Samsung Combi Smart Microwave Oven MC32DG7646CKE3 review

Samsung Combi Smart Microwave Oven: two-minute review

The Samsung Combi Smart Microwave Oven aims to be an all-in-one appliance that'll handle a whole range of different kitchen tasks, and it's smart home compatible too. For this review, I tested the MC32DG7646CKE3 Combi Smart Microwave Oven with Air Fry, 32L model, which can operate as a convection oven, as well as having air fry, grill and microwave modes, alongside a dizzying array of presets. I wanted to see if it really can deliver all of those functions, and if it could provide an all-in-one alternative to one of the best air fryers.

Overall, I was pretty impressed. Although its very large and bulky, the design is sleek and smart. It's also impressively intuitive to use, given how many different settings it needs to be able to cover.

On test, the microwave, grill and oven cook modes all worked exactly as I'd hoped. However, the air frying was a little disappointing – it's slower, and the results are less crispy than when using a dedicated machine.

The app is well-designed and easy to navigate, but limited in what it can achieve remotely. You can use it to create a cooking plan (mode, temperature, duration) and it'll update you on progress as it works, but you still need to press a button on the machine itself to start it cooking.

My main performance complaint – and it's going to sound petty but it really is annoying – is that it's set up so that it beeps far too much, and if you turn the beeper off, it won't beep at all.

Beeper woes aside, I found this a well-designed, high-quality product that goes a long way to justifying it's quite-high price tag. It'll be great for anyone who wants lots of versatility but doesn't have space for many dedicated appliances. Just don't expect it to replace your air fryer any time soon. That's the short version; read on for my full Samsung Combi Smart Microwave Oven review.

Note: in the range, there's also the MC32DB7746KCE3 Combi Smart Microwave Oven with Air Fry & Steam 32L for £349. This has many of the same functions as the model I reviewed, but adds a steam mode.

Samsung Combi Smart Microwave Oven review: price & availability

• List price: £329, or £349 for version with added Steam mode
• Available: UK
• Launched: July 2024

Samsung Combi Smart Microwave Oven with Air Fry MC32DG7646CKE3 has a list price of £329. If you opt for the version with added 'steam' mode (MC32DB7746KCE3), that costs £349.

Compared to a standalone air fryer or microwave, it's expensive. We count any air fryer that's more than £200 as premium. However, this is a combi model, so you have to factor in the other versatility, and also the large capacity.

A similar-ish model would be the Ninja Combi 12-in-1 Multi-Cooker, Oven & Air Fryer SFP700UK, which costs £279.99. However, it can't microwave food.

Overall, the build quality is high and the design is effective, and I feel like it's fairly well priced for what you're getting here. Sales events like the Black Friday deals can be an especially good time to shop for appliances like this one if you're looking to avoid paying full price.

• Value for money score: 4 out of 5

Samsung Combi Smart Microwave Oven specs

Samsung Combi MC32DG7646CKE3 review: design

• Big and bulky, with large internal capacity
• Slick design with touchscreen controls
• Comes with crisping plate and two racks to stack food

If you're having trouble visualizing what a 32L capacity looks like, I'll save you some trouble: the Samsung Combi Smart Microwave is big. The exterior measures 51.5cm in depth, it's 52.3cm wide and 33cm tall (it stands on little feet, which elevate it from your work surface).

That generous size is great if you want to cater for a lot of people, but make sure your space can accommodate it, and remember it also needs ventilation room too – Samsung recommends at least 10cm at the back and on each side, and 20cm from the top.

Otherwise, it looks roughly like any of the microwave oven. There's a glossy front with a window to see inside, an LED timer display, and one 'multi-function selector' knob. You can select your cooking mode via a touchscreen panel, and there are also touchscreen buttons for stop/eco mode, smart control, and start/+30s.

Slightly more unusually, the door opens forwards, with hinges at the base, rather than sideways. There's no clunky button to release it, just a large, deep groove running along the top.

It comes with the usual heavy glass plate and roller ring, which need to be used for all cooking modes. There's also two metal racks (one taller, one shorter). These can be used in grill, convection and combination cooking, and enable you to double-stack your dishes and heat more things at once.

Finally, there's a round metal tray that Samsung (pleasingly) refers to as the Crusty Plate in its user manual. This is designed to help brown food better in combination cooking modes – so it'll help keep your pizza base crisp and ensure sure you avoid soggy bottoms on your quiches.

The model I tested has four main modes, which are listed down the side of the control panel. These are: convection, air fry, grill, microwave, and auto cook.

Under the auto cook function, there are a ton of presets – 12 'air fry' options (including frozen oven chips, potato wedges, and chicken wings), 15 'healthy cooking' options (including brown rice, spinach, and chicken breasts – grilled or not), five 'dough proof / yoghurt' options (pizza dough, bread dough, yoghurt small cups, yoghurt large bowl) and four 'auto reheat / cook' options (ready meal, frozen pizza, muffins).

You've also got five different 'power defrost' settings – for meat, poultry, fruit, and bread or cake. In short, far more presets than you'll ever need or use.

As well as controls on the microwave itself, you can operate it remotely (to a certain extent) using the Samsung SmartThings app. I'll cover this in more detail in the Performance section.

