The best toaster oven for 2021 – CNET [CNET]

Other toaster ovens we tested

• Bialetti 35047: This countertop oven model was one of our top value picks of 2019 for its strong features and classy design. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to be available any longer, at least not at any of the online retailers we track. It isn’t even listed on the Bialetti website anymore.
• Black & Decker TO3265XSSD: One of the newest models from the top name in toaster ovens replaces the convection bake setting with a gimmicky, one-temperature-fits-all “Air Fry” mode. It’s fine for the price if you need a wide-bodied design with extra room for toast.
• Hamilton Beach 31123D: One of Hamilton Beach’s “Easy Reach” models, the slightly under-powered 31123D makes it a little easier to see inside as you’re cooking or broiling, thanks to a sloping “Easy Reach” door that lifts up to open. Too bad Hamilton Beach stamped a large logo on the glass to obstruct your view.
• Nostalgia Retro RTOV220RETRORED: The cheesy, retro-red design makes it look more like a toolbox than a toaster oven, and it felt a bit cheaply made. Still, this eye-catching model performed passably well in our tests. 
• Toshiba AC25CEW-BS: The digital controls are nice to have in this fancy-looking, black stainless steel option, but it comes with a learning curve thanks to underpowered toasting and overpowered baking and broiling.

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What are my options?

You’ve got absolutely no shortage of toaster ovens to choose from. Names like Black & Decker, Hamilton Beach, Oster and countless others have been cranking the things out for generations now.

The true bargain-bin picks cost less than $50. If you’re willing to spend a little more, you should expect to get some form of convection heat and cooking, as well as perhaps a wider oven cavity, a few additional cooking preset options, digital controls, a non-stick coating on the bake pan or a nicer-looking design. The Bialetti and Toshiba models I tested come in black stainless steel, matching a modern large appliance trend, and the Toshiba model features a built-in rotisserie rack, too. The Nostalgia model offers a unique, red-bodied build, while lower-cost options from Hamilton Beach and Oster serve as simpler budget picks.

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How we tested toaster ovens

Testing toaster ovens requires an awful lot of cooking, so I donned my trusty tan apron and got to work. 

Specifically, I set out to cook a wide variety of common toaster oven fodder. With the exception of the toasting tests, where I looked at each toaster oven’s individual settings for light, medium and dark toast, I used standardized temperature and cook times, and followed the recommendations on the box for whatever I was cooking wherever possible.

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Pizza and other frozen snacks and foods

I also baked a bunch of frozen pizzas — personal-sized pepperoni pies from DiGiorno, to be specific. The box recommends baking a frozen pizza at 425 F for 17 minutes, so that’s what I did with each toaster oven. 

The results were all over place, but not terribly surprising. The Hamilton Beach toaster oven was a little wimpy in the toast tests, and it followed suit here, too, with an underbaked pizza that needed another couple of minutes in the oven. Meanwhile, the toaster oven with the most power — the Bialetti — gave us burnt pizza that cooked a lot faster than you’d expect.

Toshiba burnt the pizza, too. That was more surprising since it had the opposite problem during my toast tests. Like Bialetti, it offers a dedicated pizza setting. With both models, the result was basically identical — burnt pizza when following the box instructions.

The best-cooked pizzas of the bunch came from Oster and Black & Decker, while the bright red, retro-designed Nostalgia toaster oven baked a passable pie, too.

In addition to DiGiorno’s, I made sure to test a number of other frozen snacks and foods, including mozzarella sticks (short bake time), Pizza Bagels (medium baking time) and waffle fries (long baking time). Again, for the most part, I was less concerned with how things tasted than I was with how much each toaster oven matched the recommended temperature and cook times compared with the user’s manual. The results largely lined up with what we saw from the pizza, but if you want to read more details, you can check out my full testing notes here.

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Don’t get burned by bad design

I’ve yet to test a toaster oven that makes foods taste any better than a full-size oven would. They’re simply not designed to perform to that standard — especially not for less than $100.

That’s why I think you should take most toaster oven performance claims with a grain or two of salt. As long as your toaster oven doesn’t overcook or undercook foods too much, and if it has enough power (1,500 watts is a good benchmark for average-sized convection toaster ovens), then you won’t notice much of a difference in the way it cooks foods as compared with other models like it.

