Whether you’re making some yummy banana cake or reheating some mini pizzas, a toaster oven is super essential and a must-have in your kitchen. A toaster oven lets your bake chicken, broil vegetables, and keep food warm for serving. Look through a variety of toaster ovens with features like time and temperature controls to make cooking fast and easy.
Although dials might seem a little outdated, they’re extremely simple to use and little can go wrong with them.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. You’ll want to think carefully before buying your new toaster oven to make sure it has all the features you need. In addition to cooking functions, you should consider size and capacity to make sure it’s large enough to cook what you want to cook but also fits on your countertop.
This is a fairly large oven that eats quite a bit of countertop space. The Calphalon Quartz Heat Countertop Toaster Oven didn’t toast as well as our picks and it didn’t evenly melt the cheese on bagel bites. It also had a very noisy convection fan that sounded like it was struggling to operate with every rotation. Unlike our upgrade pick, the Cuisinart lacks a handy rack-position key on the oven door.
This is an OEM Approved replacement part designed for use with Hamilton Beach Toastation Toaster and Oven. This Bake Pan is made out of Metal and it is Sold Individually. Reflects how easy the controls are to set and how clear they are. It holds the same quality as similar high-end models but for a fraction of the price. It also has an override for the timer, in case you need to use it longer than half an hour.
In fact, we weighed white sandwich bread and rustic sourdough bread before and after toasting to see how much moisture the bread retained. On average, plain white sandwich bread actually retained less moisture when toasted in the Balmuda than when toasted in our top pick, the Cuisinart. Should you encounter any problems with the FlashXpress under its one-year warranty, contact Panasonic. Unlike our other picks, Panasonic sells replacement parts for many of the oven’s components (including the heating elements, power button, and door handle). The results gave us a heat map of each oven, showing us how evenly each model toasted and whether there were any hot spots.
But according to a representative we spoke with, Cuisinart won’t repair the oven if it becomes defective under warranty, and won’t ask you to mail it back. Instead, they’ll ask you to cut the cord and send them a picture of it, then send you an entirely new unit. They’ll even do this if the lightbulb burns out, which is the downside to this otherwise excellent warranty.
That said, the controls are clearly labeled and straightforward to use, so we’re willing to overlook this drawback. We’d also prefer dial controls over the FlashXpress’s blister-push buttons, but they’re perfectly usable and not as glitchy or mushy as others we tested. 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). 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.
However, if grease splashes onto the heating elements while cooking, it’ll leave permanent stains. Their performance scores, however, was an interesting upset, with the Mueller actually winning. The Mueller was better at toasting bread, baking pizza, and roasting whole chicken in spite of its lower power draw.
It offers just three temperature settings—350 °F, 400 °F, and 450 °F—plus four presets, and it can only fit two pieces of bread. The Balmuda has other design flaws (a flap on the door) and twee impracticalities (the easy-to-lose steam cup), and ultimately, we found it to be just a snazzy-looking hamilton beach prototype at best. The FlashXpress’s one annoying quirk is that you can’t add time or change the temperature midway through a preset cooking cycle (although you can change the toast shade settings). This means you have to turn the Panasonic off and back on again to adjust it.