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”).
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.
Balmuda’s The Toaster is a $300 appliance that’s different from most other toaster ovens because it steams bread while it toasts. In theory, it’s supposed to help keep the “inner moisture and flavor from escaping,” but we’re not convinced it makes a difference. In fact, we weighed white sandwich bread and rustic sourdough bread before and after toasting to see how much moisture the bread retained. On average, plain white sandwich bread actually retained less moisture when toasted in the Balmuda than when toasted in our top pick, the Cuisinart.
However, in our research, we’ve found that toaster ovens have a longer life expectancy than slot toasters. If you don’t have room for both appliances in your kitchen, we’d recommend getting a toaster oven instead. It was the Hamilton Beach Toastation, a combination mini-oven and toaster. What made the Toastation unique is that it had a slot on top like a standard toaster but it was also a small oven that could bake or broil. It was easy to use, cooked evenly and quickly, saved on precious countertop space and it was a cute red color, so it added a little extra personality to my kitchen. Then one day that switch that flipped it from oven to toaster broke.
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 oven 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.