Reviews you can trust.
See why.Best Toaster Ovens
We baked 10 batches of cookies, broiled 100 asparagus spears, roasted 10 chickens, and toasted a whopping 860 slices of bread to find the very best toaster oven.
Top Picks
See Everything We Tested
What You Need To Know
The uses for a toaster oven go way beyond making toast. A good toaster oven functions as a small second oven, and can even take the place of your big oven—it can handle a 4-pound chicken or bake potatoes or a batch of cookies, and it preheats faster, uses less energy, and is easy to clean. Toaster ovens make quick work of toasting nuts or bread crumbs, and are ideal for roasting a vegetable side dish, baking an 8-inch square cake, or broiling a few fillets of fish. They’re even handy for holidays or parties when you need more cooking space, and they won’t heat up your kitchen as your full-size oven would on hot days. But which toaster oven is best?
Toaster ovens come in a variety of sizes, but we narrowed our lineup by looking at those that were big enough to function as mini ovens—spacious enough to fit 6 slices of bread and tall enough to accommodate a 4-pound chicken. Ultimately we ended up with a lineup of 10 toaster ovens priced from about $40 to about $270.
Trials in Toasting
We started out by running slices of sandwich bread through the toasters, first by toasting single slices on light, medium, and dark settings, and then toasting four and six slices at a time. Here, we were looking for ovens that were well calibrated; a low setting that just barely kissed the slices with color, a medium setting that resulted in evenly browned, golden slices, and a dark setting that gave us well-toasted, but not burnt, slices. Many toasters’ dark settings ticked on for 8 or 9 minutes, and the toast was scorched by the time the cycle ended. One model toasted for more than 12 minutes on its highest setting, ultimately delivering toast that smoked like a chunk of charcoal. While toast time and color can vary based on the size, thickness, and moisture content of your bread, 12 minutes is simply too long to wait for a slice of toast, especially a burnt one.
We also looked at how evenly the machines toasted. After some fiddling with settings, we were able to make single slices that were relatively well browned on both sides in most of the toasters. However, when we toasted four or six slices, many browned the slices unevenly; some even left whole slices practically blond, indicating that the heat wasn’t dispersing evenly throughout the oven. Only a few ovens evenly browned all the slices from edge to edge on both sides; we rated them higher. We also preferred toaster ovens with a range of doneness settings—our top-rated machines offered seven different shades—enough flexibility to tweak the toaster to work with your bread and toasting preferences.
Temperature Inaccuracies in Toaster Ovens
Beyond toast, we put the ovens through a ...
Everything We Tested
Highly Recommended
- Baking: 3 stars out of 3.
- Cleanup: 3 stars out of 3.
- Accuracy: 3 stars out of 3.
- Broiling: 3 stars out of 3.
- Roasting: 3 stars out of 3.
- Toasting: 3 stars out of 3.
- User-friendliness: 3 stars out of 3.
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.
- Baking: 3 stars out of 3.
- Cleanup: 3 stars out of 3.
- Accuracy: 3 stars out of 3.
- Broiling: 2.5 stars out of 3.
- Roasting: 3 stars out of 3.
- Toasting: 3 stars out of 3.
- User-friendliness: 3 stars out of 3.
Recommended
- Baking: 3 stars out of 3.
- Cleanup: 3 stars out of 3.
- Accuracy: 3 stars out of 3.
- Broiling: 3 stars out of 3.
- Roasting: 3 stars out of 3.
- Toasting: 3 stars out of 3.
- User-friendliness: 2 stars out of 3.
- Baking: 2.5 stars out of 3.
- Cleanup: 3 stars out of 3.
- Accuracy: 3 stars out of 3.
- Broiling: 1 stars out of 3.
- Roasting: 3 stars out of 3.
- Toasting: 3 stars out of 3.
- User-friendliness: 3 stars out of 3.
- Baking: 2.5 stars out of 3.
- Cleanup: 2 stars out of 3.
- Accuracy: 2 stars out of 3.
- Broiling: 2.5 stars out of 3.
- Roasting: 3 stars out of 3.
- Toasting: 2.5 stars out of 3.
- User-friendliness: 2 stars out of 3.
Recommended with reservations
- Baking: 2.5 stars out of 3.
- Cleanup: 2 stars out of 3.
- Accuracy: 2 stars out of 3.
- Broiling: 2 stars out of 3.
- Roasting: 2 stars out of 3.
- Toasting: 2 stars out of 3.
- User-friendliness: 2.5 stars out of 3.
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.
- Baking: 2 stars out of 3.
- Cleanup: 2 stars out of 3.
- Accuracy: 2.5 stars out of 3.
- Broiling: 3 stars out of 3.
- Roasting: 1 stars out of 3.
- Toasting: 1 stars out of 3.
- User-friendliness: 2 stars out of 3.
Not Recommended
- Baking: 2 stars out of 3.
- Cleanup: 1 stars out of 3.
- Accuracy: 1 stars out of 3.
- Broiling: 1 stars out of 3.
- Roasting: 2 stars out of 3.
- Toasting: 3 stars out of 3.
- User-friendliness: 2 stars out of 3.
- Baking: 2 stars out of 3.
- Cleanup: 1 stars out of 3.
- Accuracy: 2 stars out of 3.
- Broiling: 2 stars out of 3.
- Roasting: 1 stars out of 3.
- Toasting: 2 stars out of 3.
- User-friendliness: 1 stars out of 3.
- Baking: 1 stars out of 3.
- Cleanup: 1 stars out of 3.
- Accuracy: 3 stars out of 3.
- Broiling: 2 stars out of 3.
- Roasting: 1 stars out of 3.
- Toasting: 2 stars out of 3.
- User-friendliness: 1 stars out of 3.
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.
Reviews you can trust
Reviews you can trust
The mission of America’s Test Kitchen Reviews is to find the best equipment and ingredients for the home cook through rigorous, hands-on testing. We stand behind our winners so much that we even put our seal of approval on them.
0 Comments
