Best Toaster Oven of 2022

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While you may not think of a toaster oven as an essential kitchen appliance, they’ve become a popular mainstay for a reason. Not only are they faster and more convenient than a traditional oven, but many are just as versatile with the ability to toast, bake, and broil. They’re great for everything from reheating leftovers to whipping up complete. meals. Panasonic and Breville make some of the best models out there, but we’ve tested many more to bring you the best toaster oven of 2023. 

Deciding which type you want is the first step in finding the best toaster oven in a sprawling sea of options. You can now tailor this small appliance by size, style, cooking functions and even smart-home connectedness. There are air-frying toaster ovens, freakishly fast models and large countertop ovens that can almost replace your full-size oven. 

Countertop toaster ovens have gotten smarter and more precise than in years past, and you can rely on a good model to bake a small batch of cookies or personal pizza. But with so many to choose from, there are bound to be some over- and under-performers in the category. I hauled in ten models — and more bags of bread than I care to admit — in a mission to find the best toaster ovens in 2023.

Best toaster ovens

Other toaster ovens we tested

• Hamilton Beach 31123D: The $90 digital toaster oven cooked four slices of toast evenly and has a sloping “Easy Reach” door that lifts up to help avoid burning your hand on hot glass. Overall, this basic toaster oven performed well and is a more budget-friendly alternative to the Panasonic FlashXpress and Breville Mini Smart Oven.
• Oster TSSTTVMNDG: This unit cost $120 but felt cheaply made as soon as I lifted it out of the box. Sure enough, one of the wire racks had already broken loose in transit. The dials were also clunky and not very intuitive. The toasting performance was satisfactory, although it didn’t brown as evenly as other models, and it takes a long six minutes to toast bread to medium.
• Balmuda Toaster: This trendy $299 option uses both traditional heating elements along with steam to keep bread and other items moist while cooking. The oven looks great and did an above-average job with toast. It’s also super fast and holds heat well, but it’s very small and thus hard to recommend at such a bloated price.
• GE Digital Air Fry Toaster Oven G9OAAASSPSS: This larger toaster oven sports a decent air fryer mode and did well in most of my testing. It takes longer than others to toast bread, and I wasn’t in love with the dials and display. It’s not a bad machine, but it costs $220. For an air frying toaster, I prefer the Ninja Foodi. And if it’s just a basic toaster oven you seek, there are definitely better and cheaper options.
• Cruxgg 072-09-0289: Besides a name that is impossible for the human tongue to pronounce, this toaster oven with air fryer mode was a bit of a flop. It burned the dickens out of bread when set to medium and toasted the four slices more unevenly than any other oven. It also costs $180, making it one of the more expensive models on the list. 

How we test toaster ovens

I set out to cook a wide variety of common toaster oven fodder. With the exception of the toast tests, where I looked at each toaster oven’s individual settings for light, medium and dark toast, I used standardized temperature and cook times, and followed the recommendations on the box for whatever I was cooking wherever possible.

Toasting capabilities: Speed and consistency

Making toast is one of the critical tasks for a toaster. I mean, it’s right there in the name. I hauled in a whole lot of bread to see how fast and evenly each oven made this breakfast and sandwich staple. 

Most low-end toaster ovens use a built-in kitchen timer to set the broiling, toasting and cooking time. Typically, those timers include a couple of preset options for toasting: medium toast, dark toast and in some cases, a setting for light, barely toasted bread, too. Higher-end models with an LCD display will usually let you dial into a specific doneness level when you’re toasting. You’ll typically get about six or seven settings to choose from with those, each with preprogrammed toasting times. That’s more precise than turning a timer knob, and worth it if you’re a stickler for the perfect shade of golden brown.

For my purposes, I toasted four slices of thin, white sandwich bread in each toaster oven on medium. The aim of this test was to see how evenly each oven toasts in all areas of the oven and how well-calibrated the medium toast setting is. Evenness is especially important when you’re making breakfast for a group. Ideally, you’ll want them all to come out looking as close to identical as possible.

