The 15 best combination microwaves for easy dinner-times

Score: 90/100

Proving a real all-rounder, our experts awarded this microwave full marks for its microwaved jacket potatoes and near perfect marks for its roasting, baking and grilling. Its clear manual and intuitive interface also make preparing more than your traditional microwave meals easy – even a roast chicken.

It was efficient too; cooking our jacket potato used just 10p of electricity. You can’t set its grill and convection power and temperatures manually, but otherwise it’s a real box-ticker.

Score: 90/100

Unlike others on this list, this is a built-in combination microwave. It has a 45-litre capacity and it’s packed with fancy features, including a small touchscreen display for easy navigation between the different programmes, voice control and an accompanying app where you can monitor your diner’s progress remotely.

In our test kitchen, it heated soup and frozen ready meals well, but struggled with defrosting mince, leaving parts cooked and other areas still frozen. A turntable would have been helpful in this instance to help distribute heat more evenly. It excelled grilling sausages and baking golden cupcakes, though.

Plus, it’s taller than most standard microwaves, making it ideal for larger dishes. Testers cooked a one-kilogram chicken in less than 40 minutes and the results were truly impressive – think crispy skin and juicy, tender meat.

Score: 90/100

Everyone loves an air fryer, so unsurprisingly, this multitasking appliance with air fryer functionality was a hit with our experts. When testing the air fryer mode, they enjoyed a well-cooked, tender whole roast chicken and delicious sausages – add some fluffy mash and that’s dinner sorted in just ten minutes.

It performed equally well as a standard combi microwave, scoring highly in our soup, jacket potato, ready meal and defrosting tests. Only mac and cheese proved a challenge – it cooked as we’d expect, but the cheese didn’t become golden.

We wished the air fryer tray was dishwasher-proof for a quicker clean-up, but otherwise, we can't complain.

Score: 88/100

Combining all the best air fryer and microwave benefits, this smart machine from Sage, which is also a grill and convection oven, is another great multitasker. It’s a premium buy, but because of its many functions, it can be a tad confusing to use, so keep the manual close by at first.

It’s an outstanding cooker though; our testers declared its roast chicken one of the best on test and awarded its mac and cheese and jacket potatoes a perfect score.

Score: 88/100

This combi microwave was the simplest to use of all the models we tested, with an easy-to-read manual and responsive buttons that make cooking effortless. Our testers were impressed with its tender, juicy roast chicken and found the grill and combination cooking modes effective. It even baked cupcakes well.

Though not the sleekest or most powerful model on test, this means your electricity bill should be lower – we used just 11p of electricity for a jacket potato.

Score: 87/100

Like the Sage above, this Salter is ideal if you want to join the air fryer train without sacrificing precious kitchen space. Its dedicated setting prepared fluffy yet crispy chips and some delicious chicken Kyivs too.

With a 26-litre capacity, it offers lots of flexibility; on test, our experts cooked a roast chicken in 41 minutes, and praised its ready meal and jacket potato prep skills too. But our mac and cheese lacked wow factor as the pasta was quite firm. Not all the features are dishwasher-safe either (although the turntable is) but this sleek microwave is well designed and easy to use, making dinner time simple.

Score: 84/100

This powerful combi does it all, including cooking up a Sunday roast thanks to its 29 auto-cook programmes that include roast lamb and beef. Plus, when we used the convection oven and microwave combination, we tucked into a succulent chicken after just 45 minutes.

It effortlessly baked fluffy fairy cakes, grilled crispy-yet-juicy sausages, and produced a golden-topped mac and cheese. It’s ideal if you tend to cook for only one or two people, as it saves you heating a large oven and performs just as well.

Score: 83/100

Another impressive offering from Panasonic, this one does everything the above model can, and it steams food too. Its large 31-litre capacity means it competently doubles as an oven when needed, with ample room to roast a big chicken or bake a generously sized cake.

The defrost function let it down, as our beef was still frozen after the programme concluded, but its intuitive, easy-to-use display and controls, plus the range of accessories to suit your cooking preferences (there's a steaming trivet), make this a versatile buy.

