It’s much cheaper than any other toaster oven we tested — considerably less so than our winning toaster oven, the Breville Smart Oven Air Fryer Pro. However, the performance is a little hit and miss, so be prepared for compromise. As in other toaster oven air fryers, a shallow basket is provided for air frying food in a single layer. We were very happy with the browning and crisping on breaded chicken breasts.
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.
The cheese topping on Bagel Bites didn’t melt as evenly in these models as our picks, and the bottoms were burned. Also, the wide gaps on either side of the oven racks allowed bread to slip through the slots and onto the bottom of the oven cavity. A standard quarter-sheet tray (and if you put a quarter-sheet tray on each of its two racks, that’s equal to a standard half sheet pan you’d use in a full-size oven). It can also fit a 12-cup muffin tin (ours measured 14 by 10.75 inches) or a 9-by-13-inch baking pan (without handles).
But fewer heating elements aren’t necessarily an indication of poor toasting performance. If the oven cavity is small, two elements are enough to regulate heat. That said, avoid larger toaster ovens with only a couple of elements because they won’t be able to distribute heat evenly. The more heating elements a toaster oven has, the bigger and more expensive it will be. If you need a slightly smaller machine, we think you’ll be happier with the Cuisinart—it performed just as well and it’s also more affordable.
We measured the cooking chamber volume to be around 12.81 liters, slightly different than the manufacturer’s provided capacity of 11.67 liters. Different from most other toaster ovens, the Mueller’s Bake function only uses the lower heating elements as opposed to lower and upper. For our Toast test, we started off by trying the Medium Toast setting which was hamilton beach toaster oven around 3 minutes 5 seconds on the timer. The four pieces of bread on the upper tray level came out only lightly toasted on top except for one golden brown piece. We then cranked it up to the Dark Toast setting—around 4 minutes 50 seconds on the timer—which, unfortunately, burnt the toast a bit. In terms of design score, the two toaster ovens are quite equal.
Guided by experts, we spend hours looking into the factors that matter, to bring you these selections. Sharon Franke is a journalist who specializes in testing and writing about kitchen equipment. A thirty-year veteran of the Good Housekeeping Institute, Sharon also worked as a professional chef in New York City restaurants for seven years. In her free time, she is an avid home cook who is in the process of mastering the art of baking sour dough bread.
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 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.
The process of cleaning this oven is pretty much the same as cleaning a regular oven, albeit a bit easier, since I had it on a countertop and could turn it as I needed. The worst mess I made was when a wily pizza eluded my grasp, bounced off the back wall, and spewed toppings onto the floor of the oven. The crumb tray caught most of the mess, and the walls wiped clean with no fuss, thanks to the nonstick coating inside the oven.
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 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.
It was the Hamilton Beach Toastation, a combination mini-oven and toaster. What made the Toastation unique is that it had a slot on top like a standard toaster but it was also a small oven that could bake or broil. It was easy to use, cooked evenly and quickly, saved on precious countertop space and it was a cute red color, so it added a little extra personality to my kitchen. Then one day that switch that flipped it from oven to toaster broke. The Toastation had a long life and served us well, so I didn’t feel like it owed me anything. However, they did have a new version of a mini-oven and toaster combo.