I also tested two pieces of bread on the lowest doneness setting (light) and the highest (dark), to see how well these presets were calibrated. After each of the three toast tests, I photographed the results and made sure to let the toaster oven cool to room temperature before testing again.

For overall evenness, the results were surprisingly uniform across the board, with the exception of the Cruxgg, which toasted extremely unevenly. The Hamilton Beach, Panasonic’s FlashXpress and Breville Mini Smart Oven were among the top finishers with mostly even cooking and a solid medium color. The Balmuda also toasted four slices of bread evenly.

The FlashXpress also had the most accurately calibrated settings. The light setting delivered barely-there toasting while the dark setting produced proper dark pieces of toast without burning them. The Breville and Balmuda also nailed the light and dark toast cycles when I put them through their paces.

Besides the Cruxgg, which burned the toast, even when set to medium, none of the doneness presets were too far out of whack, although toast made in the Hamilton Beach was, oddly, about the same color for dark as it was for medium.

Cooking times

Speed was also a factor. I think we can all agree that, on a busy morning, the less time you have to wait for toast the better. I noted the time it took for each toaster to complete a cycle on each of the three settings: light, medium and dark.

In terms of pure speed, the infrared Panasonic was the fastest, living up to its FlashXpress nickname. It toasted to a nice medium in just 2.5 minutes. The Balmuda also toasted four slices in under three minutes, while the Breville Mini Smart oven did it in three. The slowest was the clunky Oster, which took well over six minutes to hit medium, followed by the GE, which took nearly five minutes and was still underdone.

Temperature consistency and accuracy

If you plan to make things like cookies and pizza or use your toaster to make more complicated recipes, you’ll want an oven that holds its heat consistently over time. To test the consistency of each oven, I tested how much fluctuation each oven experienced when set to 300 degrees Fahrenheit over the course of 15 minutes. I used a RisePro thermocouple thermometer to measure the highest temp, the lowest temp and the average temp over the course of that period.

All of the ovens performed fairly well in this test, with the exception of the Cruxgg. The Breville Smart Mini and Panasonic FlashXpress both held an average temp of 310, just 10 degrees more than the target temp which is a good mark for any oven. The Balmuda Steam oven can only be set to 350, 400 or 450 degrees F, so I ran the same test at 350 F. It also did well, running an average of just 12 degrees above the target temp. 

In a shocker, the $45 Comfee toaster oven fluctuated the least — only 15 degrees from start to finish — placing first in the consistency test, but that is likely because it is both small and has no convection fan to stir the air up. The Comfee was fairly accurate too, although it ran an average of 22 degrees hotter than the temp I set it for. See full results below. 

Temperature consistency

	Min. temp	Max. temp	Avg. temp	Difference from target
Breville Smart Mini	288 F	327 F	310 F	+10
Panasonic FlashXpress	261 F	330 F	310 F	+10
Hamilton Beach	268 F	299 F	284 F	-16
Oster	270 F	319 F	285 F	-15
Cruxgg	320 F	363 F	341 F	+41
GE	260 F	340 F	320 F	+20
Comfee	320 F	335 F	322 F	+22
Balmuda (set to 350 F)	320 F	365 F	360 F	+10

Testing the convection and bake functions

To test each toaster’s power and ability to cook more substantial foods, I baked three pizza bites placed on a rack in different parts of the oven. This was to test how accurately each toaster melts cheese and another test of how evenly the cooking is spread out across the oven. The box recommends baking a frozen pizza at 425 degrees F for 18 minutes, so that’s what I did in each toaster oven. 

In addition to pizza bites, I cooked a frozen Jamaican meat pie in each oven as directed by the box: 25 minutes at 400 F. This test was designed to see how well an oven would cook a denser frozen food without burning the outside. We’ve all bitten into what appears to be perfectly browned and previously frozen food only to find it still frozen in the center. Not fun.

In the Jamaican patty test, all of the ovens heated the frozen meat pies through the center, but the Breville and Balmuda produced the best browning on the outer pastry shell. The hand pie that emerged from the Balmuda Oven (see below) was nearly overcooked (and perhaps it would be for some folks) but that’s just how I like mine. 

