This is not a comprehensive list of everything we’ve ever tested, just what’s still available.
Under $100
The Dash Mini Toaster Oven is cute as a button, but its small size is too limiting since you can’t even reheat a slice of pizza in it. Its internal temperature fluctuated wildly between 299 °F and 462 °F in our tests, which caused the cookies we baked to burn on top before they were fully baked.
The Mueller Premium Stainless Steel Toaster Oven also couldn’t maintain a consistent temperature—when set to 350 °F, the oven temperature slowly climbed to 455 °F before cascading back down. It didn’t toast evenly, either.
The Black+Decker 4-Slice Toaster Oven ran cooler than most other models we tested—when set to 350 °F, its actual temperature registered 290 °F when measured using an air probe. Toast was a little too dark on the underside, and the skin on the chicken thighs we baked was unappetizing and flabby.
The Black+Decker TO3250XSB Extra-Wide 8-Slice Toaster Oven had difficulty maintaining its internal temperature. It burned some things and undercooked others.
The Black+Decker TO1303SB 4-Slice Toaster Oven is cheaply built, gives you little control over the toast shade, and has a small interior space.
The Cuisinart Custom Classic Toaster Oven Broiler is easy to use, but on its medium setting, bread became too dark. Also, this model has no timer, so you have to keep a close watch on your food.
Between $100 and $200
The Breville Mini Smart Oven baked cookies and Bagel Bites well, but it toasted bread inconsistently. It regulated its internal temperature surprisingly well, but it didn’t perform as well as the Panasonic FlashXpress Toaster Oven, one of our top picks.
We appreciated the compact size of the Breville Compact Smart Oven, but it didn’t do well in many of our tests.
The KitchenAid KCO211BM Digital Countertop Oven didn’t toast as evenly as our picks, and several slices of bread were burned in patches on the bottom. Some of the Bagel Bites we baked were also undercooked and pale.
The GE Quartz Convection Toaster Oven and the GE Calrod Convection Toaster Oven are identical, except that one has quartz heating elements and the other has Calrod heating elements, and we didn’t notice a huge difference in performance between the two. Aside from toasting unevenly, these models have wide gaps on either side of the oven racks that allow bread to slip through.
The Oster Large Digital Countertop Oven has cheap plastic components but costs more than our top pick. In our tests, its performance was inconsistent, and it had hot spots and high running temperatures.
The Cuisinart Deluxe Toaster Oven Broiler toasted bread unevenly, and its temperature control was less consistent.
The Calphalon Precision Air Fry Convection 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.
$200 and up
Balmuda’s The Toaster is designed to steam bread while it toasts. In theory, this helps keep the “inner moisture and flavor from escaping,” but this wasn’t always true in our tests. We weighed white sandwich bread and rustic sourdough bread before and after toasting to see how much moisture the bread retained and on average, plain white sandwich bread actually retained less moisture when toasted in the Balmuda toaster oven than when toasted in our top pick, the Cuisinart Chef’s Convection Toaster Oven. The Balmuda toaster oven also has just three temperature settings—350 °F, 400 °F, and 450 °F—plus four presets, and it can only fit two pieces of bread.
The June Oven is a Wi-Fi–connected countertop model with an internal camera, a built-in probe thermometer (which estimates when your food will be cooked through), and several pre-programmed cooking functions. However, we were disappointed with this model’s performance, especially given its high price.
The De’Longhi Livenza Convection Toaster 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 Breville Smart Oven Air Fryer is very similar to our upgrade pick, the Breville Smart Oven Air Fryer Pro, except it has fewer programmed settings (11 instead of the Pro’s 14) and a smaller oven capacity. If you need a slightly smaller machine, you’ll be happier with our pick from Cuisinart—it performed just as well and is more affordable.
The Breville Smart Oven Pro is nearly identical to the Breville Smart Oven. The Pro does add a couple of minor features, like a slow-cook mode and an internal light. But the Bagel Bites we toasted between the door and the front of the oven’s rack were noticeably paler than those toasted in the middle and back of the oven.
The exorbitantly priced Wolf Gourmet Elite Countertop Oven with Convection produced the most evenly browned toast of any model we tested. However, it took about 7 minutes to get those results, which is far slower than any of our picks, and the toast was dried out.
This article was edited by Marilyn Ong and Marguerite Preston.
