Factors we evaluated
Toasting capability
When making toast—a toaster oven’s primary function—we looked for even color on both sides of the bread. In back-to-back rounds of toasting, we were especially concerned with whether or not the toast would burn.
Other cooking capabilities
We looked at how consistently, evenly, and efficiently each oven cooked a variety of foods. When reheating frozen pizza, we wanted a crispy bottom, evenly melted cheese, and a browned crust. For the cookies, we wanted melty insides, golden exteriors, and crispy edges. When roasting chicken, we looked for crispy, golden skin and juicy meat that was cooked throughout. We also paid attention to whether or not the oven’s presets performed as expected.
Accessories
Beyond the always-included rack, we looked at what accessories came with each oven. Some were very limited, while others included extra racks, baking sheets, trays, roasting racks, and air-fry baskets.
Ease of use
Because it’s more of an accessory appliance, a toaster oven should be easy to use, so we looked for user-friendly control panels and gave preference to those with intuitive knobs or buttons and backlit LCD digital displays. We also considered how hard or easy it was to clean each oven and how much effort it took to remove and replace the removable crumb tray.
Size
Any appliance that’s going to live semi-permanently on the counter needs to be worth whatever space it takes up. So for the bigger ovens, especially, we looked at whether they were functional and versatile enough to warrant everyday use and whether or not they could eliminate the need for other countertop cookers.
Other toaster ovens we tested
Until it was unseated by the Breville Joule, the Breville Smart Oven Compact Convection was our long-reigning product test winner thanks to its consistency, ease of use, and thoughtful features. It has a Fahrenheit-to-Celsius converter, a button that tells the oven you’re cooking something frozen, and an indicator that shows you how long the cooking or toasting cycle will be. This oven produced consistent results when we made toast, cookies, frozen pizza and chicken, and save for the Joule Oven, it gives the user more control than any other toaster oven we tested. With a footprint of 15x17x10 inches, the compact oven is big enough to bake an 8×8-inch pan of brownies, cook a 12-inch pizza, or roast a generous piece of salmon, but small enough to be reasonably discreet. If you’re not interested in an extra-large toaster oven (or something that’s super techy), but you still want the quality and smart features of a Breville oven, this is a great option at a much lower price point than the Joule.
Consider the Breville Smart Oven Air Fryer Pro the middle ground between the Breville Smart Oven Compact Convection and the Breville Joule Oven Air Fryer Pro, in terms of size, technology, and price point. Similar to the compact convection model, this one is equipped with all the basic cooking functions, like toast, bake, and roast, but it can also slow cook and dehydrate. Additionally, it has a “super convection” setting (a faster speed for the convection fan) that amps up your food’s crispiness and reduces the cooking time. We found the presets on this toaster oven to be more accurate than the presets on most other toaster ovens, so it’s hard to under- or over-cook your food—even if you’re not following a recipe. This machine churned out ultra-crispy, golden brown chicken tenders and tater tots, and it produced some of the best results for frozen pizza. The Smart Oven Air Fryer Pro is among the easiest and most intuitive to operate, and it’s truly a joy to use. Compared to the Breville Joule, the only thing this oven is missing is app connectivity. But if you’re interested in something that’s larger than the compact convection model and smaller than the Joule, you don’t care so much about having a mobile app, and you’re looking to save a couple hundred bucks—this is a wonderful option.
Though we didn’t like it as much as the Breville models, the Ninja Foodi was still an excellent air fryer–toaster oven combo. Like the Breville ovens, the interface allowed us to customize the cook times based on how many slices we were toasting, as well as the level of browning desired. We had less success baking recipes with short cooking times, and not only because the preheat took longer than the 90 seconds the product copy promised. We were, however, very happy with the air fryer function on this oven; tater tots and chicken tenders came out beautifully crisp and golden brown. We also used the air fryer function to reheat cold pizza we’d had delivered the night before—just three minutes at 400° produced reheated pizza that tasted just as hot and fresh as it did when it showed up at our door.
The KitchenAid countertop oven has nine cooking functions with presets and a sleek digital interface that’s easy to read and use. It also has a preheat function that lets you know the oven has come to temperature for baking or roasting tasks. This machine produced some of the most evenly browned toast in our tests. Other machines had a tendency to produce darker toast near the middle of the rack and lighter toast near the edges of the rack, but the KitchenAid produced toast that was evenly browned all over, regardless of the toast’s position on the rack. And while not quite as crispy as the food cooked in the Breville toaster ovens, this one made stellar chicken, tater tots, and frozen pizza.