You will notice design flaws and clunky user interfaces, though, so if you can, head to the store and get your hands on the models you’re zeroing in on before you buy. Open and close the doors, adjust the racks — look for the little things. For instance, the glass door on the top-performing Oster model opens down more than 90 degrees, which means that the glass can clank directly against the corner of your countertop if you don’t have it pushed up against your backsplash.

As for me, I hated the imprecise doneness dials on the Hamilton Beach and Nostalgia toaster ovens, and I was also bugged by the temperature dial on the Toshiba model, which starts at 350 degrees Fahrenheit and moves in 20-degree increments — that means you can’t hit a precise 400.

None of these countertop toaster ovens is perfect, but some in this price range look better than others, and feel much easier to use. Those are differences worth shopping around for.

You’ll also want to think about what you’ll be using your toaster oven for most often. If you like toast with your coffee each morning, prioritize a toaster oven with a precise preset. If you like to broil things like hamburgers, make sure you get a toaster oven with a high top rack position 2 or 3 inches underneath the heating elements. Many don’t let you set the racks any higher than halfway up, which is too low from the heating elements for a good char.

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What about my energy bill?

One argument in favor of countertop toaster ovens is that they use less energy than a full-size traditional oven. That’s true — most full-size electric ovens will draw about 2,400 watts at medium to high heat, while the average toaster oven will draw around 1,500 watts. That means that every time you’re using your toaster oven instead of your full-size oven, you’re cutting your energy consumption by a little over a third.

What does that mean in dollars and cents? Let’s walk through the math. Assuming an energy rate of $0.12 per kilowatt hour and an average use of 1 hour per day, the full-size oven will add about $105 to your energy bill each year. Unplug the oven and use a toaster oven instead, and that yearly energy cost drops to $65.

Your actual savings will vary based on use, and will likely be a lot less than $40. After all, most people who own toaster ovens will continue to use their full-size oven sometimes, if not most of the time, and hardly any of us will stop using our ovens altogether. So let’s split the difference and say that using a toaster oven instead of a full-size oven at least some of the time can knock as much as $20 off of your yearly energy bill, provided you’re baking something just about every day.

That’s still pretty good, but it’s also less than you might expect. Think about it — the average 1,500-watt toaster oven offers about 0.6 cubic feet on the inside, while the average 2,400-watt electric oven offers about 5 cubic feet. The toaster oven is 85 percent smaller, but it’s only using 35 percent less energy. If you’ve got a family to feed, or if you like to make multiple batches of cookies at a time, then you’ll actually get more value from the full-size oven.

Are there smart toaster ovens?

There sure are — well, smart countertop ovens, anyway — but it’s very early, and they’re very expensive. Unless you’re an enthusiastic early adopter of smart kitchen tech with lots of cash to burn, they’re tough to recommend, and I’d stick with a regular oven.

The first to arrive was the June Intelligent Oven, which now sells in a second-gen model for $599. It’s a capable cooking machine that uses built-in cameras to identify what you’re trying to make, and it offers cooking guidance and an abundance of settings to tweak in its companion app. It also isn’t good at making toast.

The Tovala Smart Oven is another second-gen smart oven, and at $299, it’s less expensive than June. It doesn’t feature built-in cameras — instead, this smart oven uses a built-in QR code scanner to identify specific Tovala meal kits, as well as up to 750 frozen foods from retailers like Trader Joe’s. From there, the smart oven automates the entire cooking process. You just put the food in and press start.

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Heck, even plain old toasters are looking to grab attention. The latest is the Revolution R180, a $300 toaster with a touchscreen on the front. Interestingly, that one uses diamond-shaped heating coils that are faster and more efficient than traditional toaster coils, and it worked as advertised when we tested it out. I wonder if we’ll see similar designs start to pop up in the toaster oven category.

Fresh competition like that might lead to something truly compelling — and, at the very least, it should eventually help to bring prices down to more reasonable levels. When we get to that point, I’ll update this section to include our top pick with its pros and cons.

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