Powerful, Convenient, Great Value

Author's Rating:

Pros: Cooks food well, easy to use and clean, great features

Cons: Installation somewhat difficult, carbon filters expensive

The Bottom Line: 
Great microwave, cooks and defrosts food very well, great stove venting, looks stylish, and easy to use and clean.

Author's Review
My husband and I remodeled our kitchen this past summer, and as part of that project, we decided we needed a new Over The Range Microwave to replace the ancient model that had come with the house when we bought it.
We knew we needed an Over The Range (OTR) model because our stove has no built-in exhaust hood, which was causing the overhead cabinets to become damaged from steam and heat from the stove. I also have limited counter space and was not willing to sacrifice any of it to accommodate a microwave.
We were shocked when we looked into the price of most OTR models. They ranged from $150 to over a thousand dollars, with most being in the $400-800 price range. We do use our microwave quite frequently (at least once a day), but we were not prepared to spend a fortune on this appliance. Therefore, we selected the Hotpoint RVM1435 model in white. We paid about $150 plus tax for it at Wal-Mart. This was the second cheapest OTR microwave we had seen, other than the "E-Wave", which we weren't willing to try because not only had we never heard of this brand, but it sounded like it might be better for sending e-mail then cooking food.
We have been thrilled with the Hotpoint RVM1435 Microwave. We use it mostly for reheating food, cooking frozen foods, and defrosting. It heats food evenly and very quickly. It has a great defrost feature that allows you to set the time to defrost either by the weight of the food to be defrosted, or simply the time you want it to defrost. I almost always use the "defrost by weight" option and I've been so happy with the results.
The interior of the microwave is very spacious and easy to clean. It has a rotating turntable, but it also has a feature where the microwave beeps halfway through the defrost setting telling you to flip the food over.
The exterior features an easy to use control panel with one-touch cooking for up to 6 minutes. If you want to cook longer than 6 minutes, or for, say 2 min 30 sec, then you use the Time Cook setting. I love the one-button operation and find it really convenient. It also has one-button operation for Microwave Popcorn and Beverages, as well as a Delay Start setting, but I've never actually used these. The microwave is sleek and looks very nice in our modern-style kitchen.
The microwave also has lights underneath the unit, which have a high and low setting and are used to illuminate the stove top surface. I really like this feature and it comes in handy.
Last but not least, the unit comes with a venting system to vent the steam/grease from your stovetop cooking. I am especially thrilled with this feature. The unit allows you to control the venting either straight up through a vent to the outside, sideways through a vent to the outside, or back into your kitchen through the grating in the top front of the microwave, in which case you need to purchase a carbon filter for it. Hotpoint does provide instructions for how to make a vent hole to the outside, but since we have a masonry wall home we decided that maybe breaking a hole in the wall for a vent would not be wise, and opted for the "vent back into the kitchen" option.
Although the vent works very well (almost hurricane strength on High), we did have to go online and buy a carbon filter from Hotpoint which cost about $42. I wasn't happy about the cost of the filter, especially since Hotpoint says the filter will need to be replaced every 6-12 months, but we thought it was better than busting a hole through our wall. I think our filter will actually last a lot longer than that since I don't tend to cook many greasy foods. If you cook fried chicken or the like on your stovetop, you will probably have to replace the carbon filter more frequently. Or you could just vent to the outside and not worry about the filter.
The microwave came with explicit instructions how to mount it onto your wall. It recommends two people install this, but I would recommend three people because the unit is extremely heavy. It took two people to hold it in place while my husband screwed in all the necessary bolts. One thing we did find frustrating was that the template provided to show you where to install all the mounting hardware did not match up exactly to the actual unit, so we had to remove some of the mounting hardware and re-do it so the hardware actually matched up to the microwave.
All in all, we are extremely happy with this microwave's performance and are really glad that we didn't spend a fortune on it. We highly recommend the Hotpoint RVM1435!