Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)Like just about everyone else in the free world, I grew up with a GE Toast-R-Oven. I cooked everything from toast (of course) to pizza bagels (a great discovery back in the 70s) to TV dinners and even baked fish in it. When the one I received as a gift when I bought my first house finely gave up the ghost, I replaced it with a $100 Hamilton Beach tabletop convection oven could bake a whole loaf of bread, two pies or a meatloaf. It even had a rotisserie with a spit you could impale a chicken on, though I never tested this feature. I used it for several years, and it did everything you would expect of a compact toaster oven- except make toast. The burners were just too far apart.
Enter the Breville. Rather than the mechanical timer and temperature control of the Hamilton Beach (and the GE before it) this unit has fully electronic control that promises to be more accurate in both functions. It can handle (they say) a 12" pizza, and 4 slices of toast. So how does all this work in practice?
As a toaster, it's great. It toasts more evenly than my $20 Target toaster, and the slide out crumb tray makes cleaning easy. Repeatability if excellent, and of course you can watch the bread/bagel/whatever as it toasts, keeping an eye out for burning. It compensates for heat buildup when you toast multiple items in sequence- a major help. Still, for close to $200 you expect more than just toast from a machine like this.
I haven't tried baking a pie yet, but I did do some miniature muffins, and they came out fine. I haven't done any bread yet, as it's just too small to handle a standard loaf of the size I bake. Maybe I can make some buns or rolls in it.
The timer function is a bit annoying in the way it works. You set the time and temperature, and when it comes up to temperature, it starts the countdown. This is fine for frozen pizzas and TV dinners, but less helpful for bakers trying to control the baking environment. I'd prefer something that would come up to temperature and then wait for me to start the timer.
Half the functions on the main knob are for preset cooking programs- like the microwave ovens in lunchrooms that have buttons labeled "soup", "sandwich", and so forth. There's a "cookies" function, but I have dozens of different cookie recipes with different time and temperature settings. This program is useless to me.
So: A great toaster, and a useful oven for baking very small items. It's a little deeper than the old Toast-R-Oven, but still not big enough to handle more than a quarter sheet of cookies or a small pie. Useful, for what it is, but given the price, it's getting close to being a luxury easy bake oven. I think the Breville BOV800XL The Smart Oven 1800-Watt Convection Toaster Oven with Element IQ, which adds convection and a somewhat larger oven is a better deal overall, and if you really want a useful secondary oven, something like my Hamilton Beach 31197R Countertop Oven with Convection and Rotisserie is a lot more flexible.
Followup:
After a little over three months of using this oven, I'm more convinced than ever that this is a superb (if expensive) toaster. Unlike the pop-up toaster on my counter, you can precisely set the actual toasting time- very handy- and you can watch until you get the precise shade of browning you're looking for.
I'm also becoming more favorably inclined to its use as an oven, too. It's still a bit small for most baking uses, but it's big enough for roasting peppers or baking a few potatoes, or even a tiny batch of cookies. I still think the larger version is a better all-around appliance, but for a tiny apartment kitchen this may be a good choice.
Six month update:
I find I've been using this oven more and more for all my toasting and small baking needs- it's even taking over some of the tasks I used to do in my microwave. It's still reliable, easy to maintain, and the accurate electronic timer is a great improvement over the mechanical timers in cheaper ovens in both accuracy and reliability.
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Breville BOV650XL Compact 4-Slice Smart Oven with Element IQSimilar to the Breville Smart Oven, but in a smaller, more compact design, this 1800-watt oven offers exceptional cooking convenience while taking up less space on the counter. The unit's 3/5-cubic-foot nonstick interior can accommodate a 12-inch pizza or four slices of bread at a time, while its push-button and turn-knob control panel makes it easy to program. Turn the control dial to select the function--options include Toast, Bagel, Bake, Roast, Broil, Pizza, Cookies, and Reheat. The oven's Element IQ "smart" sensor technology puts the power where it's needed most to ensure energy-efficient operation. For each of the eight pre-set functions, Element IQ automatically adjusts the power and calculates the cooking time. The time and temperature for the pre-set programs can also be manually adjusted to accommodate individual preferences--the oven will even remember the new settings for next time.
Use the second control dial for setting the time (from one minute up to two hours) and for adjusting the temperature (from 120 to 450 degrees F), as well as for selecting the number of slices and for setting the toast shade, from light to dark. The control panel also offers a large start/cancel button, a defrost button for frozen foods, and a temperature-conversion button for recipes with cooking temperatures in Celsius. The oven's easy-to-read backlit LCD screen shows the current function, temperature, and adjustments made--plus it illuminates orange to indicate preheating and cooking, then blue to indicate the end of the cooking cycle. Other highlights include a tempered-glass door, three rack positions, and a front-access removable crumb tray for quick cleanup. Accessories include a 10-by-10-inch enamel baking pan and a 10-by-10-inch enamel broil rack. Attractively housed in coated steel with a strikingly modern design, the countertop oven measures 16-1/2 by 14-1/4 by 10 inches and carries a one-year limited warranty.
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