Over the course of several years of testing, the Panasonic Flash Xpress has maintained its status as our favorite smaller, more affordable toaster oven—but only by a hair. Its top competitor, the Hamilton Beach Stainless-Steel 4-Slice Toaster Oven, has consistently browned slices of toast quickly and evenly. It also has more intuitive dials for selecting temperature, function (toast, broil, bake), and time. Ultimately though, the Hamilton Beach didn’t quite perform as well as the Panasonic. For example, it took nearly 20 minutes to bake cookies from frozen balls of dough in the Hamilton Beach model versus just 14 in the Panasonic.
The cube-shaped Wonder Oven has a modern, minimalist design that comes in a few neutral colors and fits within a certain Instagrammable aesthetic. While it has a modern look, it works like a traditional toaster oven. Instead of having a digital interface, this six-in-one machine uses three manual knobs: one for temperature, one for cooking mode, and one for time. The timer even audibly ticks away the seconds like an old school toaster oven, and a loud “ding” sounds off when the cooking is complete. It’s definitely got fun retro vibes. The Wonder Oven has two rack positions and it can toast, bake, air fry, roast, broil, and reheat. It also has the ability to steam bake, which came in handy for reviving stale bread and reheating leftover pizza. We found that this machine ran hot, and things like toast and cookies browned comparably fast, which means that food requires a bit of babysitting to ensure it doesn’t burn. That said, this toaster oven produced immaculate frozen chicken tenders and roasted chicken thighs. For both, the chicken remained juicy and tender on the inside and was crispy and gold-brown on the outside. At 11.5 inches wide, this is one of the smallest toaster ovens we’ve used, and it’s also one of the lightest. So if you’re looking for a toaster oven that’ll take up very little counter space, or something you can stow away when not in use, this is a machine to consider.
The Crux Artisan Series Digital Air Fryer Toaster Oven looks and operates similarly to the Breville ovens, but it’s not quite as nice. The convection fan has a regular setting and turbo setting for air-frying, and this model comes with a removable air-frying basket and drip tray. The oven can also run for up to 24 hours, making overnight slow cooking or dehydrating very doable. Unfortunately, the knobs and buttons on the control panel are overly sensitive, especially while the oven is hot, and it beeps loudly every time you press a button or turn a knob.
The Oster Digital RapidCrisp Air Fryer Oven has a simple and intuitive interface. It made decent toast on our first try, however subsequent batches yielded inconsistently browned, disappointing results. It did a good job with frozen pizza, roast chicken, and baked goods, but ultimately, this oven makes countertop cooking more complicated than it has to be. The timer starts counting down as soon as you press “start,” and because it doesn’t have a preheat function, we had to add three minutes or so to our cook times, then wait around to put the food in once the oven had reached the desired temperature. Additionally, it lacks an interior light and it’s harder to clean than many of the other models we tested.
The Cuisinart Convection Toaster Oven Air Fryer was truly disappointing. The bulky machine feels and looks like a tank, and for the price, it lacks finesse. The timer is on a dial, which made it difficult to tell how long we were setting it for, and we didn’t like the top-heavy design, with the controls set over the door, either. This oven also runs very hot. The medium setting for toast lasted a full five minutes and produced bread that bordered on burnt; the cheese on the frozen pizza browned and puffed up instead of melting.
The Oster Large Capacity Countertop 6-Slice Digital Convection Toaster Oven is conspicuously large and has an inscrutable interface; even the manual didn’t specify the appropriate rack positions for different functions. As for performance, the medium setting for toast lasted a lengthy five minutes 15 seconds—and it resulted in burnt bread (you had one job, toaster oven!).
This sleek-looking oven from the maker of the Instant Pot has an intuitive touchscreen interface, and we were impressed with its air-frying capabilities. Unfortunately, it repeatedly ruined our toast, and while it did bake cookies in just five minutes instead of the expected 10, the browning was uneven and blotchy like a bad spray tan. Likewise, a frozen pizza that should have taken 20 minutes to bake took only 10, but the edges got super dark before the pizza reached an internal temperature of 165°F. The instruction manual was confusing, and considering the price ($250 at the time of publishing), the accessories are lacking. This machine comes with one rack, a fryer basket, and one baking sheet, which slides into the same grooves as the rack. But the included sheet pan is just a hair too wide, so it scratched the interior walls every time we slid it into the oven.
In our testing, Black + Decker’s 4-Slice Toaster Oven toasted the first two slices of bread quickly and evenly, but burned the toast on the second round. It did a respectable job considering its low price, but it ran hot and we didn’t love the design or the control knobs.
Additional reporting by Jarrett Melendez, Emily Farris, and Tiffany Hopkins.
+ There are no comments
Add yours