If grease splatters inside the oven, clean the interior according to the manufacturer’s instructions or refer to the care and maintenance section in our guide to the best air fryer toaster ovens. We recommend the Panasonic FlashXpress Toaster Oven for those who want a small oven to make toast, prepare a few frozen snacks, or reheat a couple slices of pizza. We are smitten with its adorable retro 90s design, and after hamilton beach toaster oven years of long-term testing we continue to be impressed with its strong baking performance, compact size, and reasonable price. The FlashXpress cooked foods to a lovely, even golden brown better than most other models we tried in this price range , and its toast shade settings were among the most accurate. For a relatively low price, this toaster oven stands out from a crowded pack of mediocre, cheap models.
Hamilton Beach® Convection Toaster Ovens offer the convenience of an oven and the speed of convection cooking in one convenient appliance. You’ll save lots of cooking time—the convection mode in this toaster oven cooks food up to 25% faster by circulating heated air evenly around food as it cooks. The Hamilton Beach received a relatively hamilton beach counter oven poor score of 4 out of 10 in our ease of use testing, putting it towards the bottom our user friendliness score sheet. Its interface has three knobs, one each for temperature, function, and time. We like this dedicated knob system, but this oven lost a considerable number of points due to its lack of a preheat function.
You should also know that as soon as the oven is preheated, the timer starts counting down. This can be annoying if you’re not quite ready to put your food in the oven, but we think it’s easy enough to adjust the timer once you’re ready. The timer on our upgrade pick, the Breville Pro, also begins counting down once the oven is preheated. However, it will pause the timer when you open the oven door, whereas the Cuisinart doesn’t. We also used an AI-powered analysis tool to scan 6,500-plus customer reviews across nine toaster ovens to identify what made some models better or worse than others.
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. We also looked at smart toaster ovens, such as the exorbitantly priced June Oven; it boasts an HD camera , carbon fiber heating elements, and two convection fans. We recognize that for some, a level of automation could prove helpful, so we’ll continue to test smart ovens.
They’ll even do this if the lightbulb burns out, which is the downside to this otherwise excellent warranty. For certain issues, you may have to choose between living with a broken minor part and sending an hamilton beach counter oven otherwise functional machine to the landfill. If something goes wrong with the oven after the warranty expires, Cuisinart will offer you 20% off the retail price of a new oven and provide free shipping.