Score: 83/100

Bakers, this one may be a game-changer for you, as it boasts a dough-proofing programme! Our fairy cakes were scrumptious too. It also has all the usual functions you’d want from a combi; it cooked a mouth-watering roast chicken in 41 minutes and defrosted minced beef well.

Our testers were also pleased by the grill’s browning skills (note, you can't set its temperature manually), but found it struggled to heat soup and a chilled ready meal evenly. It gets bonus points for its thoughtful design functions though – you can turn the beeper off if it grates, and it has an eco-button that switches off the machine’s LCD display to save electricity.

Score: 82/100

This microwave offers convenience and flexibility with its cooking options. Testers were impressed with its general microwaving skills (which delivered a beautifully cooked jacket potato) as well as its grill function.

What makes this Samsung smart, though, is its app features. You can check cooking times, follow guides and recipes, and even add ingredients to your shopping list from your phone. We programmed it to defrost a 1.5-kilogram chicken, and it calculated the right length of time, fully defrosting it within 24 minutes.

It won’t start the programmes though, so you still need to do this manually, and its auto-cook function disappointed a little; our frozen lasagne needed an extra minute to reach a safe temperature for eating. Still, that's not a dealbreaker and there was a lot to love about this machine, including its large viewing window, easy-to-clean interior, and delicious fairy cake-baking skills.

Score: 81/100

Perfect if you’re short on time, this combi gets grilling without any preheating, so you can tuck into those evenly browned sausages in no time. It fared well across most other tests too; our roast chicken emerged golden after just 40 minutes, while our batch of fairy cakes was also perfect.

When defrosting and microwaving, it proved largely reliable, but faltered when cooking our frozen ready meals, leaving one lasagne barely cooked after the recommended time. This aside, with its 34-litre capacity, it's a good family feeder.

Score: 81/100

Uniquely, this combi doesn’t have a turntable, so your dishes remain static and cleaning is effortless because you don’t have to contend with any rotating parts. Handily, you can also fit in larger dishes. However our experts found the buttons weren’t always that responsive, and they would have liked an adjustable grill rack, as the one provided has a fixed height.

It wasn’t the strongest grill on test either; our bread and sausages weren’t that evenly browned. But it warmed our soup, mac and cheese and jacket potatoes evenly and it’s affordable, making it a solid pick for heating large amounts of food.

Score: 81/100

Another Panasonic model and another steam combi, this is a great buy if you want to cook in a way that locks in lots of nutrients. Overall, it’s well designed and simple to use thanks to clearly labelled controls and programme descriptions. It doesn’t have a turntable, but its cooking was reliable, producing excellent grilled sausages and a top notch roast chicken.

Note, however, that condensation built up when we used the steam function alongside the microwave one, so we had to wipe it down after we used it to cook our jacket potatoes. But a tea towel should absorb it in seconds, and it cleans up nicely, too.

Score: 80/100

While this Samsung model doesn’t have a convection oven (so skip if you want one for cakes and roasts), it does have a grill with one temperature setting that’s perfect for giving microwave meals a crispy finish. It also has a whopping 40 auto programmes, including ones for rice and fresh fish, alongside a nifty “keep warm” function.

On test, we enjoyed evenly cooked food, well-defrosted minced beef and crispy jacket potatoes with fluffy insides. It’s not the fanciest of combis, but it’s more affordable and compact than many on this list – ideal for smaller kitchens.

Score: 80/100

The speediest of chicken roasters, this combi’s auto roast setting served up a bird in just 37 minutes. Impressively, its breast meat was succulent, but the legs were a little overdone, so it may also be worth exploring its manual modes, as you can fully adjust the power levels and temperatures when combination cooking.

A detailed manual will guide you through this, along with all its other functions, which produced well-heated and cooked food as well as nicely defrosted meat. The grill gave our sausages a patchier finish than most, but given its extensive capabilities, this microwave is excellent value – especially for often pricey Panasonics.