The Best Toaster Ovens

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Our previous winner once again aced all our tests, producing evenly baked cookies, golden brown pizza and tuna melts, tender-crisp asparagus spears, and a bronzed, crisp-skinned chicken. Its settings are intuitive and easy to use, and it's programmable, so you can set it to remember your preferences; no fiddling with the dials. Markers on the glass door helpfully instruct you to where to place the rack for each setting, and the interior of the oven that has a nonstick coating for easy cleanup. Though it took longer than other products to toast (about 5 minutes for medium toast) it was capable of making big batches of perfectly golden slices that were evenly browned from edge-to-edge.

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A close second place, this toaster oven excelled at all our cooking tests, churning out evenly browned toast, tender potatoes, melty pizzas, and even a fully-roasted chicken with crispy skin. Its dials and digital display were a cinch to use, and its nonstick interior was extremely easy to clean. It broiled food quickly and efficiently since its top rack is located 2.7 inches from the broiler element; yet the rack was obscured by the handle so we couldn't see the food as it broiled—a minor inconvenience. Otherwise, this was an all-around great toaster oven. 

With four quartz heating elements, an easy-to-use dial for selecting from eight cooking functions, three baking rack positions, and a front slide-out crumb tray that simplifies cleanup, this small version of the Breville Smart Oven is well designed and a solid performer. Toast was a tad uneven to start (we got browning primarily the middle of our slices) but improved greatly on batches in succession. Likewise for broiling: Follow-up rounds melted cheese more evenly across the surface of open-faced tuna melts. With the same heating technology as the bigger Breville, it was also fairly accurate. Because it’s small and relatively short, it can’t roast a whole chicken, but it produced a beautiful, evenly browned bone-in, skin-on chicken breast. And it’s still broad enough to toast six slices of sandwich bread and bake eight cookies evenly too. 

This toaster oven looked similar to the Breville with its large, backlit display, selector dial, roomy crumb tray, and enamel baking and broiling pans. We found it nearly as intuitive to use and extremely accurate—its temperature only varied an average of 6 degrees from our target temperature. Unsurprisingly, nearly everything we cooked in it came out flawless; potatoes were tender, chicken was beautifully roasted and juicy, cookies were evenly baked. Our only issue was the slightly complicated and confusing control panel, which had a big dial, digital screen, and half a dozen buttons.

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There was a lot to like about this oven from its easy to clean nonstick interior to its rubber seals which lock in heat. In our recipe for roast chicken, which calls for turning the oven off halfway through cooking, the rubber seals helped the oven stay hot enough to cook the chicken beautifully within the recipe time. It also made golden toast, melty pizza, and well-browned cookies. Our one qualm was its rack positions. Unlike most ovens, which have at least three possible rack levels, this model only had two and the highest one was 3.75 inches away from the broiler element. Unfortunately, this made the oven less effective at broiling; it took about 50 percent longer than other top-ranked ovens to melt cheese on tuna melts or to broil asparagus.

This model is the same size and has the same interface and capacity as our favorite toaster oven, The Breville Smart Oven, with two additions: an interior oven light and a slow-cook function. It performed identically to the Smart Oven when broiling, baking, and roasting, but we found that it consistently underbrowned toast, even on the highest setting. While we were able to make thoroughly browned toast by running bread slices through two heating cycles, it was a frustrating extra step. We did like the slow-cook function, which turned out tender, juicy pulled pork. It’s worth noting that to slow-cook you need a covered casserole dish or a 3.5-quart (or smaller) Dutch oven with the lid knob removed (it is simple to unscrew). While we still prefer the Smart Oven, the Pro model is a good option if you aren’t too concerned about toast and you prepare a lot of meals in your toaster oven—especially if you’re interested in slow cooking but don’t have the room for an extra appliance.