• Design score: 4.5 out of 5

Samsung Combi Smart Microwave Oven review: performance

• Intuitive controls, impressive given number of functions
• Great for microwaving and cooking, but less so for air frying
• App is well designed, but limited in what it can do remotely

To assess performance, I tested the Samsung Combi Smart Microwave Oven's various modes on a range of different food types, including skinny sweet potato fries, a flatbread (cooked from raw), frozen veggie meatballs, and cherry tomatoes and peppers. Overall, I found that the Samsung Combi worked well in most modes, with a few caveats.

Let's start with the controls. Given how many functions this appliance offers, these are impressively intuitive and well-designed. You can select a mode using the touchscreen, or via the knob. Rotating the knob cycles you through settings, and pressing it in Enters and shifts you onto the next parameter (so Mode > temperature > duration). It is also possible to select settings via the app, but I'll explore that in its own section further down.

Alternatively, if you select Auto Cook, it'll prompt you to select numbers relating to the menu inside the Combi's door. So 2 – 9 for grilled tomatoes, for instance. Note: you can't access these presets via the app.

The app will inform you that the microwave is preheating, and when it's done. How long that takes depends on the mode and when you last used the oven, but for my initial air frying session it took over three and a half minutes, which felt long for an air fryer, although it wouldn't be for a full-sized oven.

The Samsung Combi is definitely far slower to air fry compared to my dedicated air fryer. I used it for some thin, frozen sweet potato fries. My air fryer gets these super crispy and hot through in around six minutes; in the Samsung Combi they were in for 11 or 12, and still pretty soggy at that point, if I'm honest.

I will give it some leeway for the larger capacity, and I also wonder if part of this is that the air isn't circulating all around the food as it would in an air fryer – it sits on a solid plate at the base of the cavity.

A couple more notes on air frying, in case you were thinking of buying it for this purpose. First, the maximum temperature is 200C, which is fine for most things but many air fryers go up a little higher. Personally, I'd like the option of going to 220C to crisp up fries and so on. I also found it a lot noisier than my dedicated air fryer, and the fans continued whirring for a while after the cooking was complete.

General convection cooking was effective, and a little faster than my full-size oven, but not massively so. To test the Crusty Plate, I added a raw flatbread. After cooking, it was definitely a bit browner on the top than on the bottom, but not soggy.

A quick PSA: you will need to remember not to treat this device like a microwave if you're not using it in Microwave mode – the metal plate will heat up, and you will get burned if you don't use gloves.

Microwaving also worked well, as I'd expect. There is an Eco mode, which is combined with the touchscreen button for Stop, but I couldn't work out how to access it without just turning the whole machine off. I guess that is the most eco-friendly option, but I assume not what Samsung intended.

There's also a five-minute Deodorize mode, designed for removing food smells. I tried this, and it seemed to work pretty well.

While this appliance is mostly intuitive to use, I would have preferred slightly more in the way of instructions for different modes. Should I raise the Crusty Plate near to the grill element for Grill mode? I did, but nowhere did it tell me to do this. Can I use the metal accessories when operating in Microwave mode? The manual says they are for Combination cooking, but one of the Combi modes includes microwaving. It feels very wrong though, and I didn't test it for fear of blowing up my kitchen.

In fact, my main complaint with the Samsung Combi actually has nothing to do with the cooking. It has to do with the incessant bleeping. Samsung has really gone for an all-or-nothing approach here. With sounds switched on, you get a bleep for every increment you go up for down when selecting settings (cooking for five minutes? That's 30 bleeps). It'll also continue to beep at you every minute or so if you don't remove the food from the machine.

You can switch off sounds via your SmartThings app, but then you don't get any feedback at all, so it won't even bleep to tell you when it's done. The solution, if you don't want to lose your mind, is to sort all the settings via the app and then send it to the microwave, but I don't think you should have to do that. Speaking of which...

App

This microwave is compatible with the Samsung SmartThings app – the hub from which you can control all Samsung Smart Home devices. Linking up your microwave is simple, and I found the app well-designed and intuitive to use.

You can select time and cooking mode settings within the app (referred to as a 'recipe') and then send it to the microwave. Then you need to press the Smart control button on the microwave for it to 'receive' the settings, and then press Start. If you enable notifications, it'll send a popup to your phone when your food is ready.

There are more modes in the app than you can access on the Samsung Combi's manual controls. For instance, it includes 'Grill Combi' (microwave plus grill) and 'Convection Combi' (bake plus roast). However, you can't access the machine's presets via the app. You're also a bit limited by the fact that you still need to be near the Combi to set it off. You can't change modes remotely – say, set it to grill to crisp up some chips after oven baking.

• Performance score: 3.5 out of 5

Should you buy the Samsung Combi Smart Microwave Oven?

Buy it if...

Don't buy it if...

How I tested the Samsung Combi Smart Microwave Oven

• Tested all the different cooking functions
• Made a range of different foods
• Tried controlling it via the app as well as manually

For this Samsung Combi Smart Microwave Oven review, I tried out all the different cooking modes, and compared them to my experience using standalone appliances (my microwave, oven, grill and air fryer). I used it to cook a range of foods, including flatbreads, grilled vegetables, fries and veggie meatballs. I also downloaded and used the app, seeing how easy it was to operate the machine remotely as well as manually.

Read more about how we test

First reviewed October 2024