The Best Toaster Ovens for Baking, Broiling, Roasting, Air-Frying and, Of Course, Toasting—Tested and Reviewed

We live in the future now, so everything you thought you knew about toaster ovens is probably wrong—or at least outdated. Today, the best toaster oven does so much more than just toast bread, reheat leftovers, and broil tuna melts. Newer models are true multifunctional small kitchen appliances that threaten to make all of your other countertop cookers (and maybe even your full-size oven) obsolete. Many also function as air fryers thanks to added convection fans, which produce extra-crispy freezer waffles, hash browns, french fries, and other frozen foods at the push of a button.

But with so many brands promising upwards of eight cooking modes and who even knows how many presets, which toaster ovens actually deliver the perfectly cooked goods?

We tested a variety of models at different price points and landed a clear winner that truly does it all. While we were at it, we found a smaller, simpler, more affordable option to recommend too. Below, find our top picks—and keep reading for the specifics of how we tested and what to look for in a toaster oven.

The Breville Joule Oven Air Fryer Pro is really an updated version of the Breville Smart Oven Air Fryer Pro (Breville is not always economical with the names), but it is also a definite upgrade from a previous winner, the Breville Smart Oven Compact Convection. And though it may be more advanced than some people may think they need from a countertop toaster oven, it has the kind of functionality that grows on you to the point that you wonder how you ever lived (or at least cooked) without it.

This oven has all of the not-so-basic features we still like in the Smart Oven Compact Convection, including a convection fan, an easy-to-read backlit LED screen with countdown timer, and multiple rack positions for use with the 13 different cooking functions (as well clear indications of what position to use with which function). The functions include presets for traditional toaster oven foods like toast and bagels, as well as pizza, and cookie settings. The different settings utilize the heating elements and convection fan in different ways. It also features Breville’s proprietary smart feature, Element IQ, which employs sensors to automatically adjust the oven’s temperature from its multiple heat sources as needed.

During testing the Joule Oven made consistently flawless toast, passed our pizza test with flying colors thanks to that pizza setting, and produced chicken thighs with nice, crispy skin. It really could do just about everything a full-sized oven could too, including foolproof proofing, baking, roasting, slow-cooking, and broiling.

Though it’s noticeably bigger than toaster ovens of yore—21.5 by 17.3 by 12.8 inches, about the size of a big microwave—it eliminates any reason for owning a separate toaster, air fryer, and dehydrator. You might even find you prefer this to a microwave for quick reheats on anything besides a cup of coffee too (please don’t put a coffee cup in the toaster oven). If you’re really looking to streamline your small kitchen appliances, the Joule Oven’s slow cooker function has two slow-cook settings and can be set for anywhere from four to 72 (!) hours so it just might inspire you to donate your old Crock-Pot too. And while we’re not saying you should replace your full-size oven with this countertop cooker, you probably could because it can accommodate a 9-by-13-inch baking pan, a 13-inch pizza, and a 14-pound turkey.

That sounds like a lot, but there actually is more.

Why we love the Joule Oven app

We often find small appliance companion apps to be more gimmicky and buggy than useful. Not so with the user-friendly Breville+ app, developed in collaboration along with the hard-core culinary nerds at ChefSteps. In fact, the app is what really sets the Breville Joule Oven Air Fryer Pro apart from its predecessors.

The Breville+ app, which also controls the Joule Sous Vide Turbo, has expected features like a mobile alert when the oven is preheated or when a cook has completed, and we love that the recipes include an illustrated list of ingredients as well as any extra equipment required, so you will never be caught off-guard halfway through making dinner. Even better, each recipe step has photos and videos to guide you through all of the prep.

The real value of the Joule Oven app, however, is in its execution of recipes like from-scratch croissants, air-fried zucchini fries, and even a rotisserie-style whole chicken. In the case of the croissants, the Joule’s AutoPilot mode automatically adjusts the oven for both proofing and baking. For the rotisserie-style chicken, this smart “toaster oven” cycles through different bake, broil, and convection settings that no human would have the patience to manipulate manually—and likely wouldn’t be able to keep track of even if they tried.

After all of that, if you want to just push a button on the oven to make some toast, you can do that too. And that’s what really makes the Joule our top pick: Its versatility.

Read our full full review of the Breville Joule Oven.

The Joule Oven comes with multiple accessories, including a stainless-steel dehydrate/air-fry basket, a 13-inch nonstick pizza pan, two stainless-steel wire racks, a 9x13-inch enameled roasting pan, and a 9x13-inch broiling rack (while our experience tells us the racks are technically dishwasher-safe, the manual suggests hand-washing them). An additional bamboo board that sits on top of the oven and acts as a heat barrier can be purchased separately.

