Best Toaster Oven

Toaster ovens are one of kitchen workhorse as serving various culinary duties, from perfect golden-brown of toast for breakfast, bake cookies to broil a whole chicken for delightful dinners, or even reheat leftovers in the next morning. In fact, they can handle most duties of conventional full-sized toaster ovens in way faster, more energy efficient, smaller and cheaper. Today’s premium toaster ovens also offer amazing features, like slow cook, dehydrate and air fry.

The Competitors

Commonly, inexpensive toaster ovens come with limited capacity, feature and power. They’re designed for basic tasks—bake, toast and broil—as well as handling a portion of foods, such as toasting bread and bagel, cooking snacks or roasts some side dishes. Though some models might pack with superior features, like air fry and convection, the performance and quality aren’t as good as the pricier ones.

COMFEE’ (CFO-BB101) 4-Slice Compact Toaster Oven ($40*) has only 3 basic functions: bake, broil and toast. It’s fine for the price if you look for a basic, compact, lightweight and fast toaster for morning routines.

BLACK+DECKER TO3250XSB Extra Wide Convection Countertop Toaster Oven ($70*) is a best-selling model for value-accent. It offers a convection mode with spacious cooking capacity that accommodating 8 slices or a 9x13 inch tray. For the price, it cooks acceptably good—found some unevenly with burnt toasts but visibly better than many rivals. Still, it occupies a lot of counterspace.

BLACK+DECKER TO3265XSSD Extra Wide Crisp ’N Bake Air Fry Toaster Oven ($79*) offers relatively similar features as the TO3250XSB but replaces the convection function to ‘Air Fry’ mode. Unlike a convection oven, the convection fan of the TO3265XSSD can only work for the air fry setting and can’t be adjustable and gives disappointing performance—slow, ineffective cooking with a very small capacity.

Hamilton Beach (31123D) Easy Reach with Roll-Top Door Convection Countertop Toaster Oven ($80*) has an interesting open-up door instead of down for convenient ‘reaching’ to food and keep clean. Intolerably, it delivers uneven results—burnt rims and uncooked at the center of the foods. Also, there’re many complains about cheaply made materials and rapid overheat exterior that can lead to get a fire hazard.

Oster (TSSTTVMNDG) Large Digital Convection Oven ($95*) has lots of functionality and a utility cooking space, adapting a 12” pizza. At the inexpensive price range, the cooking performance is acceptably good for regular tasks—endorsed by the CNET’s Best Value Toaster Oven. However, aside from elusive interface, the convection cooking is quite slow and unproductive. Moreover, the quality of the whole assembly and plastic parts are quite poor, which might be risk getting burns from dangerously hot.

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Breville BOV450 Mini Smart Oven ($159*) is a good small oven—4 slices or a 11” pizza—as giving delicious bakes and toasts for daily routines. It works slower and less consistency than the Panasonic FlashXpress. Still, it’s our favorite alternative for compact model.

Breville BOV650 Compact Smart Oven ($189*) is pretty similar to the BOV450—a bit bigger and about $30 pricier.

Cuisinart TOB-40N Custom Classic Toaster Oven Broiler ($125*) is a good starter model—compact size (6 slices with a 11” pizza), simple setting, nice assembly and a nice warranty. Unfortunately, this 1800-watt oven has inconsistent heat element and no timer, so you’ll have to monitor closely to prevent overcooking and burning. The indicator is barely noticeable, too.

Cuisinart TOB-135N Deluxe Convection Toaster Oven Broiler ($200*) works reasonably well—less consistent than the Cuisinart TOB-260N but can get the jobs done. Irritatingly, it’s found that the labels will wear off the writing in a few months of use, which makes hard to use in the future.

Calphalon TSCLTRDG1 Quartz Heat Countertop Toaster Oven ($199*), as an America’s Test Kitchen’s recommended product, brought golden toast, melty pizza and well-browned cookies, in their empirical tests. Still, with only 2 racks and unsuitable rack position, it’s much less effective at broiling. Moreover, it’s quite bulkier than our picks while offering less evenness and smaller.

Calphalon TSCLTRDG1 Quartz Heat Countertop Toaster Oven

NUWAVE BRAVO XL Air Fry Smart Oven ($179*) boasts for a smart operation and a temperature probe for scientifically perfect results. Unlike the Breville, this unit is too complicated to set and control for non-techies, oldies, and beginners. The manual is apparently helpless, as well.

De’Longhi EO141150M Livenza (0.5 cu ft.) Digital Compact Convection Oven ($200*) is a well-designed compact and solid-made model. At the same dimension, it offers a bigger space that fitting a 12” pizza and lots of functions without sacrificing loads of counterspace. If you’re not serious about uneven brown toasts and not-so-crispy air fries, it’s good user-friendly model.

