Bosch - 500 Series 1.6 Cu. Ft. Built-In Microwave with Sensor Cooking - Stainless Steel

I installed this myself about 3 days ago. I'll start with the good: It looks great. It was super easy to install assuming your cut out is roughly the size it specifies. My cut out (from the previous built in Bosch microwave) was the perfect width but 3/4 inches too tall so I put a thin piece of wood on the bottom of the cut out to raise the microwave about a 1/4 inch to center it. It looks great now. For the price, its a good value since similar style microwaves can cost upwards of $2,000 or more. The buttons and settings are easy to use and it seems to heat the food well and evenly. The interior LED light when its in use is nice as its east to see your food cooking. Here is where is seems to fall short: I tried the "auto reheat" function a few times and it works ok but on some foods the food comes out not quite done. It seems to work well on liquids (soups, coffee, etc). Also, the popcorn function worked ok, but the popcorn bag wasn't fully popped when it stopped, so I had to add 30 more seconds manually. I view these as minor issues as I usually like to pick my own heat time and power level instead of relying on the auto functions. There is also an auto cook function for certain foods and auto defrost function I have not tried yet. Probably the biggest disappointment (as many other reviews have mentioned) is that the clock on the display goes very dim after about 30 minutes after the last time the microwave was used. I set the display settings to full brightness, but after 30 minutes of nonuse, the display does very dim. As soon as you push a button on the microwave, the display brightens back to full brightness again, but then dims again after 30 minutes of nonuse. I am guessing this is some sort of energy saving feature, but that seems silly because it takes almost zero energy for the clock display to stay at full brightness. I have an oven right next to to the microwave that has a clock on it, so this issue is not a huge deal to me, but if you want something that you can read the clock all the time, this unit falls short. The manufacturing date on my unit was 4/2020, so its possible a newer unit has this problem fixed. Overall its a good value and looks great, and importantly I was able to find one in stock. If there were more in stock options right now, I would possibly look at other options, but this was the only one I could find that fit my space property and was at a reasonable price.

We chose this Bosch product to create a professional look to our kitchen, in that it matched the style of the Bosch double ovens we installed.

This microwave is fantastic! It's very quiet and does a great job. I love all the features