Unlike many of Breville’s small appliances, which come with a one-year warranty, the Joule Oven Air Fryer Pro has a limited two-year warranty, and additional coverage can be purchased if you buy directly from breville.

What we didn’t love about the Breville Joule Oven Air Fryer Pro

The two downsides to this oven are its cost and its size, though we believe both are justifiable by its quality and functionality. At the time of publication, the suggested retail price is $499, but when you consider the fact that it serves the purpose of at least three or four countertop appliances—and for many home cooks, it can practically eliminate the need for a conventional oven—it’s a worthy investment if budget and kitchen layout allow.

Temperature range: 80ºF-480ºF
13 cooking functions: Toast, Bagel, Bake, Air Fry, Broil, Roast, Pizza, Cookies, Proof, Reheat, Slow Cook, Keep Warm, Dehydrate
Includes: 13’’ non-stick pizza pan, 2 Wire racks, 9” x 13” broiling rack, 9’’ x 13’’ enamel roasting pan, Air fry basket
Wattage: 1800 watts
Dimensions: 21.5"D x 17.3"W x 12.8"H
Weight: 22.8 lbs.

If you’re in the market for something smaller, simpler, or more affordable, we recommend the Panasonic FlashXpress Toaster Oven with Double Infrared Heating.

This compact oven’s double-infrared heating element significantly speeds up cooking times. Our bread was transformed into a deep tan toast in only two minutes, and using the pizza preset, our frozen pizza emerged with melted cheese and a crisp outer crust. But it’s not perfect. Cookies were nicely browned on the bottom but had to be removed earlier than the recipe specified. The oven’s accelerated “abilities” would have burned them if we hadn’t been monitoring them. And while the Flash Xpress roasted chicken beautifully, the sputtering of fat did create a concerning amount of sizzle and a little smoke too (though we admit we didn’t follow the manufacturer’s instructions to wrap meat in foil before cooking.)

This quirky infrared-powered toaster oven has an R2-D2 vibe and cube-like proportions. At 12x13x10.25 inches, it takes up much less counter space than the Breville, but as its name suggests, it’s really quite flashy. The controls, which include an oven light and buttons with imagery of the food it suspects you’ll be making (e.g., toast or frozen pizza), are lined along the bottom and the door is situated on top, a feature that puts the food closer to eye level. A light also turns on and off during use, as if the oven is chatting with you—though it’s actually the work of a smart sensor, which turns the heat on and off automatically to maintain a desired temperature.

There’s only one groove for positioning the wire rack, so it doesn’t have the flexibility of the Breville, but the rack is connected to the door, so it pops out automatically when you check your food, eliminating the need to pull it out while wearing a bulky oven mitt. You can remove both the rack and the crumb tray for cleaning.

As with most of our product review budget picks, saving some money usually means sacrificing features or functionality—and this is certainly the case with toaster ovens. The Panasonic doesn’t come with nearly as many accessories as the Breville (there’s no app, either), but there is an included 9-inch-square baking tray. This oven also has a one-year limited manufacturer’s warranty on parts and labor.

What we didn’t love about the Panasonic Flash Xpress Toaster Oven

There are some persnickety things about the Panasonic that take getting used to. For example, the temperature can be set in Celsius or Fahrenheit, but the oven clearly favors Celsius, as there are settings for 355ºF or 390ºF and not the more standard Fahrenheit temps like 350º and 375º. Additionally, the timer only goes up to 25 minutes, at which time the oven automatically shuts off. If you want to cook anything for longer than that, you’ll need to set it more than once.

Temperature range: 250ºF-500ºF
6 cooking functions: Toast, Waffle, Roll, Pizza, Quick, Hash brown
Includes: 1 wire rack
Wattage: 1300 watts
Dimensions: 13"D x 12"W x 10.25"H
Weight: 7.5 lbs.

A toaster oven can bake, roast, broil, defrost, and, of course, brown bread—and some can do a whole lot more. To evaluate these multitasking functions, our testers cooked the following:

We started by toasting two slices of bread on each machine’s medium setting. Immediately after the first round, we filled each toaster’s rack to maximum capacity (four to nine slices, depending on the size of the oven) to see how evenly the bread browned in back-to-back batches of varying sizes. We also wanted to see if the oven’s residual hot air affected the second round. Additionally, we timed how long it took to toast the bread on whatever counted as the oven’s “medium” setting. Most of all, we were looking for a machine that toasted consistently as an indicator of its capability for even cooking.

We made chocolate chip cookies from scratch, portioned them out, and froze overnight. Then we baked four to a rack the next day. For both the pizza and cookie tests, we used the baking sheets that came with the respective toaster ovens.

We cooked personal frozen pizzas following the instructions on the box. If an oven had a preset “pizza” setting, we used it. If it didn’t, we set the temperature controls manually or used the broiler setting. For the devices that didn’t have preheat settings or indicators, we heated each for five minutes before baking.