The FlashXpress just slightly overcooked the patty, while the Cruxgg burnt it well past edibility. While all of the ovens produced meat pies that were hot in the center, the least outer browning came from the Hamilton Beach toaster and Oster. Not surprising, considering both ovens both ran cool in the temperature consistency and accuracy test.

Toaster buttons and display

I found the toaster ovens with digital displays easiest to program since you dial into your preferred level of doneness on a six- or seven-point scale rather than guesstimating with a timer knob. My favorite display was on Breville’s Mini Smart Oven, which was simple and easy to use with dials that accurately adjust the cooking time for both doneness and number of slices. This model also has an “a bit more” button and a cool-down mode to stop cooking faster. I also liked the Panasonic FlashXpress’ display which is slightly simpler than the Breville with fewer special modes but more programs for specific items like one for frozen waffles, frozen pizza and even hash browns. 

In truth, I don’t find toaster oven cooking programs very helpful, and I rarely use them. Since every brand, be it frozen pizza, waffles or mozzarella sticks, vary in size and density, it’s generally best to follow the instructions on the box. 

My least favorite display was on the Oster, which had one-dimensional backset buttons and a wonky digital screen that offers very little information. The buttons would often not react and required a forceful push, sometimes two. The super-cheap Comfee Toaster has manual dials and no display. Manual dials are difficult to set accurately both for temperature and time. They often make a ticking sound as well, which can be annoying.

Testing how easy each toaster is to clean

This was less of a cooking test and more of a cleaning test, but one that’s near and dear to my heart. Every toaster oven comes with an aluminum baking sheet with a nonstick coating, but some are much easier to clean than others. Because these sheets are mostly fitted to the oven, you’re sort of stuck using that one until you replace the toaster entirely, so it’s nice when they come clean and don’t stain or collect gunk after just a few sessions. 

After the pizza bites finished cooking, there was inevitably some spilled sauce and cheese left on the sheet. I allowed the pan to cool enough to handle without gloves and then scrubbed it vigorously for one minute using a sponge, hot water and Dial dish soap. The easiest baking sheets to clean belonged to the Breville Mini Oven (which is black, so that probably helps), the Panasonic FlashXpress and the $43 Comfee toaster. 

The trays that came with the Hamilton Beach and GE Toaster remained the most stained after a minute of cleaning, with the rest falling somewhere in the middle.  

Toaster oven specs

	Comfee CFO-BB101	Hamilton Beach 31128	Oster TSSTTVMNDG-SHP-2	Panasonic FlashXpress NB-G110P	Breville Mini Smart Oven BOV450XL	Cruxgg Nefi 14985	GE G9OAAASSPSS	Balmuda, The Toaster
Energy draw (watts)	1,000	1,400	1,300	1,300	1,800	1,800	1,200	1,300
Settings	Toast, Bake, Broil	Bake, Broil, Toast, Pizza, Convection	Toast, Bake, Convection, Broil, Warm, Pizza	Toast, Waffle, Roll, Quick, Hash Brown, Pizza	Toast, Broil, Bake, Roast, Reheat, Pizza Cookies, Bagel	Toast, Bagel, Air Fry, Broil, Bake, Pizza, Cookies, Dehydrate, Warm, Reheat	Air Fry, Toast Bake, Broil, Convection, Warm, Proof, Roast	Toast, Artisan Bread, Pastry, Pizza
Toast time, medium	4:15	4:40	6:00	2:30	3:00	4:00	4:40	2:30
Exterior dimensions	14.6 x 11.4 x 8	15 x 19 x 9	20 x 16 x 11	12 x 13 x 10	16 x 14.25 x 8.5	11.5 x 18 x 15	16 x 17 x 14	14 x 13 x 8
Weight (pounds)	7.68	13	20	7.5	15	16	21	10
Key features	None	Flip-up door	Large capacity	Infrared heating	Precise toasting	Air fryer mode	Air fryer mode	Uses steam
Colors	Black, White	Gray	Black	Silver	Silver	Black, White	Silver	Black, Cream, Gray, Tan
Warranty	1-year	1-year	1-year	1-year	1-year	1-year	1-year	1-year
Price	$45	$90	$120	$150	$160	$180	$220	$299

Toaster oven buying guide: Things to consider 

Beyond performance, there are several considerations to make before buying a toaster such as size, functionality, design and overall value.

