A promising magnetic refrigerant, AlFe 2 B 2 , has been prepared for the first time by microwave (MW) melting of a mixture of constituent elements. For comparison, samples of AlFe 2 B 2 have been also prepared by arc-melting, traditionally used for the synthesis of this material, and by induction (RF) melting, which was used in the very first report on the synthesis of AlFe 2 B 2 . Although an excess of Al has to be used to suppress the formation of ferromagnetic FeB, the other byproduct, Al 13 Fe 4 , is easily removed by acid treatment, affording phase-pure samples of AlFe 2 B 2 . Our analysis indicates that the equimolar Fe/B ratio typically used for the preparation of AlFe 2 B 2 might not provide the best synthetic conditions, as it does not account for the full reaction stoichiometry. Furthermore, we find that the initial Al/Fe loading ratio strongly influences magnetic properties of the sample, as judged by the range of ferromagnetic ordering temperatures (T C = 280−293 K) observed in our experiments. The T C value increases with the decrease in the Al/Fe ratio, due to the change in the Al/Fe antisite disorder. The use of the same Al/Fe loading ratio in the arc-, RF-, and MW-melting experiments leads to samples with a more consistent T C of 286−287 K and similar values of the magnetocaloric effect.