If the machines were marketed as air fryer–toaster oven combos, we also attempted to crisp up straight-from-the-freezer tater tots and chicken tenders.

If an oven performed well in the first three tests, we moved it on to the meat round and roasted a chicken thigh and leg—each simply coated in olive oil and seasoned with salt and pepper.

When making toast—a toaster oven’s primary function—we looked for even color on both sides of the bread. In back-to-back rounds of toasting, we were especially concerned with whether or not the toast would burn.

We looked at how consistently, evenly, and efficiently each oven cooked a variety of foods. When reheating frozen pizza, we wanted a crispy bottom, evenly melted cheese, and a browned crust. For the cookies, we wanted melty insides, golden exteriors, and crispy edges. When roasting chicken, we looked for crispy, golden skin and juicy meat that was cooked throughout. We also paid attention to whether or not the oven’s presets performed as expected.

Beyond the always-included rack, we looked at what accessories came with each oven. Some were very limited, while others included extra racks, baking sheets, trays, roasting racks, and air-fry baskets.

Because it’s more of an accessory appliance, a toaster oven should be easy to use, so we looked for user-friendly control panels and gave preference to those with intuitive knobs or buttons and backlit LCD digital displays. We also considered how hard or easy it was to clean each oven and how much effort it took to remove and replace the removable crumb tray.

Any appliance that’s going to live semi-permanently on the counter needs to be worth whatever space it takes up. So for the bigger ovens, especially, we looked at whether they were functional and versatile enough to warrant everyday use and whether or not they could eliminate the need for other countertop cookers.

Until it was unseated by the Breville Joule, the Breville Smart Oven Compact Convection was our long-reigning product test winner thanks to its consistency, ease of use, and thoughtful features. It has a Fahrenheit-to-Celsius converter, a button that tells the oven you’re cooking something frozen, and an indicator that shows you how long the cooking or toasting cycle will be. This oven produced consistent results when we made toast, cookies, frozen pizza and chicken, and save for the Joule Oven, it gives the user more control than any other toaster oven we tested. With a footprint of 15x17x10 inches, the compact oven is big enough to bake an 8x8-inch pan of brownies, cook a 12-inch pizza, or roast a generous piece of salmon, but small enough to be reasonably discreet. If you’re not interested in an extra-large toaster oven (or something that’s super techy), but you still want the quality and smart features of a Breville oven, this is a great option at a much lower price point than the Joule.

Consider the Breville Smart Oven Air Fryer Pro the middle ground between the Breville Smart Oven Compact Convection and the Breville Joule Oven Air Fryer Pro, in terms of size, technology, and price point. Similar to the compact convection model, this one is equipped with all the basic cooking functions, like toast, bake, and roast, but it can also slow cook and dehydrate. Additionally, it has a “super convection” setting (a faster speed for the convection fan) that amps up your food’s crispiness and reduces the cooking time. We found the presets on this toaster oven to be more accurate than the presets on most other toaster ovens, so it’s hard to under- or over-cook your food—even if you’re not following a recipe. This machine churned out ultra-crispy, golden brown chicken tenders and tater tots, and it produced some of the best results for frozen pizza. The Smart Oven Air Fryer Pro is among the easiest and most intuitive to operate, and it’s truly a joy to use. Compared to the Breville Joule, the only thing this oven is missing is app connectivity. But if you’re interested in something that’s larger than the compact convection model and smaller than the Joule, you don’t care so much about having a mobile app, and you’re looking to save a couple hundred bucks—this is a wonderful option.

Though we didn't like it as much as the Breville models, the Ninja Foodi was still an excellent air fryer–toaster oven combo. Like the Breville ovens, the interface allowed us to customize the cook times based on how many slices we were toasting, as well as the level of browning desired. We had less success baking recipes with short cooking times, and not only because the preheat took longer than the 90 seconds the product copy promised. We were, however, very happy with the air fryer function on this oven; tater tots and chicken tenders came out beautifully crisp and golden brown. We also used the air fryer function to reheat cold pizza we’d had delivered the night before—just three minutes at 400° produced reheated pizza that tasted just as hot and fresh as it did when it showed up at our door.

The KitchenAid countertop oven has nine cooking functions with presets and a sleek digital interface that’s easy to read and use. It also has a preheat function that lets you know the oven has come to temperature for baking or roasting tasks. This machine produced some of the most evenly browned toast in our tests. Other machines had a tendency to produce darker toast near the middle of the rack and lighter toast near the edges of the rack, but the KitchenAid produced toast that was evenly browned all over, regardless of the toast’s position on the rack. And while not quite as crispy as the food cooked in the Breville toaster ovens, this one made stellar chicken, tater tots, and frozen pizza.

