However, the back-left side of the oven routinely toasted a little lighter than the rest of the oven. The roll-top feature allows the user to access items by reaching down to them, making it much easier to adjust or remove food without bumping into the oven or burning your hands. Many toaster ovens have very little space between the racks and the interior sides of the oven, making it challenging to adjust or remove food. We also liked the fact that the Easy Reach’s door is completely clear, which allowed us to monitor all of our food in one glance. We also love that the entire door can be removed for easy cleaning. The Balmuda’s controls and capacity are also limited compared to our top picks.
The oven’s exterior only gets hot to the touch after a long cooking time at a high temperature. The door can be kept partially open at many degrees but keep in mind that it doesn’t switch the oven off. The two sides of the baking rack have slight curves upward at an angle to keep the baking pan in place.
GearLab is founded on the principle of honest, objective, reviews. Our experts test thousands of products each year using thoughtful test plans that bring out key performance differences between competing products. And, to assure complete independence, we buy all the products we test ourselves. On bright side, once we learned the subtleties of this oven, we were consistently able to produce frozen meals that were acceptably cooked. We simply had to wait a little longer than the directions suggested. We may get a small share of the sale should you buy something through our recommendation links.
We felt that the larger size would save on heating up the big oven for some smaller side dishes. While the timer is loud, you get used to it like everything hamilton beach else and it’s really nice to have a built-in timer aside from our oven timer. This oven is not “intuitive”; it definitely takes some getting used to.
Otherwise, they encountered no issues—the Hamilton Beach is great for any simple toasting and baking jobs. I’m one of those people that use a toaster oven daily, sometimes even twice a day. I hate turning on the big oven if I just want to reheat pizza or cook biscuits. With this oven though I have to be very careful that I set everything correctly for tempetature and time.
The toppings were also caramelized quite evenly from the meat and veggies to the cheese, worthy of another 8/10. The cheese was nicely melted but the areas closer to the back of the cooking chamber were more caramelized compared to the rest. Due to its contents, this product cannot be shipped via our Priority Service or sent to Alaska, Hawaii, P.O.
It fits perfectly with the guide to help prevent accidents when placing your food in the oven. The Toast function is where both the lower and upper heating elements work. Nonetheless, the oven still provides all the basic functions for its intended purposes. Aside from the Hamilton Beach oven itself, the box also contained a baking pan, a baking rack, a removable crumb tray, and a basic user manual. The Mueller 4 Slice and the Hamilton Beach 31127D 6 Slice are both conventional, analog toaster ovens. Considering their difference in size, it’s quite impressive that the Mueller only loses out in its overall score to the Hamilton ever so slightly.
It makes me want to hide this toaster, if I didn’t use it so often it would be hidden. Some brands will advertise the material of their toaster oven’s heating elements, and generally, ovens using quartz or ceramic will cost more than those using Calrod. But in all our research and testing, we didn’t see consistent correlations between element type and either price or performance.
Since most of the crevices and protrusions are rounded, it’s easier to clean than sharp corners. The back corners are the hardest bits to clean, but they’re also the least likely places food would spatter. 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 super-fast or powerful, though, so it’s not the perfect replacement for the broiler in a standard oven. At 15 inches high, 23.4 inches wide, and 18 inches deep, this is a fairly large oven that eats quite a bit of countertop space.