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Undeniably, Breville is the big and reliable player for toaster ovens as having the impressive heat regulator (known as the Element IQ Technology), quality material and cooking results.

Breville BOV800 Compact Smart Oven ($269*) is a previous model that nearly identical to our pick, the Breville BOV845 Smart Oven Pro. If you don’t mind for a slow cooker function, an interior light and less color option of the BOV845, it’s an unbeatable choice that is slightly cheaper.

Breville BOV900 Smart Oven Air ($400*) is a gold standard of the all-in-one countertop appliance that can really replace a full-sized machine. It’s our pick for solid performance.

Cuisinart TOA-65N Digital AirFryer Toaster Oven ($280*) shares most similarities as the old dial version, the Cuisinart TOA-60N as offering the same capacity, wattage and cooking results. The new features of The TOA-65N are the digital controller and additional low temperature setting for slow cooking, proofing and braising (but not impressive as done in a Dutch oven, a pressure cooker or even the Breville BOV845BSS). Think about spending an extra $80, the non-digital TOA-60N can fulfil the duties in a better value.

DeLonghi Livenza EO241250M Convection Oven with TriplePro Surround Cooking ($269*) has inconsistency control. For the price, it’s unsuccessful to precisely set and maintain exact temperature. It can toast and brown but not as even as the Breville or Cuisinart.

Sharp Superheated Steam Countertop Oven ($349*)—leans to a steam oven than a toaster oven—is quite a par competitor of the BALMUDA The Toaster | Steam Oven Toaster ($329*) delivers less consistency and less juicy toasts.

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This is a new trend of cooking. These products offer ‘smart’ features, like precise censors, inside camera, remote or voice control, or even knowing what to cook. At any rate, they’ve the cost to pay.

Tovala Gen 2 Smart Steam Oven ($299*)—a smart convection oven with a steamer function—bakes and toasts less evenly than the Breville’s. The steam cooking is remarkable but is bewilderingly confused to understand. In practice, it’s recommended for folks who can afford $12 a ready-to-cook meal than home chefs who want to prepare meals with their own ingredients. If you need a good toaster oven with steam feature, the Cuisinart CSO-300 Convection Steam Oven ($345*) is a stronger choice.

Breville Smart Oven Pizzaiolo ($999*) can deliver restaurant-quality bakes—pies, breads and pizzas—in amazingly fool-proofed action; just turn the knob to select which type (350°F, frozen, pan, NY, thin & crispy, wood-fired or 750°F) and time to cook. The ability to hit 750°F allows to make authentic pizzas just about 100 seconds.

Though the Pizzaiolo is peerless for making special bakes (mainly pizzas) in both easiest setting and spectacular result, it’s rather an additional kitchen gadget than serving the versatile kitchen tasks. If you fall for the taste of crunchy, restaurant-edition pizzas and have more bucks to burn, this is a no-regret choice.

June Oven ($599 - $999*) is a real smart machine at the standpoint of technology with an internal HD camera, a built-in probe, a sophisticated touchscreen display and tons of cooking presets. Creatively, the June works like an AI unit. After place the foods in, it will detect and recognize the certain ingredients and what temperature to cook then automatically programs cook setting. It also allows to see, monitor and control your foods from the inside camera via Alexa voice control through Wi-Fi or their friendly-designed apps from miles away.

June Oven

However, having the ‘smart’ things cut off, the June doesn’t yield phenomenal performance than the top models, such as the Breville BOV845 (or upper than the Smart Oven series) and the Cuisinart TOB-260—Say, it cooks great but not noticeably better than these decent non-tech models. The intelligent technology is real but is scarified by nearly double cost of regular toaster ovens.

Sensibly, if the main reason to buy an oven is to do basic things like reheat pizzas or toasts, it mightn’t worth the price. At the same way, if you’re experience cooks—who experiencedly knows which effective temperature and time to cook—and don’t rave about smart things, this is a splurge, either.

Brava Smart Oven ($1,095*)—feels a lot like a giant Apple product—has the same vibe of the June Oven for the smart and sophisticated cooking concept. It proposes piles of inspiring features for tech-enthusiastic people—6 high-powered lamps, 8 temperature sensors, 2 particle detectors and a temperature probe for controlling the oven temperature and the cooking time consistently. The Brava does deliver impressive cooking results from smart controlling (via Alexa or apps) as advertised.

Paradoxically, the Brava claimed for “fastest oven in the world”, this can work only to certain foods, mostly for basic tasks, while this expensive machine takes plenty of counterspace and only cooks for four serves (or just two hungry adults). Moreover, the interface is not flexible for non-preprogramed settings and complicated to learn for non-techies.

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