Visually, this toaster oven from Zojirushi stood out, with its unique square shape and sleek black exterior. Temperatures were extremely accurate and came within an average of 2 degrees of our targets. The digital display was also easy to read and use. Chocolate chip cookies baked to a beautiful golden brown. We were even able to roast a small whole chicken nicely. It was a tight squeeze, though, so you might be better off roasting smaller pieces. However, the device underperformed when making toast and broiling. We achieved evenly browned slices of toast only with the highest setting, and when we toasted six slices at once, the doneness was inconsistent. Asparagus took twice as long to cook as with other models. It barely browned when we broiled it, since the max temperature was just 400 degrees and the oven rack was more than 3 inches away from the upper heating elements.

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This sleek, moderately priced toaster oven did a great job with almost every task. It produced impressively even-colored toast in a range of doneness levels, baked good cookies and potatoes, and even roasted a whole chicken beautifully. We liked that it came with a crumb tray for easy cleanup, and appreciated the markings on the oven door, which helped us choose which of the four rack positions to use for each function. There were just a few quirks that made us scratch our heads a little. Because you can only use the broil function at a paltry maximum of 350 degrees, asparagus took forever to cook through and never charred. (For better browning, we recommend baking at the highest temperature instead.) The digital interface can be a little confusing to navigate; we had to take a little time to figure out which dial controls which setting. We wish that the rack itself was a full rectangle—it has cutouts on one side that make it a little tricky to sit six pieces of bread securely on top. Finally, you can only adjust the temperature in 10-degree increments. For its price and otherwise excellent performance, however, most of us were willing to forgive these minor idiosyncrasies.

It’d be easy to dismiss this compact toaster oven—it resembles a child’s version of an old desktop monitor, or an ’80s-style TV with a video slot. But it actually performs very well, turning out perfectly browned toast impressively quickly and in a range of different doneness levels. It also baked cookies and gratins beautifully. Its interface is easy to navigate and lets you adjust cook time during use. A crumb tray allows for easy cleanup, and a bright interior light lets you see your food’s progress. There are just a few small detractors. You can’t broil in it, though you can get very good browning on food by baking at 500 degrees. And you can’t cook anything for more than 25 minutes at a time, so if you want to bake anything longer than that (a potato, chicken breast, mini casserole), you’ll have to reset the time and temperature periodically until the food is cooked. Preset temperatures are in relatively large increments and pinned to Celsius targets, so those wishing to bake or roast may have to make some adjustments (baking at 355 instead of 350 or 390 instead of 375). And while it’s far from a deal breaker, the console cedes valuable real estate to preset functions that many people are unlikely to use, with buttons for heating hash browns and waffles, among others. We wish this machine were a little more versatile, but there’s no denying that it’s great at what it does. If you want a truly compact toaster oven and don’t mind a more limited range of functions, this is a fantastic option.

This sleek, handsome, compact toaster oven performs one task exceptionally well. It makes excellent toast, tender on the inside and crisp and fairly evenly browned on the outside. (Tops usually browned slightly more than bottoms.) A steam function is responsible for the great texture of the toast You pour a small amount of water into a reservoir with a tiny measuring cup (included, though very easy to lose) and the bread steams slightly before it browns, reviving old bread and keeping all toast from getting too dry and cracker-like as it bakes. Overall, the machine is well-designed and very easy to use, with clearly labeled dials and the ability to increase or decrease cooking time while the machine is in use. The downsides? You can’t broil in this toaster oven, and while technically you could bake or roast in it, it can only be used for 15 minutes at a time on the oven setting. So unless you’re making some very quick-baking cookies, you’ll have to stand by and repeatedly reset the oven in order to bake a potato or roast a chicken breast—a somewhat impractical requirement.

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We liked the cheery red color and retro look of this inexpensive toaster oven, but our enthusiasm dampened somewhat once we began to use it. It maintained accurate temperatures, baked potatoes and cookies well, and did a decent job of roasting chicken. But it made somewhat unevenly browned toast. And with a top rack position that was 3 inches from the heating elements, it didn’t broil well, taking forever to cook asparagus and failing to char any spears. But our biggest peeve was with its analog dial system. To turn the oven on at all, we had to wrench the time dial clockwise. It was difficult to set exact cooking times in this fashion, and if we wanted to turn the oven off before the time was up, we had to wrench the dial the other way—a maneuver that was hard to accomplish without worrying that we might break the dial itself. Worse yet, we had to perform this maneuver every time we wanted to make toast, standing by as the minutes ticked away until the bread got to our preferred darkness.

