Top 7 Best Toaster Ovens In 2021
Set the oven to broil setting, heat up the broiling pan for at least 5 minutes. If you are a home baker who bakes occasionally, buying a convection toaster oven could be a wise investment. The best way to ensure a longer lifespan for your product is by cleaning it regularly. All in all, except for the common danger of burns or fire hazards occurring when the ovens get very hot, countertop toaster ovens are generally safe for your health. If crumbs get clogged up at the bottom of the oven for too long and get hot enough where the heating elements are working, they can start a fire. Coming along with the extra large capacity will be the bulky footprint.
Within just a few minutes, your toaster oven should be hot enough to prepare a whole batch of muffins. Don’t get me wrong – the Cuisinart-60 Air Fryer/Toaster Oven is a great kitchen workhorse. It gives you lots of cooking options, a large enough cooking area, and quick cooking times. It’s certainly not as good as the big ol’ Breville Smart Oven Air — although it’s still great for a dual-function air fryer toaster oven. The Breville BTA840XL Die-Cast 4-Slice Smart Toaster was hands down the best toaster we tested, but we’re not confident it will last long enough to justify its exorbitant price. The model we’ve been long-term testing since 2018 is still working well.
The two-slot Cuisinart is also one of the tiniest toasters we tested, making it ideal for kitchens with limited counter space. Though you’ll pay a hefty price for this countertop oven, it’s well worth the money. The 1,800 watts of power and convection heating help to roast meat, toast bread, and bake in less time than traditional countertop ovens. And the smart heating system, referred to as “Element IQ,” provides more consistent power so your food is cooked to perfection each time.
In this type of oven, there several levels to separate different foods. For example, you can put an individual pizza on the baking pan, and fries in the air fry basket. An air fryer oven is specially designed to make your food crunchy and heat food for a long time. And it is the best for precision heating of any type of dish or recipe. And, although this convection toaster oven does have a fan, the motor is so quiet you’ll barely hear it. It’s perfect because you can chat with your guests in the kitchen while cooking.
We liked the look of the Zwilling Enfinigy 2-Slot Toaster, but the controls are labeled with symbols rather than words, making this model less intuitive to use out of the box. Ohio State found that even though the Cuisinart toaster has less-complex circuitry than the Breville, the actual quality of the electronics isn’t necessarily better in one model than the other. By contrast, the vintage toasters it analyzed were very simple machines that lacked elaborate circuitry , which leaves less room for electrical malfunctions. That said, Beach told us it would be unlikely for the heating elements to be the main cause of malfunction.
Convection uses a fan and exhaust system to circulate hot air inside the toaster oven, which makes for faster, more even cooking. It’s not a necessary feature for everyone, but it’s definitely nice to have—especially if you like to bake. Because toaster ovens are generally smaller than full-size ovens or wall ovens, most require much less time to preheat. This means you don’t have to wait up to half an hour to begin cooking or baking.
The right countertop models can churn out all the power you need to complete a wide range of cooking tasks, from toasting and roasting to baking and broiling. Plus, they require a lot less power, which makes them much more energy-efficient machines. Unlike a toaster oven which requires no installation and is ready to use once plugged in, a conventional oven needs to be properly installed. Most of the time, the installation process is not difficult, but it takes time and effort, and sometimes more money. If you’re cooking for a large family or want to prepare a big dinner party, clearly, a full-size oven will be more appropriate. Besides an air fry feature that helps reduce the fat content of fried foods by up to 80%, this oven also offers several notable improvements in design and feature set.
Though it was a company best-seller when we tested it in 2018, the Hamilton Beach Keep Warm 2-Slice Toaster gave us pale bagels and streaky toast with white tops. The toaster also beeps loudly three times before your toast pops up, which gets annoying fast. We liked the sleek look of the Cuisinart CPT-T20 2-Slice Touchscreen Toaster, which features touchscreen controls that are easy to wipe clean. However, it didn’t toast bread as evenly from edge to edge as the Cuisinart CPT Slice Compact Plastic Toaster, and it’s more expensive. But you’re not necessarily paying for vastly superior heating elements or higher-quality circuitry. As mentioned above, there are many variables that can contribute to a toaster’s failure, and a fancy model isn’t immune to them.
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We’ve come to this conclusion based on what we’ve seen from Ohio State’s testing, reader feedback, and customer reviews online. We’ve tested multiple models of both Cuisinarts over the years, and they consistently toasted evenly from top to bottom and slot to slot, even after we made back-to-back batches. They beautifully browned the entire slice of Wonder bread, whereas cuisinart pots and pans set other toasters, like the Osters or Hamilton Beaches we tested, left unappetizing raw halos on top. When we filled every slot, the four-slot model made slightly lighter toast than the two-slot, but you can easily fix this by turning up the toasting dial. By comparison, all other similarly priced toasters—and even some pricier machines—left bread even whiter and patchier.