Why not just get a toaster oven ? If all you are concerned with is reheating frozen pre cooked food, that would be your best option. For great examples look on the Cooking Forum and search "canary bird". She makes the most exquisite meals in her toaster oven that you will ever see. She lives as you may guess in the Canary Islands and does not want the heat from a full oven.

I have the Miele 30" double wall ovens. They do not take 18 min, to preheat to 350. I use them almost daily to bake many different breads . I also utilize the rotisserie function and the roasting probe etc. I definitely get my money's worth from these ovens. You probably will not get that kind of use from any double ovens that you buy. But maybe you will increase the kind of cooking you do when you have the wonderful new kitchen you are planning , who knows. Only you do.

If you are buying for resale then the amount you spend on the ovens you buy will be influenced by that. So you really need to investigate your own personal plan to see what is best for you. Make a list of pros and cons and see what seems to be best.

Also if you are cooking frozen pizza at 350 you are not setting the temp high enough. Caroline

There really is an issue of an oven telling you it has reached the pre-heat setting and the oven actually stabilizing at that temperature - some of it is a function of where the thermostat is located - I'll bet your builder grade GE ovens really didn't stabilize in 6 minutes. Also, for many things that you are reheating you don't need to actually preheat the oven before putting things in. Getting a range vs. a wall oven is really not the issue.

Why do [wall] ovens take so long to preheat? Because they are trying to heat 3.5 to 4.4 cubic feet of a very poor thermally conductive/susceptible material - air. Simple physics really.

Are you looking for an oven to BEEP in 6 minutes? Or to preheat in 6 minutes?

Most (not all) conventional ovens will beep at you in about 6 minutes. But neither your ovens nor Trailrunner's ovens are actually reaching 350 degrees in the center of the oven - where you're doing your baking - in 6 minutes. I'm sure they are most quite reliably recording 350degrees in 6 minutes centimeters from the broiler element where the sensor is located, however, that causes the oven to beep at you. ;-)

Otherwise, I agree with Trailrunner - the smaller the cavity, the faster it will preheat. For frozen pizzas, a small toaster oven is not a bad thing to have. I think my cuisinart convection toaster oven is ugly as sin. But I've kept it and I use it regularly for heating and even cooking smaller quantities of food. Seriously no sense heating up a large cavity if you're not going to do justice to it.

Good luck.

Hey, just wanted to say that these are great posts, in the best GW tradition. Thoughtful and most importantly correct explanations, and nice suggestions as to alternatives. Better than anything you could get at some "expert's website." Good job to all.

I agree with trailrunner, we have a toaster oven too, works great for heating things up. We also have the Miele wall oven, I set ours to 400F last night and it only took 5-7 mins to get to the 400F.

The old ovens had exposed heating elements, the new have hidden. Hidden elements will take longer to pre-heat because they are below the floor. You wanted cleaner ovens with no coils showing, you got it and 20 minutes to pre-heat isn't long, it's reasonable.

If fast cooking times for prepared food is your primary concern, why not consider a speed-cook oven? No pre-heat time at all, plus speedy cooking.

the answer is more like "it doesn't take 20 minutes". It's the definition of "preheat" and "stabilized at XXX temp" which might mean 20 minutes.

It's not that the oven will ONLY be used for prepared food, but that's when the preheat time factor is most likely to be noticed.

No you won't notice...start the oven before you head for the Quik Pic or the freezer. Pull out what you want to cook (oven is already on)....open package, go to wine cooler...select wine...open wine...get glasses... wine is breathing ...pour...toast your S O ...enjoy the moment. Oven is now preheated...cook pizza ( or other items).

All is good.

Not trying to be " funny" but this is a nonissue. Get the oven you can afford and learn to love it . c

I appreciate the original question and have wondered the same thing, I recently renovated and spent $8k on a wolf dual fuel/range oven which generally I'm very happy with, although I have noticed that it takes much longer to preheat than previous ovens I've had, 20 minutes is not too far off.

I'm sure that the previous posts comments around the physics/temp stabilization are probably the reason. It has not been a dealbreaker for us, we've just adjusted to turning the oven on before we even get ingredients out to make something to allow the extra time to preheat. It can be inconvenient when entertaining if you need to last minute finish something in the oven.