With Father’s Day rapidly approaching, here’s a way to affirm him with a unique desktop gadget – the iwavecube™ personal microwave. While Dad is toiling away in his home away from home, having his very own personal microwave in his cubicle will certainly bring immeasurable joy. Considering how nasty shared use office kitchen microwaves can be, he’ll appreciate your thoughtfulness.
With a iwavecube™ personal microwave in the corner of his 8×8 cubicle, Ole Dad could be sipping on some reheated Starbucks coffee, a SmartOne or instant soup for lunch; or freshening the air with popcorn while reviewing TPS Reports.
With the easy carry handle, this cubic square foot microwave is easily portable.
The packaging suggests many uses wherever there is a three prong plug – in the family room, nursery, pool house, dorm room, at the game… I’m just not sure about in the bedroom, although the idea of waking up to the smell of Jimmy Dean mini sausage biscuits is compelling (assuming you have a mini fridge in the bedroom as well.)
This modern nuke ‘em machine measures 10″ x 10.5″ x 12″ and weighs only 12 lbs. It is designed to easily fit on a desktop or where space is at a premium. Typical of a small microwave, it heats coffee very well, does a good job with popcorn, or heating up baby bottles. The microwave power is only 600 watts, so it does take longer to heat items.
The interface located on the top is pretty simple to operate and intuitive. The timer is preset at 10 second, 1 minute and 5 minute increments. Since the iwave is not for heavy duty use, there are restrictions. Pressing the 10 second button several times will max out to 1 minute. The 1 minute button maxes out to 5 minutes and pressing the 5 minute button two times set the maximum of 10 minutes for a microwave session. To the right are preprogrammed settings for items such as hot pocket type sandwiches, Popcorn, Coffee, Soup and Rx Gel Pack.
The cooking times for the items are:
Hot Sandwich – 4 minutes 30 seconds
Gel Pack – 1 minute 40 seconds
Coffee – 5 minutes for 8 oz or 6 minutes for 12 oz (there are two settings COF1 or COF2)
Soup – 5 minutes for 10.75 oz or 6.30 minutes for 15.3 oz (there are two settings SOU1 or SOU2)
Popcorn – 4 minutes 30 seconds
Inside the visible door is a small cooking rack. There a little light that comes on when cooking items.
The cord is long enough to easily reach the floor…
The iwave has a child lock out feature which can be used to keep the riff raff at work from infringing on your own microwave space.
The iwavecube™ personal microwave is pretty cool looking, does the job well and is quite the conversation starter. I tell people that it’s a big iPod speaker that heats coffee. Besides it’s good office etiquette to offer to reheat one’s coffee.
The iwavecube™ personal microwave comes in several colors for your décor: black, red, silver, blue, green, pink, yellow and retails for $130.
MSRP: $130.00 Available from Sharper Image.
What I Like: The novelty and coolness of the smallest microwave invented, ability to instantly fill the office air with the smell of bacon and convenience of reheated coffee at the desk.
What Needs Improvement: Is pricey at $130 considering other microwaves can be obtained for less… but there is only one personal microwave that looks cool on a desktop!
Cool – I wonder whether Sharper Image stores will have these on clearance for their Bankruptcy sale?
The Sharper Image used to be cool. I remember the ads they used to have in Popular Science. I also seeing some of the first WinCE devices at a local Sharper Image. Now they are both gone replaced by some other non name brand store.
Awesome device to review. That is too, too cool! The possibilities of snacks and goodies at my desk has just increased exponentially.
*tosses out slippers* Won’t need those anymore.