For certain issues, you may have to choose between living with a broken minor part and sending an otherwise functional machine to the landfill. If something goes wrong with the oven after the warranty expires, Cuisinart will offer you 20% off the retail price of a new oven and provide free shipping. This Cuisinart model provides impressively even cooking, a whopping nine-slice toast capacity, a three-year warranty, and some useful accessories.
One disappointing thing about the Breville, especially at this price, is that it comes with a two-year warranty, whereas the Cuisinart has a three-year warranty. To learn even hamilton beach 1000 watt microwave more about the Breville Air Fryer Pro, see our guide to the best air fryer toaster ovens. We like the Breville Air Fryer Pro’s sleek design and easy-to-navigate interface.
To keep grease from dripping on the lower heating element, use foil and a pan underneath whatever you’re cooking. If you’d like to air fry, but you just don’t have the space for an air frying toaster oven, then a pod-shaped air fryer might be best for you. Their cooking baskets can also be a little safer or simpler to maneuver than a hot pan for children, new cooks, or those with mobility concerns. Just keep in mind that the pods tend to cook a little less evenly, and in most cases you’ll only be able to make a couple servings at a time.
The Breville also has a Phase Cook feature (similar to the Cuisinart’s Dual Cook Mode), which allows you to program two back-to-back cooking functions. Like the Cuisinart, the Breville’s rack glides out when you open the door so you don’t have to stick your hands deep into the oven cavity to retrieve your food. It comes with two oven racks so you can cook more food at once—an addition we appreciate with the Cuisinart too. 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). The Cuisinart also has two convection speeds, regular and high.
Both glass tray and turntable ring assembly must always be used during cooking. The De’Longhi Livenza Digital Convection Oven did not toast evenly in our tests. It also had a difficult time maintaining its internal temperature (which fluctuated between 322 °F and 369 °F when set to 350 °F). The Calphalon Quartz Heat Countertop Toaster Ovendidn’t toast as well as our picks and it didn’t evenly melt the cheese on bagel bites.
Unlike the dial-centric designs typical of other toaster ovens, the Panasonic FlashXpress has membrane buttons. In every round of testing we conducted for this guide, we started by filling each toaster with as many slices of basic white bread as we could, then set each machine to toast at medium shade. The results gave us a heat map of each oven, showing us how evenly each model toasted and whether there were any hot spots.