I got my first microwave in the 1980s. I had heard lots about them and about a lot of gotchas. But, I had hoped to use it to turn the rocks (frozen hard food}) from the freezer into usable food in a few minutes. Nope, that didn't work well. A frozen chicken had cooked, grey, rubbery wings by the time the whole bird was defrosted, just as one example. Nowadays we don't just shove the food in the MW and try to defrost it at full power. We have better instructions. Also, my current MW has something called "turbo defrost". I tell it how much it weighs in kg or lbs and it figures out how to do a pretty good job of defrosting it. I can hear it change the power level part way through.