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Compact toaster ovens

14 years ago

I'm looking for a nice toaster oven that will not take much counter space and is very easy to clean.

Many of the nicer brands make their toaster ovens more bulky than I have counter space to deal with. I can use my full size oven for larger items.

It does not need to be a "high-end" brand, in fact I prefer not, but something of good quality that isn't a pain to keep clean and will use minimal possible counter space.

Under cabinet space-saver models won't work because the cabinet bottoms are low and there would be not enough space to use the counter under it anyway.

Comments (7)

  • 14 years ago

    Until I recently got a Breville, I was never happy with the quality of toast produced by a toaster oven but now I am. I got the larger convection toaster oven but they make a smaller compact one - not cheap but worth it in my opinion. One nice thing, is that the crumb tray pulls out from the front which makes it easy to clean.

  • 14 years ago

    Another vote for the Breville. Great little oven. Great for casseroles, small pizza, broiling, toasting -- I have been relying on it exclusively during our loooooong kitchen remodel.

  • 14 years ago

    We have the baby Breville, which is not convection, but works fine for our needs. Also using it as our primary oven during reno, so not sure how it will work afterwards, but it's not as much bigger as the old (OLD!) toaster oven we had before. Fits a full chicken pot pie from the local bakery, which is fun! Toasts well but needs a couple of cycles on the default settings---I haven't played with adjusting this too much yet. We use toaster ovens primarily for toasting and broiling and had tested, and been unhappy, with several other newer ones (Cuisinart, Philips, Krups). This one seems to decently toast while still baking and such.

  • 14 years ago

    People say the temperatures on Breville toaster ovens are wildly off calibration. Makes it difficult to bake.
    Looks nice though.

    Here is a link that might be useful: Temps in Breville Toaster Ovens

  • 14 years ago

    There are 300 5-star reviews vs. 15 1-star reviews. All products have some bad units. As with all ovens, you may need to preheat it for a while after it beeps to allow the temperature to stabilize.

  • 14 years ago

    I was reading through more reviews and I have an idea of why that person was having problems even after exchanging for a second unit. It is 1800 watts and needs 20 amps to power it. Maybe his power supply couldn't handle it and it wasn't getting enough power, so it didn't heat properly.
    I also read that it could also trip the circuit beaker if you use it and your microwave at the same time. If I wouldn't be able to use both at the same time anyway, I might as well get a convection microwave combo unit and save counter space. Counter space is at a premium now that I swapped the OTR microwave for a countertop microwave.
    They wouldn't be plugged into the same wall outlet, but I have no way of knowing if they are on the same circuit. Different outlets in a kitchen may share the same circuit.

  • 14 years ago

    I will say that our Breville trips the circuit whenever it's in use at the same time as another heating device. However, we are in the middle of a kitchen remodel and have a single outlet powering our refrigerator, dehumidifier, and three lamps (one socket via extension cord) and our toaster oven, electric kettle, and hotplate (other socket, via a power strip)---so this is not exactly the "recommended" scenario! Circuit trips if any two of toaster oven, kettle, hot plate, rice cooker or waffle maker are used at once, though, so I don't know that you could blame Breville for that.

    I am curious about the temps, though. Our oven thermometer is packed away but will test it when I do find it---it is the case that much of the "TV dinner" style food I've been making takes 20% longer to bake than the directions say it will, but we've never made those before either in the oven or in the old toaster oven, so I don't know if that's normal or not. We didn't ever use the old toaster oven for things that required specific temperatures (and probably won't use this for that once the oven's connected again), so this is new territory for me. Biscuits worked fine following the same temp and time I use for them in the real oven, though.

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