Roll-top door makes it easy to clean, reach, or quickly transfer hot food. Like traditional ovens, many toaster ovens use convection heating or at least offer it as an option for baking. Other models make up for the lack of convection with multiple heating elements placed around the oven. The GE Quartz Convection Toaster Oven and the GE Calrod Convection Toaster Oven are identical, hamilton beach air fryer except that one has quartz heating elements and the other has Calrod heating elements. 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.
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 has a coating but is not completely non-stick so you may need to watch out for some stubborn stains after a hefty roast. Our measurements of the oven’s footprint were 14.96″ x 11.61″ x 8.86″ which pretty much coincided with the manufacturer’s 14.84″ x 11.85″ x 8.86″. However, the weight of the oven by itself was already 9 lbs whereas the label said the entire box was 7.63 lbs. The oven has a cool-touch door handle and back buffers to prevent it from being too close to the wall. The meat was acceptable in terms of texture and juiciness, but didn’t stand out as remarkable.
After the first 40 minutes, we flipped the chicken to find out that parts of the skin on the back got stuck to the baking pan. Then, when we reinsert the pan, the same problem with the breast happened to the back. The tray in the bottom of a collects crumbs and other food debris to help prevent mess. You should empty this once every week or two depending on how frequently you use the appliance. If you want a simple toaster oven with a couple of nice conveniences, consider this compact model.
Inside the box are also a user manual and a simple recipe booklet. Nonetheless, our chef decided to stop the roasting as the color wouldn’t improve anyway and to avoid overcooking the meat. This cooking time was the equivalent of a 6/10 according to our data. It’s important to think about both the internal and external size of any toaster oven you’re considering. We recommend these products based on an intensive research process that’s designed to cut through the noise and find the top products in this space.
It also comes with an air fry/dehydrate basket rack and a broiling rack that fits inside its enamel roasting pan. But we still prefer the Cuisinart’s ceramic pizza stone over the Breville’s nonstick pizza pan (though Breville does sell a pizza stone separately for around $30). For the past two years, two Wirecutter hamilton beach employees have used the Hamilton Beach for basic tasks like making toast, reheating pizza, and baking frozen snacks. One of our testers initially tried toasting bread in the baking pan, which only browned the top of the bread. As with all models, you want to remove the pan and toast bread directly on the oven rack.
Quartz heating elements also cool down faster, are more energy-efficient and easier to clean but not as durable. Both units only have analog control dials and no internal lighting so there was nothing particularly convenient about them. The Hamilton does offer more cooking space though, fitting 6 slices of toast despite being a medium size. You can buy Hamilton Beach toaster ovens starting at $30 to $60. Some higher-end Hamilton Beach toaster ovens have a roll-top door. This opens upward and rolls over the top of the unit rather than opening outward and potentially getting in your way or taking up counter space.
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.