If your kitchen is so active that the oven is often full, you can use the toaster oven as Martha Rose Shulman—chef and author of The Simple Art of Vegetarian Cooking—does. When she runs out of room, she told us, she turns to the toaster oven to make gratins, lasagna, and sandwiches. The majority of Hamilton Beach toaster ovens have simple dial controls, but some high-end models have touchpad controls with a digital display. Although dials might seem a little outdated, they’re extremely simple to use and little can go wrong with them. Of course, touchpad controls have their benefits too, such as giving you more precise temperature control and being quick to use once you get the hang of them.
However, when you open the oven door, you’ll find the rack position numbers printed on the side of the oven. But you’ll still have to consult the user manual to know where the racks should be placed for each cooking function, which is a little inconvenient. We also hamilton beach toaster oven used an AI-powered analysis tool to scan 6,500-plus customer reviews across nine toaster ovens to identify what made some models better or worse than others. A large toaster oven that also works as an easy-to-clean rotisserie oven; earns our expert’s approval.
The top elements are at the very front and back of the oven, so I was surprised at how evenly my open-faced grilled cheese sandwiches cooked when I set the oven to broil. I was also pleased when I used the broil setting to sauce and broil some ribs I had cooked the previous day. The broiler isn’t hamilton beach mixer super-fast or powerful, though, so it’s not the perfect replacement for the broiler in a standard oven. The oven’s door has a large, thick, wide handle that helps to keep hands away from the glass when the glass becomes hot from use, with enough space to wear an oven mitt when opening it.
When the oven is operating, the glass door becomes excessively hot, reaching temperatures as high as 339.2°F. 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. Toaster ovens by Hamilton Beach only take up a small amount of counter space and have a variety of uses. This countertop oven is available in several different variations. For example, some of these ovens have doors that roll back and open upward instead of downward, making it easier to take food in and out.
Unlike our other picks, Panasonic sells replacement parts for many of the oven’s components (including the heating elements, power button, and door handle). In every round of testing we conducted for this guide, we started by filling each toaster with as many slices of basic white bread as we could, then set each machine to toast at medium shade. hamilton beach mixer The results gave us a heat map of each oven, showing us how evenly each model toasted and whether there were any hot spots. A toaster oven is a multipurpose appliance that lets you toast bread and bake or reheat food. It’s also great for use in a small rental with a tiny kitchen and an oven that doesn’t work well (or is missing altogether).
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. Despite all these features, we were disappointed with the June’s performance, especially given its high price. We wish it had additional cooking programs and that the recipes were more enticing and better written.
Corner to corner, no other oven was as consistent (aside from the exorbitantly priced Wolf Gourmet Countertop Oven). Similarly priced large toaster ovens (like ones from Breville and KitchenAid) concentrated heat in the center of the oven and had more significant fall-off of heat toward the edges. Additionally, as a Japanese appliance, the Panasonic FlashXpress is designed around degrees Celsius for temperature input.