The 4 Best Toaster Ovens of 2024, Tested and Reviewed

Our Favorite Toaster Oven

The Breville Smart Oven was by far our Best Overall pick. Our test kitchen found that it has even heating and browning properties for a perfect cook every time. It’s also super easy to clean, is sleek and modern in its design, and offers exceptionally high value for the price. If you’re also in the market for an air fryer, we recommend the Instant Pot Omni Plus Air Fryer Toaster Oven.

How We Tested Toaster Ovens

To find which toaster ovens performed above the rest, we put 24 top-rated models through rigorous side-by-side testing. In the testing, editors judged each product on several factors:

• Heating accuracy: While not entirely crucial for toasting bread or melting cheese, preheating becomes extremely important when using your toaster oven for just about anything else. This is why we carefully monitored how long each oven took to come up to temperature and how well it held the set temperature we selected.
• Heating consistency: It’s best that a toaster oven can heat its entire cavity from corner to corner. Otherwise, there’s wasted space in an already compact design. To test this, we loaded each toaster oven with bread from single slices up to six slices, depending on each toaster oven’s capacity. We toasted the slices and looked for even browning but also for the oven’s heat map. The heat map shows how the heating element in the oven either does or doesn’t allow for even cooking through the entirety of its interior. 
• Baking: The temperature isn’t the only important feature of a toaster oven. The material of everything from the baking sheet to the metal racks can affect baked goods made in the appliance. We measured how well each toaster oven performed on this front by baking some cookies from pre-made refrigerated chocolate chip dough.
• Broiling: We decided to test the toaster ovens’ broil functions on an ingredient that can both melt and brown beautifully: cheese. After broiling cheese on toast, we rated how efficiently and evenly it melted under the broiler.
• Crisping: The toaster ovens with both a convection fan and perforated basket were tested alongside all the best air fryers to determine how well they crisped up delicious French fries and other breaded foods. 
• Ease of use and cleanup: We took a detailed look at the instruction booklet provided by the manufacturer. From pre-operation warnings to cleanup instructions, we confirmed whether or not the information provided was clear and thorough enough to be considered user-friendly. We also disassembled and cleaned the toaster ovens several times, noting any pros or cons along the way.

Factors to Consider

Size

How big you need your toaster oven to be — or rather how much room you have for a toaster oven on your countertop, is as unique to each user as their fingerprint. Be sure to measure for specs that work in your kitchen (provided in the dimensions noted underneath each oven description). Finally, consider what you’ll want to toast, bake, roast, or broil in the oven when deciding how big the toaster oven you need is.

Features

With so many options on the market today, discovering the right perfect toaster oven largely depends on the settings you’re likely to use. Are you looking for a toaster oven to mainly toast and reheat leftover foods? Or, are you also looking to whip up a pizza or air fry salmon for easy weeknight dinners? Price will vary depending on the added features, but determining your use cases with the added settings will help you make an informed decision.

Racks and Accessories

Despite the ease of shipping these days, it can be hard to find just the right accessories for a toaster oven. Buying one with everything you need makes this less of a hindrance. We considered the accessories provided with each oven, evaluating the quality of each item and how easy it was to clean after use. When purchasing, consider if the price of the added accessories and the space they will inhabit in your kitchen is worth it.

Other Toaster Ovens We Tested

Strong Contenders

Cuisinart Chef's Convection Toaster Oven ($300 at Amazon)
Though this toaster oven was simple and easy to use with large, easy-to-read display buttons, we found the oven to be a bit too spartan with limited timer functions for certain foods.

Hamilton Beach 4-slice Countertop Toaster Oven & Pizza Maker ($60 at Amazon)
Despite its reasonable price point and everyday functionality, we found this analog-style toaster oven to be a bit too basic, lacking crucial features, including an interior light and broil timer.

Cuisinart TOB-40N Custom Classic Toaster Oven Broiler; 17-Inch ($100 at Amazon)

While toast came out consistently brown during our tests, foods like cookies and grilled cheese sandwiches cooked near the back of the oven were unevenly cooked. Since this toaster oven does not have a controllable timer, and the toasting feature is the only available smart feature, we found this oven yielded uneven cooking results.

De'Longhi 10-in-1 Digital Toaster Oven ($350 at Amazon)

This toaster oven works best as an oven or air fryer, yielding evenly-baked chocolate chip cookies and French fries. For quick everyday cooking tasks like toasting single pieces of bread, we found inconsistent results with too many functions to choose from.

Panasonic Toaster Oven FlashXpress ($170 at Amazon)

This toaster oven worked well for simple, individual tasks like reheating leftovers. However, we found an overall inconsistency in cooking, as the oven got hotter in the back and cooler towards the door.

What Didn't Make The List

Although the convection baking functionality was somewhat consistent with toaster ovens like the one we tested from Oster, we found inconsistent results when toasting bread, broiling, and baking cookies. Despite its extensive features, we found the testing and convection performance of other products like certain Black + Decker devices to be subpar, with inconsistent results between modes. Other models, such as BALMUDA's, are beautiful, but overall performance was lacking in tasks like baking and cooking.

Our Expertise

• Christa Glennie has been a freelance writer and food editor for nearly 20 years. She is also the author of two cookbooks and specializes in food and drink trends, agriculture, the regional foodways of Western New York, and the restaurant business. Her respect for simplicity and uncluttered counters in the kitchen ultimately fuels a desire to find and own well-designed, multi-purpose, best-in-class kitchen tools.
• Food & Wine Updates Writer Dillon Evans contributed updates to this article. He's a lifelong home cook and baker whose work can also be found in EatingWell. In Dillon's kitchen, you can find one toaster oven — or more — which aids his obsession with potato fries, tenders, and other crispy foods.