or wanted one in a special colour.

But what if I told you there was a secret microwave cheat code that you can unlock by not buying that rock-bottom cheapass microwave? A special word to use when searching Pricespy that will change your cooking life for the better?

Cheap microwaves are binary. On or off. Full blast or zero. When you set the power level to 50%, all that happens is the cheap microwave turns on and off so that it’s still blasting 100% power, but for half the time. This is why the edges of your “defrosted” meat are burnt, or why your morning-after reheated BBQ sausage ends up looking like Thomas Kane the moment a Xenomorph bursts from his chest.

Inverter microwaves, on the other hand, actually properly dial down the constant power output so that the micro-waves are more, I dunno, gentle or something. Panasonic have a page with diagrams and stuff that explains it better than I can. Apparently they invented inverter microwaves way back in 1988 and have been perfecting the tech ever since.

If you’ve never used an inverter microwave it’s impossible to understand how life-changing it is to be able to set your microwave to 40% power and gently warm up some cheerios for the kids in three minutes without having them turn inside out. With an inverter microwave, you can gently warm up a slice of pizza without drying the pepperoni, or precisely soften a block of butter without having it boil and splatter everywhere.

Now do you understand? Next time you buy a microwave, look for one with the word “inverter” on the front. Mine has quite honestly changed my cooking life.