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.
The large Cuisinart Chef’s Convection Toaster Oven (TOB-260N1) has nearly all of the capabilities of a full-size oven. It delivers even heat to up to nine slices of bread and can easily handle a 13-inch frozen pizza or a whole roast hamilton beach juicer chicken (whereas our other pick, the Panasonic FlashXpress, can fit only a handful of frozen snacks). The Cuisinart’s three-year warranty is outstanding, as are its impressive accessories, which include a ceramic pizza stone.
If you have your eye on a recipe written specifically for a pod-shaped air fryer (as most are) but want to prepare it in a convection toaster oven, you can get good results with some minor adjustments. You’ll need to wait until 2023 to buy or install a new electric oven, when the rebates (which will vary by state) go into effect. In the meantime, you may be pleasantly surprised by how much one of our larger picks (like the Cuisinart TOB-260N1 or the Breville Smart Oven Air Fryer Pro) can accomplish as a temporary replacement oven. The FlashXpress’s retro LED display looks more like a time bomb from a 1990s action thriller than a modern kitchen appliance (but we kind of love it). Although it’s not hard to read the display dead-on, it can be tricky to discern from some angles.
However, it’s difficult to determine exactly where the dial should be placed for your preferred toast shade. Eventually, we were able to find the sweet spot on the dial for our desired doneness, but it took multiple attempts. That said, the toast came out remarkably hamilton beach toaster oven even for a toaster oven of this caliber. Like most toaster ovens, the Hamilton Beach will get hotter after each batch of toast you make in a row. You’ll need to reduce the toast shade setting for each subsequent batch you make to prevent the bread from burning.
However, in our research, we’ve found that toaster ovens have a longer life expectancy than slot toasters. If you don’t have room for both appliances in your kitchen, we’d recommend getting a toaster oven instead. 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.
Balmuda’s The Toaster is a $300 appliance that’s different from most other toaster ovens because it steams bread while it toasts. In theory, it’s supposed to help keep the “inner moisture and flavor from escaping,” but we’re not convinced it makes a difference. In fact, we weighed hamilton beach toaster 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.