The back corners are the hardest bits to clean, but they’re also the least likely places food would spatter. The process of cleaning this oven is pretty much the same as cleaning a regular oven, albeit a bit easier, since I had it on a countertop and could turn it as I needed. The worst mess I made was when a wily pizza eluded my grasp, bounced off the back wall, and spewed toppings onto the floor of the oven. The crumb tray caught most of the mess, and the walls wiped clean with no fuss, thanks to the nonstick coating inside the oven. Of course, since rotisserie is in this product’s name, I had to test out that function—on birds up to 5 pounds, which is the oven’s limit. The most difficult thing about cooking a rotisserie chicken is tying it and getting it balanced on the spit so it can spin properly.
It’s compact design lends itself to one-and-done, single-serving dishes. You should buy this toaster if you’re looking to save money and don’t need a large, multi-function oven. This toaster is designed to bake simple snacks, re-heat leftovers, warm side dishes, or cook small, pre-made frozen meals. It’s great for after-school goodies and would also be perfect for a college student or someone living the studio apartment life. We found the same heating map inconsistency when toasting bagels.
The FlashXpress also had the most accurately calibrated settings. The light setting delivered barely-there toasting while the dark setting produced proper hamilton beach toaster oven dark pieces of toast without burning them. The Breville and Balmuda also nailed the light and dark toast cycles when I put them through their paces.
How well the toasters or toaster ovens produced a range of light to dark toast. I really liked the FlashXpress’ simple display and big buttons, and its easily-removable crumb tray. This toaster is also unusually light, weighing just 7.5 pounds. Most of the other best toaster ovens of this size are double the weight. This model from Hamilton Beach is a great choice if you make toast often, heat up frozen pizzas, make breaded chicken for the kids, or perhaps only cook for one or two.
As for accessories, this oven comes with a baking pan, oven rack, and slide-out crumb tray. For this metric, we gave the Easy Reach its highest marks for ease of cleaning. Likewise, cleaning out the oven’s interior is a breeze — another benefit of the roll-top door. When open, the oven is completely accessible, both visually and spatially, which allows fingers, rags or scrubbers to easily find their way into every corner. The Hamilton Beach Easy Reach 4-Slice is able to do most basic cooking tasks well and does so at a great price. You can’t fit huge portions in this compact oven, but what does fit inside will be cooked or baked consistently better than what you’d expect from such an inexpensive oven.
If I had known then what I know now about counter-top appliances like toaster ovens, I could have saved myself a lot of time, energy, and cuss words. The controls are easy to understand, with knobs to set the cooking method, temperature, and time. Depending on the lighting, sometimes it was difficult to read the settings since they are printed with silver ink on a shiny black surface. At 15 inches high, 23.4 inches wide, and 18 inches deep, this is a fairly large oven that eats quite a bit of countertop space.