I will be honest with you: choosing an appliance because of its name is pointless.

I sold major household appliances (in-wall microwaves, ovens & stoves, oven hoods, refrigerators and dishwashers) for over a year to property-management companies nationwide.

I believe the business was built on the premise of servicing apartments for turnovers & replacements.

For example, a fridge is a fridge. A contraption whose function is to keep things cold. Either it does or it doesn't. GE has a lower-price-point line, Hotpoint. Standing together in our warehouse, I was hard-pressed to find the difference between the two other than the name label (they may have offered more options for GE brand items, but they were the exact same thing.. Same for Whirlpool and Roper. Maytag's Magic Chef line is almost identical. Frigidaire only makes Frigidaire products, as far as I know. I believe that most GE/Hotpoint and Whirlpool/Roper laundry products, regardless of brand, are actually made by Whirlpool. Especially the stacking units.

As for the trusted Kenmore line by Sears--good luck finding a Kenmore factory. It's all items from other manufacturers, mostly GE and Whirlpool, re-branded.as "Kenmore." Their laundry is identical to Whirlpool.

Upscale selling points: GE, Whirlpool or Maytag. Perform the same functions but cost less: Hotpoint, Roper and Magic Chef.

But for tabletop items, they may be licensing use of their name. The manufacturer may have no relation to product itself. I believe I have a Magic Chef microwave that has nothing to do with Maytag.

Wal-Mart lists the GE 1.1 cu ft. as their top rated, followed by a Sanyo 0.7 cu. ft, a Danby 0.6 cu. ft., a Sharp 2.0 cu. ft and a Magic Chef 1.3 cu. ft. and a Panasonic 2.2 cu. ft model.

Just on those results alone, it depends on what you want. You can go from as small as 0.6 cu. ft to as large as a 2.2 cu. ft.

The microwave I have is an older version of the Magic Chef 1.1 cu. ft, pictured below, which is a little further down the list. It was online for $59. Mine is easily 15, almost 20 years old. That's 1990 to 1995--hardly seems that long ago, but it is.

If I were you, i would sooner purchase the one that fits my needs and costs the least--they're all going to meet the minimum basic requirement of "Microwave Oven." Raytheon's Dr. Spencer figured that out, and there are still some ham-radio enthusists who will use the two ends of the microwave oven if they still work, and make a point-to-point communication device with them. Microwaves are also still used in Studio-to-Transmitter links (STLs) in broadcasting (see sources)

More technically:

"All electromagnetic energy can be characterized as waves with a specific wavelength and frequency distributed over a continuous range known as the electromagnetic spectrum. For example, some radio waves have a wavelength of 6 feet (12 meters) and a frequency of 50 million hertz (Hz-cycles per second). Visible light waves have a wavelength of 400 to 700 millimicrons, and typical X-rays have a length of 0.01 millimicrons and a frequency of 30 x 10¹² millions.

Microwaves (short waves or high frequency radio waves) are the shortest of radio waves, with a length of 0.1 millimeter and a frequency of 3 x 109 Hz. They are found in the non-ionizing portion of the energy spectrum, between radio waves and visible light. "Non-ionizing" means that microwaves do not detach charged particles and produce atoms with an unbalanced plus or minus charge. Microwaves can therefore safely produce heat and not cause food to become radioactive.

Microwaves are reflected from most metals but they produce inductive resonance's in the atoms of many other substances. It was the discovery of their reaction to metals that led to the invention of radar. It was their ability to produce resonant coupling that led to the invention of the microwave oven."

A friend outside my sales territory called me for advice. He needed to replace his dryer. He was at a big-box home improvement chain. I said "Did you use all of those cycles are on the old machine?" He answered "No," to which I replied, "That's right. It needs to meet the minimum basic requirement of a machine that passes hot air into a rotating tube. The fewer bells and whistles, the better off you'll be. Look for a Roper or Hotpoint."

Amana lists a 0.8 cu. ft. microwave, also pictured, on their site at $129.00. I'd be hard-pressed to find very much about it that's different than my $59 Magic chef, which is slightly bigger.

We have had our share of microwaves. Currenetly we have a Genereal Electric and we have had it for like 11 years now. It works wonderfully and does not come close to anything we have had in the previous years. However it is an under the counter instead of acctually sitting on the counter. Has a turntable, drefrost , timer and many other features. We reallly love it alot.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ajbogdanphoto/1479077324/

Appliances today are NOT made the way appliances were made back in the day. You aren't likely to find something that will last 28 years. However, I've personally had a lot of luck with Kenmore (from Sears) in countertop microwaves. I owned one before I bought my house that I later sold to a friend and that she still uses. I currently own a Kenmore over the stove microwave.

The Kenmore 6633(9) and 6325(2) midsized models are both highly rated by Consumer Reports and run about $130-140.

Go to Walmart, Best buy, Target or other big box store, ask them where the microwaves are. Have them put a blindfold over your eyes, spin you around have them point you towards the microwaves. The first one you touch grab it, otherwise just get the cheapest one that's on sale.