Morphy Richards Cassini 20L Digital Microwave Review

Design and features

• Digital controls
• Automatic defrost
• Turntable

Part of the appeal of the Morphy Richards Cassini 20L Digital Microwave, aside from its relatively low price, is its slick exterior. Designed to match the kettle and toaster in this range, the dimpled pattern on the front looks great, and there’s a choice of green, black, and blue (the latter of which I have on review).

With its 20-litre interior, this is a small microwave that doesn’t take up much counter space. It’s ideal for a dinner plate, so will suit smaller housholds or those who just use the microwave for the odd job, such as heating pasta sauce, reheating dinners and that kind of thing.

There’s not much in the way of assembly, with just the glass plate needing to be attached to the turntable. Having a turntable limits the size of rectangular dishes that you can fit, but it’s rare to find flatbed microwaves at this price, bar the Caso Design MG 20 Ecostyle Ceramic Microwave & Grill.

One of the benefits of having such a straightforward model is that it’s easy to use for basic tasks.

The easiest way to get started is to load your food in, and then just tap the Start button, which adds 30 seconds to the clock and starts running the microwave at full power. Tap the button repeatedly to add 30 seconds at a time.

For more control, you can hit the Micro button, and use the dial to select the power you want: 100% down to 0% (fan only) in 10% steps. Then, the main dial can be used to select how long you want to microwave for, before you hit Start.

The only annoyance in this mode is that you can’t adjust the remaining time while the microwave is running, nor add 30 seconds using the Start button. If you want to microwave for longer (or shorter), you need to stop the microwave and then start from scratch.

A dedicated Defrost mode is available by the button, which is handy, as it avoids trying to work out which microwave power is best. I could choose a time to run the microwave for, or by hitting the defrost button again, I could select the weight of food to let the Caso Design MG 20 Ecostyle Ceramic Microwave & Grill work out timings for me.

There are some automatic cooking programmes available via the Menu button, with options A-01 to A-05. Clearly, you need the manual handy to work out what these options are, and it would have been nice if there was a label inside the door that just explained the options.

Anyway, in order, they are milk/coffee, potatoes, fish, pizza and popcorn. With the right mode selected, the dial controls the cooking process by letting me select, depending on mode, the number of servings or the weight.

That mostly works, but for the potato, the manual says that it has the option to cook between one and three servings, but the menu only lets me select up to two.

Finally, there’s a Reheat menu, which is similar to the Defrost option, only with a choice of food weight only, not time.

A slight interface annoyance is that if you select the wrong option, there’s no back button. Instead, I had to hit Stop and then choose the option again.

Performance

• Heats evenly
• Auto programmes can need some extra time

As a basic model, I ran through my standard microwave-only tests. I started with a reheat test, heating a bowl of rice. As you can see from the thermal image below, heating is throughout the rice, and the entire bowl was steaming. The only cooler parts of the image are where the rice grains are in touch with the cooler sides of the bowl.

Next, I moved on to the defrost test. Due to the turntable, I could only fit two slices side-by-side on a large plate. Due to the low weight, I set the time manually (1m 30s) and used the defrost setting.

From the thermal image below you can see that the bread is thoroughly defrosted on either side, but there’s a curved cold patch that runs through each slice. On touch, this part of the bread felt colder, but not frozen. I could easily toast this bread or wait a minute or so before making a sandwich with it.

I then cooked a potato using the auto programme, selecting the option for one serving. I washed and pricked the potato, but at the end of cooking, the potato felt a little hard when I pushed a fork through it, so I added a few minutes extra of cooking.

Once finished, the potato was fluffy on the inside, but the skin was soft as there’s no grill or oven option. I’d finish this potato off in an oven to get a nice crispy skin, although it was edible at this point.

Should you buy it?