A high-quality toaster oven offers much more than just perfectly browned bread; it's a versatile small appliance capable of transforming your cooking experience. After extensive evaluations, we've identified the top models that excel at diverse tasks, from crisping air-fried chicken tenders to baking cakes, slow-cooking stews, and delivering impeccable frozen pizzas, all while consistently producing excellent toast.
Our leading choice, the Breville Joule Oven Air Fryer Pro, stands out for its extensive functionality and precision, making a full-size oven almost redundant for many users. This advanced appliance boasts 13 cooking functions, each utilizing distinct heating elements, along with intuitive knobs for manual adjustments. It also features two convection settings, including a "super convection" mode for extra crispiness and faster cooking, ideal for air-frying. A clear backlit display guides users to the optimal rack position for various settings. Beyond basic functions, it efficiently handles proofing, baking, roasting, slow-cooking, and broiling with superior efficiency and accuracy. It consistently produced perfectly crispy chicken skin and flawless frozen pizzas during our tests. The innovative Breville+ companion app further enhances its appeal, offering mobile alerts and user-friendly, illustrated recipes with step-by-step photos and videos, specifically tailored to maximize the oven's capabilities. Despite its larger size and premium price, its ability to consolidate multiple kitchen appliances like a toaster, air fryer, and even a microwave justifies the investment. For those seeking a simpler, more compact, and affordable alternative, the Panasonic Flash Xpress Toaster Oven is an excellent option. Its unique double-infrared heating element significantly accelerates cooking, achieving deep, even toast in minutes and yielding nearly perfect frozen pizzas. While it runs hot and has limited accessories and a 25-minute automatic shutoff, its powerful performance and small footprint make it a strong contender for kitchens with limited counter space.
When evaluating toaster ovens, several key factors were considered beyond mere toast production. A good toaster oven must deliver consistent, even toasting on both sides of the bread, across multiple batches. Modern toaster ovens, especially those with air-frying capabilities, were thoroughly tested for their versatility and precision. This included assessing their ability to reheat frozen pizza for a crispy crust and perfectly melted cheese, bake cookies with gooey centers and golden edges, and roast chicken with crispy skin and juicy meat. The range and utility of included accessories, such as baking sheets, roasting racks, and air-fry baskets, were also important. User-friendliness, characterized by intuitive control panels and easy-to-clean designs, was another critical aspect. Finally, the appliance's size and its value proposition relative to the counter space it occupies were weighed, favoring models that offered broad functionality and efficiency to potentially replace other kitchen tools.
