Microwave ovens that are also proper ovens are two a penny nowadays. So LG has taken it upon itself to go not just one but two better with the LG SolarCUBE that has four independent heat sources that it claims with cook you food much faster than anything else and more nutritiously.

The LG SolarCUBE itself is much bigger than most microwave (527 x 363 x 472mm - 26kg in weight), barring those big ones you can get for industrial kitchens and so did take up a lot of space in our compact kitchen. Although no doubt LG would say that because it combines so many different functions in one box we could probably do away with some our of other bits of kitchen.

None the less, for the money you get a 1900W grill, a 2200W convection oven and a 700W microwave.  Using it is simple enough, once you get over the passable, almost humorous English translations  that are contained within the instruction manual. As the machine is quite big you luckily get around 32 litres of capacity inside (so a Christmas turkey can be fitted in without too much of a problem).

It also has three racks so you can put in a few trays of cake should you so wish. The controls on the outside are the dial ones so setting it up to work involves turning the knobs around until you get the type of cooking then pressing a button and then twisting another knob to set the temperature setting and the cooking time. A couple ofLEDs tell you the type of cooking, the time and the power of the setting. This can take a while to get used to as we found sometimes that we chose the wrong type of cooking or set the power too high or the cooking time too short.

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