Size and capacity

Consider both the counter space you have to devote to your toaster and what you’ll typically use it to cook and how much of it you’ll be cooking. If you have four kids who all eat toast most mornings, a bigger model will save you from having to cook in batches. If it’s just you or one other house member, a smaller toaster model might be the better pick.

Features and settings

You’ll also want to think about what you’ll be using your toaster oven for most often. If you like toast with your coffee each morning, prioritize a toaster oven with a precise preset. If you like to broil things like hamburgers, make sure you get a toaster oven with a high top rack position just 2 or 3 inches underneath the heating elements. The Breville Mini Smart Oven, GE and Hamilton Beach are good examples of broil-friendly ovens.

Some of the temperature controls are more imprecise than others which may be a nuisance depending on how and what you plan to cook. The Balmuda can only be set in increments of 50 degrees, for instance, while the Panasonic FlasXpress in increments of 35 degrees. This didn’t bother me too much, but it does mean you can’t hit a precise 400 and thus may have to adjust for certain foods.

Design and construction

You will notice design flaws and clunky user interfaces, though, so if you can, head to the store and get your hands on the models you’re zeroing in on before you buy. Open and close the doors, adjust the racks and look for the little things. For instance, the wire rack that came with the Oster oven felt cheap. Upon closer examination, one of the wires had already snapped off in transit. 

Another flaw to look out for is unusually short cords, a baffling design flaw that is more common than you might think. The Comfee and Oster cords were both only 2 feet long while the rest were 3 feet or longer. It certainly isn’t the worst failing for a toaster but, depending on your kitchen layout, can be an annoyance. 

What about smart ovens?

There are also several smart ovens to consider that can do your toasting and a whole lot more. They are still relatively new to the market and in their early stages of design and production but one or more might be worth considering if you’ve got some extra money to play around with.

June Oven

I’m most intimately familiar with the June Oven, which now sells a third-gen model for around $899 (though is currently sold out). It’s a very capable cooking machine that uses built-in cameras to identify what you’re trying to make and a probe thermometer to nail the internal temps of meat and fish. It also offers cooking guidance and an abundance of settings to tweak in its companion app, but a premium subscription for that will run you another $10 per month. Read my full review of the third-gen June Oven here.

Tovala Oven

The Tovala is another, smaller smart oven I’ve tested. At $299 (and currently on sale for just $99), it’s less expensive than the June oven but has fewer features and cooking modes. It doesn’t feature built-in cameras, for instance, instead, this smart oven uses a built-in QR code scanner to identify specific Tovala meal kits, as well as up to 750 frozen foods from retailers like Trader Joe’s. From there, the smart oven automates the entire cooking process. You just put the food in and press start. I tried this oven. I liked it and found it simple to operate, but would say it’s really only worth the money if you plan to buy a subscription for the Tovala meals it’s engineered to cook. Those run about $9 a pop and range from outstanding to just OK. Read CNET’s full review of an earlier-gen Tovala Smart Oven for a breakdown.

Brava 

The third smart oven worth mentioning comes from Brava, and it’s the most expensive of the three at $995. Among toaster oven upgrades, it’s a bit like Frankenstein’s monster — you get the same infrared heating elements as the Panasonic FlashXpress, the same built-in cameras as June, and the same meals kit approach as Tovala. Like the smart oven itself, those meal kits are awfully expensive, with dinner for two ranging from $28 to $45. 

The Revolution Toaster

Heck, even plain old sliced bread toasters are looking to grab attention from smart home techies. The Revolution R180, a $350 toaster with a touchscreen on the front. Interestingly, that one uses diamond-shaped heating coils that are faster and more efficient than traditional toaster coils.I have to admit, the Revolution worked extremely well with lightning-fast speed when I used it. But no matter how you slice it, $350 is a whole lot of dough to drop on a slot toaster. 

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