Over the course of several years of testing, the Panasonic Flash Xpress has maintained its status as our favorite smaller, more affordable toaster oven—but only by a hair. Its top competitor, the Hamilton Beach Stainless-Steel 4-Slice Toaster Oven, has consistently browned slices of toast quickly and evenly. It also has more intuitive dials for selecting temperature, function (toast, broil, bake), and time. Ultimately though, the Hamilton Beach didn’t quite perform as well as the Panasonic. For example, it took nearly 20 minutes to bake cookies from frozen balls of dough in the Hamilton Beach model versus just 14 in the Panasonic.

The cube-shaped Wonder Oven has a modern, minimalist design that comes in a few neutral colors and fits within a certain Instagrammable aesthetic. While it has a modern look, it works like a traditional toaster oven. Instead of having a digital interface, this six-in-one machine uses three manual knobs: one for temperature, one for cooking mode, and one for time. The timer even audibly ticks away the seconds like an old school toaster oven, and a loud “ding” sounds off when the cooking is complete. It’s definitely got fun retro vibes. The Wonder Oven has two rack positions and it can toast, bake, air fry, roast, broil, and reheat. It also has the ability to steam bake, which came in handy for reviving stale bread and reheating leftover pizza. We found that this machine ran hot, and things like toast and cookies browned comparably fast, which means that food requires a bit of babysitting to ensure it doesn’t burn. That said, this toaster oven produced immaculate frozen chicken tenders and roasted chicken thighs. For both, the chicken remained juicy and tender on the inside and was crispy and gold-brown on the outside. At 11.5 inches wide, this is one of the smallest toaster ovens we’ve used, and it’s also one of the lightest. So if you’re looking for a toaster oven that’ll take up very little counter space, or something you can stow away when not in use, this is a machine to consider.

The Crux Artisan Series Digital Air Fryer Toaster Oven looks and operates similarly to the Breville ovens, but it’s not quite as nice. The convection fan has a regular setting and turbo setting for air-frying, and this model comes with a removable air-frying basket and drip tray. The oven can also run for up to 24 hours, making overnight slow cooking or dehydrating very doable. Unfortunately, the knobs and buttons on the control panel are overly sensitive, especially while the oven is hot, and it beeps loudly every time you press a button or turn a knob.

The Oster Digital RapidCrisp Air Fryer Oven has a simple and intuitive interface. It made decent toast on our first try, however subsequent batches yielded inconsistently browned, disappointing results. It did a good job with frozen pizza, roast chicken, and baked goods, but ultimately, this oven makes countertop cooking more complicated than it has to be. The timer starts counting down as soon as you press “start,” and because it doesn’t have a preheat function, we had to add three minutes or so to our cook times, then wait around to put the food in once the oven had reached the desired temperature. Additionally, it lacks an interior light and it’s harder to clean than many of the other models we tested.

The Cuisinart Convection Toaster Oven Air Fryer was truly disappointing. The bulky machine feels and looks like a tank, and for the price, it lacks finesse. The timer is on a dial, which made it difficult to tell how long we were setting it for, and we didn’t like the top-heavy design, with the controls set over the door, either. This oven also runs very hot. The medium setting for toast lasted a full five minutes and produced bread that bordered on burnt; the cheese on the frozen pizza browned and puffed up instead of melting.

The Oster Large Capacity Countertop 6-Slice Digital Convection Toaster Oven is conspicuously large and has an inscrutable interface; even the manual didn’t specify the appropriate rack positions for different functions. As for performance, the medium setting for toast lasted a lengthy five minutes 15 seconds—and it resulted in burnt bread (you had one job, toaster oven!).

This sleek-looking oven from the maker of the Instant Pot has an intuitive touchscreen interface, and we were impressed with its air-frying capabilities. Unfortunately, it repeatedly ruined our toast, and while it did bake cookies in just five minutes instead of the expected 10, the browning was uneven and blotchy like a bad spray tan. Likewise, a frozen pizza that should have taken 20 minutes to bake took only 10, but the edges got super dark before the pizza reached an internal temperature of 165°F. The instruction manual was confusing, and considering the price ($250 at the time of publishing), the accessories are lacking. This machine comes with one rack, a fryer basket, and one baking sheet, which slides into the same grooves as the rack. But the included sheet pan is just a hair too wide, so it scratched the interior walls every time we slid it into the oven.

In our testing, Black + Decker’s 4-Slice Toaster Oven toasted the first two slices of bread quickly and evenly, but burned the toast on the second round. It did a respectable job considering its low price, but it ran hot and we didn’t love the design or the control knobs.

Additional reporting by Jarrett Melendez, Emily Farris, and Tiffany Hopkins.