I recently bought the Breville Convection Toaster Oven and love it - best I've ever had - but it doesn't meet some of your criteria. It's expensive (list $250 but I got 20% off) - they do make a smaller non-convection version. It takes about 5 minutes to make toast but the toast comes out great. It also serves as a reasonble second oven for me.

If you just want it to make toast, you'd be better off getting a toaster not a toaster oven.

Hamilton Beach countertop convection toaster oven.

I find them at Kmart for $60 on sale.

There's only two of us, so we do most of our cooking in it every day.

We have the Breville Compact (non-convection) Smart Oven. Got it this past fall. Pricey but good. We got ours with 20% coupon @ BB&B. I've seen them on sale at Bloomingdales, too.

Breville is top of the line. If you want to cook a roast, and don't want to heat up the "big" oven, it works great.

Will cook anything that will fit into it.

While expensive, it is much more than just a toaster oven.

(makes great toast too!)

Thanks all for your comments! We will have to look at the Brevilles. The smaller one would certainly fulfill our t/o needs. Amazon reviews seem pretty positive.

Corrie22: Do you have one of the Hamilton Beach Toastations that have the slots on the top for toast? It is an interesting idea, though I wonder how usable the oven part is.

Nope, I have this one, I use it at least once a day.
Like I said, there's only two of us, so there's no sense in cranking up the big oven.
I cook almost everything in it and love it.
Cooked a meat loaf and cornbread in it last night.
It's a lot faster than my big oven too.

Here is a link that might be useful: Hamilton convection oven

Definitely north of $100 but we have the Breville 800XL and it rocks in every way. We got it for $190 on the 'net.

-Stooxie

It would be interesting if somebody had the means to check total electricity usage for a big oven vs a toaster oven when cooking a roast or baking a cake. There's got to be a point where the insulated big oven is cheaper than an uninsulated toaster oven.

quertyui, here's a site that claims to do that.
I don't necessarily use the toaster oven to save, it's just a whole lot faster and doesn't heat the kitchen up that much. Plus, my oven is built in the bottom cabinets which is harder for me to get to. The toaster sits on the counter and is easier for me to get to and easier to clean.

Here is a link that might be useful: Elec use kitchen appliances

It is an interesting question. The now-failed Euro Pro TO289 is rated as drawing 1200 watts. Since the toast mode uses both top and bottom elements, I'd assume that it is close to that in actual use. The Breville BOV650XL, which it appears we are now interested in, draws 1800 watts in toast mode. I *think* it is on a 20 amp circuit, even though the outlet is only a 15 amp outlet. (Actually it is a GFI w/15 amp outlet.) So the Breville, if that is what we end up with, will max out the outlet.

Right next to it, in cabinets, sits a Viking VESO130 wall oven. Looking at the specs, Viking only states that it can draw as much as 24 amps on a 240 volt circuit (i.e., 5760 watts). Most home ovens are probably less than that. But with this knowledge we can at least start to figure costs.

If, say, it takes 10 minutes to preheat the Vike, at $0.12/kw hour, means it costs $0.10-$0.12 to preheat. Once at temp, it would use considerably less. The power to the heating elements cycle on/off to maintain a constant temp. And as noted, modern self-cleaning ovens have very good insulation. Say the elements are on 5% of the time after preheat and it then costs a couple of cents an hour to run.

The countertop oven, at 1800 watts, warms up faster because it is warming a much smaller space. So maybe $0.01 for a 5 minute warmup or toast cycle. It is true that it not insulated anywhere close to a modern self-cleaning electric oven. But even still, I bet in bake mode (which draws much less power than toast mode, and say we are cycling it on 20% of the time) it still probably costs in the $0.01/hour range.

The above numbers are very rough and off the top of my head. Please feel free to calculate/correct them.

So my guess is the main difference, cost wise, is the warm up cost. Once at temp, they would both cost about the same or a little more for the wall oven.

I should note that we also have a Dacor ERD-36 range - which has a gas broiler in its electric oven. It uses the gas broiler to speed the pre-heat process, so the warm up costs should be a lot less than the Viking.

In any event, SWMBO has a 20% off coupon for BB+B. So we are going to look at the smaller Breville today. I am still a bit leery about electronic controls. But I trust the opinions of the denizens of this site more than most. :)

Hmmm. Looking at the web site that Corrie22 linked in, it appears my numbers for the wall oven are a bit off. Though he readily admits that even he thinks the $0.24/hour is too high and that he hasn't actually measured it.

Went for the smaller Breville. Initial impressions are that it looks good. A 12" pizza pan fits fine (was a bit tight in the Euro Pro.) After the initial 15 minute burn in, the first bagel came out perfect.

I also need to get a new toaster oven. I rarely use it for anything but toast. However I make my own bread and haven't found a "real" toaster that a thick, uneven slice of home made bread will fit in (that is the way my husband likes to cut them, and he's a major bread eater).

I often melt cheese on my toast, don't think that would work in a conventional toaster either.

We depended on our Breville during our kitchen construction . For six weeks it was our toaster, baker, broiler. We were surprised how many good meals we were able to make...

I just read dozens and dozens of Breville reviews, and all were 5 star RAVES. Pretty reassuring! We are debating a micro + Breville, or a Sharp or Panasonic convection micro. Whatever we choose will be put in a cabinet stack, so space isn't a huge issue. I'm thinking that the trim kit for the Sharp is $200-$300 alone; for that, I can get a Breville instead.

Depending on your needs, of course, the only overlap between the larger Breville and a convection m/w is for convection baking for small loads. The larger Breville only has a capacity of 0.8 cu ft, whereas a decent convection m/w is more like 1.5 cu ft. (Using the Viking convection m/w, which is really a rebadged Sharp, as an example.)

Four days into it, we are still happy with the Breville. One minor quibble is that the 'time/temp' button in the middle of the lower knob has to be pressed 'just right' in order to make contact. Anyone else notice this?

I have the Breville convection oven and love it. It is large enough to be our primary oven for most of our cooking since there are just the two of us. My son has the smaller Breville. It works very well and is just as solid as the big one but, just qualitatively, it has more the feeling of a toaster oven whereas the large one is a serious, real small convection oven that can also be used for toast.

I have had the larger Breville for about 4 months now and love it. I bought a refurbished one on amazon, so paid only about $140 for it including shipping (normally they are are around $250-$300). No problems whatsoever.

It does an excellent job of toasting but also wonderful at baking. And since I don't have double oven in my kitchen it has been a lifesaver baking potatoes or cooking a pie for dessert while something else is in my oven. I'm super happy with it.