Super Bowl pizza challenge

Faster isn't necessarily better when you're feeding the fans

Apollo claims its $200 Half Time convection microwave oven is "the only oven in the world" that cooks like a conventional range in half the time. With Super Bowl XLIII coming on February 1, 2009, in Tampa Bay, Florida, we decided to complement our beer Ratings by testing that claim against a stack of frozen 12-inch pizzas and our top-scoring smoothtop electric range.

The Half Time is, indeed, fast: just 13 minutes for pizza in its combination convection-microwave mode, compared with 39 minutes, including preheating, for the Electrolux EW30EF65G range on its nonconvection setting. Both pizzas were slightly browned, though neither was especially crispy.

Could the Half Time outrun other convection microwaves? We tried the Kenmore Elite 6428, $250, a CR Best Buy. Pizza took a bit longer—25 minutes—but emerged brown and crispy. Yet when it came to crispy pies, even the Kenmore microwave couldn't beat the Electrolux range in its convection mode, which served up the crispiest slices (at right in the photo) in 34 minutes.

Bottom line

The Half Time saves time, but it was hardly a touchdown compared with a convection range or our top-scoring convection microwave.