Believe it or not, toaster ovens have come a long way since their days as Bagel Bite-making machines. Many have bigger capacities and more features that might make them better suited than your full-size oven for certain dishes. Some of the best toaster ovens can even act as two appliances in one, with high-end features like air frying and convection cooking. Plus, they won’t heat up your entire kitchen in the summer. Here are seven of the best models you can buy in 2020.
Breville Smart Oven Pro
If you’re looking for a toaster oven that can do a lot more than cook bread to perfection, you should check out the Breville Smart Oven Pro. This top-of-the-line offering uses “Element IQ” cooking technology to automatically adjust its heating method, allowing you to properly cook everything from pizza to cookies. The Breville Smart Oven is one of the bigger offerings on this list, too, with enough interior cooking space to toast six slices of bread or a 13-inch pizza. This impressive oven also has a convection feature that can speed up the cooking process by up to 30 percent.
The Breville Pro separates itself from the competition with advanced features like its slow-cook function, which lets you set the appliance to cook for as long as 10 hours at a low temperature. Sadly, such features don’t come cheap. While the host of convenient features — which includes a non-stick coating and an auto-eject rack — help justify the cost, you’ll definitely want to make the most of its cooking, toasting, and baking capabilities.
Hamilton Beach Easy Reach Toaster Oven with Convection
This Hamilton Beach offering brings convection cooking into your kitchen at a reasonable price. This toaster oven can bake, broil, and toast, and with a built-in convection fan, you can be sure that your meals will be evenly cooked. You can also cook up to six slices of bread or a 12-inch pizza at the same time on the adjustable rack.
Unlike most toaster ovens, the Easy Reach features a roll-top door that lifts up and out of the way. This gives you easy access to your food and makes it impossible for you to spill on the door. You’ll also get a full-width crumb tray, making it easy to clean. There’s no digital display on this toaster oven, but the analog controls are simple and adequate. Not bad for one of the least-expensive options on this list.
Cuisinart Convection Steam Oven
The Cuisinart Convection Steam Oven is packed with just about every cooking function you could possibly want — and a few you might not — in a toaster oven. In addition to toasting, baking, broiling, and convection heating, the toaster oven harnesses the power of steam. The 47-ounce reservoir provides up to two hours of steam cooking, thus allowing you to make some amazingly healthy and moist meals. It’s a feature that costs thousands in a full-size oven, so this is a great way to experiment with a chef-approved technique.
You may not be able to fit a Thanksgiving turkey in there, but the oven is big enough for a 4.5-pound chicken. The Cuisinart Convection Steam Oven is perfect for adventurous cooks who want to test out different cooking styles, though it might be a tad too expensive for someone who just wants to toast bread.
Black + Decker 4-Slice Toaster Oven
If all you want is to make something to smear your jam on in the morning, look no further than the Black + Decker 4-Slice Toaster Oven. This machine may not have convection heating or a steam function, but it easily accomplishes what it was designed to do. This toaster is on the smaller side of the spectrum, measuring a mere 15.5-inches wide, but it can still comfortably cook a 9-inch pizza or four slices of bread in its 10.75-by-9-by-7-inches interior.
The Black + Decker 4-Slice Toaster also has “even toast technology,” which, as you may have guessed, evenly cooks your toast. A 30-minute timer and crumb tray round out the features on this budget buy, which gives you more than enough time to make some Bagel Bites.
Oster Large Capacity Convection Toaster Oven
Oster’s Convection Toaster Oven delivers many of the features included in top-of-the-line models, but at a slightly more reasonable cost. The toaster benefits from a large interior that’s capable of toasting up to six slices of bread at once, a convection mode for faster cooking, an interior light, and digital controls.
The Oster toaster also can also fluctuate between 150 and 450 degrees Fahrenheit and can cook for up to 90 minutes at a time. It even comes with adjustable broil, giving you the ability to delicately melt deserts or cheesy breads. A higher broiling temperature works for meats that can fit into its 13.7-by-13.48-by-5.31-inches interior chamber.
Cuisinart Digital Air Fryer Toaster Oven
Air frying is one of the best ways to cook, bar none. It cuts out all the grease from the oils we’re used to bathing our favorite foods in, and can produce a full-cooked meal in less time than a standard oven or fryer. The Cuisinart Digital Air Fryer boasts 1800 watts of power, a 0.6 cubic-foot interior, and a host of different cooking functions, featuring presets like Dual Cook and a low-temperature setting for slow cooking and braising.
This Cuisinart oven even has options for dehydrating and proofing. All presets feature a customizable temperature range between 80 and 450 degrees, and the high-velocity fan and heater always work together to produce the perfect chicken nuggets, with minimal operating noise.
Breville Mini Smart Oven
The Breville Mini Smart Oven is nearly half the price of Breville’s top-of-the-line offering, the Breville Smart Oven Pro, but still boasts Element IQ Technology, multiple pre-set functions, a non-stick interior, and a digital display. Its 0.45-cubic-foot cooking space can’t hold a dutch oven like its big brother, but it is big enough for an 11-inch pizza. While the Breville Mini does pack power into a 16-inch package, it doesn’t have convection heating, a function available on other less expensive models.
Panasonic Toaster Oven NB-G110P FlashXpress
This tidy little toaster oven uses 1,300 watts of power and a double-infrared heater setup to cook foods as fast as possible while still keep the heat evenly applied. With a 9-inch baking tray and a timer that maxes out at 25 minutes, this Panasonic model is definitely meant for smaller toaster projects, but it’s very, very good at them. Panasonic claims that the heating system can cook up to 40% faster than conventional toaster ovens, and there are six preset cooking modes to help out with toast, waffles, rolls, pizza, hash browns, and reheating.
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