We’re a family that loves homemade pizza, and cheesy bean burritos and tuna melts too. Read to the end of the post and you can see my simple tuna melt recipe. Those two things – toaster ovens and tuna melts – make me slightly nostalgic for the 80s and 90s when I was growing up making these in our toaster oven.
The Balmuda’s controls and capacity are also limited compared to our top picks. It offers just three temperature settings—350 °F, 400 °F, and 450 °F—plus four presets, and it can only fit two pieces of bread. The Balmuda has other design flaws (a flap on the door) and twee impracticalities (the easy-to-lose steam cup), and ultimately, we found it to be just a snazzy-looking prototype at best. The KitchenAid KCO211BM Digital Countertop Toaster Oven didn’t toast as evenly as our picks, and several slices of bread were burned in patches on the bottom. The Cuisinart TOB-40 Custom Classic Toaster Oven Broiler is easy to use, but on its medium setting, bread became too dark.
The quartz model costs about $25 more than the Calrod version (at the time of this publishing), but there wasn’t a huge difference in performance between the two. The underside of the toast we made was very uneven and patchy in the GE Quartz, while the GE Calrod toasted a bit more evenly. The cheese topping on Bagel Bites didn’t hamilton beach toaster melt as evenly in these models as our picks, and the bottoms were burned. Also, the wide gaps on either side of the oven racks allowed bread to slip through the slots and onto the bottom of the oven cavity. Additionally, as a Japanese appliance, the Panasonic FlashXpress is designed around degrees Celsius for temperature input.
The Hamilton Beach is the only toaster oven we tested with a door handle that becomes very hot to the touch at a temperature of 146.8 °F. The oven is extremely quiet as it operates with a dBA reading of 50.4; we virtually couldn’t hear it when it was running. Also, we found hamilton beach toaster oven the middle shade setting for toasting (setting 4) to be a bit dark. We recommend using setting 3 for making perfect golden-brown toast. The Cuisinart has a three-year limited warranty, whereas most similarly priced competitors include just one- or two-year warranties.
If you have your eye on a recipe written specifically for a pod-shaped air fryer (as most are) but want to prepare it in a convection toaster oven, you can get good results with some minor adjustments. You’ll need to wait until 2023 to buy or install a new electric oven, when the rebates (which will vary by state) go into effect. In the meantime, you may be pleasantly surprised by how much one of our larger picks (like the Cuisinart TOB-260N1 or the Breville Smart Oven Air Fryer Pro) can accomplish as a temporary replacement oven. The FlashXpress’s retro LED display looks more like a time bomb from a 1990s action thriller than a modern kitchen appliance (but we kind of love it). Although it’s not hard to read the display dead-on, it can be tricky to discern from some angles.
The De’Longhi Livenza Digital Convection Oven did not toast evenly in our tests. It also had a difficult time maintaining its internal temperature (which fluctuated between 322 °F and 369 °F when set to 350 °F). We also ran a bonus round to evaluate how well each oven could crisp up the skin on chicken thighs—a very telling test, as very few models excelled at this task. Ace Rewards members are eligible to receive free delivery on orders of $50 or more. Thank you for your interest in participating in Ace Hardware Corporation’s beta test of Ace Rewards® Platinum, a new membership program available for purchase by eligible Ace Rewards® program members. These Beta Test Program Terms constitute a binding agreement between you and Ace Hardware Corporation (“Ace” OR “we” OR “us”).
One disappointing thing about the Breville, especially at this price, is that it comes with a two-year warranty, whereas the Cuisinart has a three-year warranty. To learn even more about the Breville Air Fryer Pro, see our guide to the best air fryer toaster ovens. We also like that the FlashXpress beeps when the cycle has finished and turns itself off automatically (as does our other pick, the Cuisinart). This model also has an oven light, which is rare for toaster ovens at this price level.
The 2-in-1 combination oven and toaster allows you to do more in less space. Bake, broil and toast by switching cooking modes easily with the slide of a lever. Hamilton Beach’s new version of the Toastation is the 2-in-1 Countertop Oven and Toaster. It has the same great dual functionality as my old Toastation, but it’s even better. The oven can fit a 9-inch pizza — the old Toastation couldn’t — yet the overall size of the entire unit is not that much bigger.
The June Oven is a smart countertop model with an internal camera, a built-in probe thermometer (which estimates when your food will be cooked through), and several pre-programmed cooking functions. The HD camera can recognize certain ingredients, automatically prompting the interface to recommend corresponding cooking programs. Plus, a Wi-Fi connection allows you to use an app to monitor your food with the camera and control the oven from anywhere in your home—or even miles away.