Our biggest gripe with this toaster was its nonsensical set of hieroglyphic-like symbols meant to indicate various settings. Three squiggly lines set above a horizontal line is meant to indicate “reheat,” but be careful not to select the button with three squiggly lines set below a horizontal line—that’s “broil.” And squiggly line coming out of a square? That’s “toast.” “Bake” and “convection” settings also have their own symbols, yet oddly share the same button. All the symbols were so confusing that we had to consult the key, which is etched onto the oven door in white ink, every single time we cooked. That wouldn’t be a big deal if its cooking results were stellar, but it averaged about 40 degrees below our target temperature when baking, so food usually took longer than our recipe times to cook. Cleanup was also a pain; the included pan warped and stained, and a gap in the glass of the oven door trapped crumbs and grease and was impossible to reach for deeper cleaning.

Though temperature tests showed this toaster oven varied by about 25 degrees from our target temperature of 350, it was able to cook most of our recipes within a reasonable amount of time, just a few minutes longer than the times called for. It made a beautiful roast chicken that was browned and crispy all over. While it was relatively intuitive to use, we found having to repeatedly press the plus or minus buttons to set the time and temperature a bit more tedious than using a dial. Its included crumb tray and baking sheet also looks a bit stained after testing, but otherwise this is a quality toaster oven at a decent price.

This toaster oven was reasonably good at baking, toasting, and broiling, though it operated more than 30 degrees below the target temperature so food usually took a few minutes longer than the times specified in our recipes to cook through. The controls were straightforward, though pressing the buttons over and over to set the time and temperature was a bit tedious. The built-in temperature probe was a nice function when we roasted chicken, but we found that even though its interior was moist and juicy, the outside of the chicken was burnt on the top near the heating elements and pale and flabby on the sides due to poor heat circulation in the cramped space.

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This bare bones taster oven with analog dials was surprisingly efficient at cooking thanks to its quartz heating elements. Potatoes, pizza, asparagus, and cookies were all evenly browned and cooked within the recipe times. Roasting a whole chicken, however, was difficult in this smaller oven—while we were able to fit a 4-pound chicken inside the oven, it came very close to the top heating elements, which burned some of the skin. The sides of the chicken remained pale and flabby, especially on the side closest to the oven door, where heat was escaping through the small gaps between the metal and glass. The oven also had just three toast settings, and we found only the middle setting to be adequate—the lowest setting barely warmed bread, while the highest charred our slices. 

Even though this oven held a relatively consistent temperature in our tracking tests, its baking results were erratic. Its baking tray takes up the entire length and width of the oven, blocking heat circulation so both cookies and chicken were burnt on the bottom where the heat was radiating up, but raw on the top where no air was circulating. The pan was hard to clean, too; it was splotchy and discolored by the end of testing. Its controls were also confusing. Its power button was also the same size and shape as its “start/cancel” button, so even after we got our settings just right, we often mistakenly pressed the “power” button instead of “start,” turning the unit off and undoing our carefully selected settings. 

We were initially impressed with this oven's toasting; it made evenly browned toast in a reasonable amount of time. It also makes smart adjustments to toasting time when making multiple batches of toast. However, toasting was all it seemed to do well. Its broiler was woefully underpowered and asparagus and tuna melts took 50 percent more time to cook than most other ovens. Baking was a bit more consistent, but also took longer than most of our recipes called for. Temperature tests revealed that the oven was operating nearly 60 degrees below the target temperature of 350 degrees; likely why it took so long to cook anything. While we were able to roast a whole chicken, grease leaked all over, not only our of the gap in the door, but also under the oven. No amount of cleaning seemed to get rid of the chicken grease; we were still finding pools of fat beneath the oven days after we finished roasting the chicken.