Toaster ovens are the most versatile kitchen appliance. They can make all of your favorite dishes, from grilled cheese sandwiches to whole roasts, homemade pizza, and even french fries without the need for deep-frying.
To prove it, I decided to put 20 of the most popular toaster ovens on the market to the test with four of the most common food items. I settle on just the basic recipes that use raw, slightly seasoned ingredients because if the ovens can cook those well, they can handle advanced recipes. Here’s my list of the 5 toaster ovens to add to your cooking arsenal!
TL,DR: Grab the Cuisinart TOA-70 as your best overall pick—it roasts and cooks savory meals better than anything near its price, as long as you're okay with decent rather than perfect toast. If you cook daily and long for top-notch build and high-end extras like proofing or dehydrating, invest in the top-of-the-line Breville Smart Oven Air Fryer Pro. See the quick-comparison table below to get a sense for which model will fit your needs the best.
*All the prices in this article are at the point of publication.
**All test data are derived from our tests at ShouldIt.com.
How I Tested
Every oven ran the same four-dish gauntlet, scored on a 10-point scale weighted toward performance (50%), with design (25%) and usability (25%) making up the rest.
For toast, I ran four slices of white bread from a cold oven at whatever shade setting produced the best result, then immediately loaded a second batch to see whether the machine compensated for an already-hot chamber. Pizza was a single 9-inch thick-crust meat pizza with a ten-minute cutoff; anything slower failed the cooking-time component outright.
The chicken was a 3-pound bird (chicken wings for mini models), flipped once partway through and probed in the thickest part of both thighs, against a one-hour baseline and the USDA's 165–180°F safe range. Fries were 12 ounces and frozen, then tossed once during, with a 25-minute ceiling.
1. Cuisinart TOA-70 Air Fryer Toaster Oven – Best to Buy ($220)
The TOA-70 is a fully analog 1800-watt countertop oven with four dials, one light button, and no screen anywhere on it. Six quartz heating elements sit inside, four on top and two below, with the convection fan mounted on the ceiling rather than the side wall like most of its competition. The cooking chamber measures about 17 liters (fitting a 12-inch pizza or a 3-pound chicken) and it ships with a baking rack, baking pan, air fryer basket, and a ceramic-coated cast iron griddle. It runs $220 on Amazon and carries a 3-year warranty in the US and Canada.
This is the oven I'd hand to almost anyone cooking for three or four people, and it earned a 9.0 overall with a 9.2 on performance—the best of the group. Savory food is where it separates itself. The pizza scored 9.8 out of 10, cooking in 3 minutes 30 seconds on Air Fry at 450°F with a crust that stayed crunchy right through the bottom.
The chicken hit 9.4 on the same function at 350°F, done in 40 minutes with a single flip at the 20-minute mark, thighs reading 191–193°F with no pink near the bone. The skin around the wings and thighs crisped so thoroughly that pieces of it flaked off when I lifted the bird with tongs, a result I've otherwise only seen from ovens with a dedicated rotisserie kit. Fries took 15 minutes at 400°F with a toss at 10 and came out golden with no added oil at all.
The ceiling-mounted fan is doing a lot of that work. Pushing heat down through the food instead of across it is the difference between crispy and dry when it comes to French fries, and it's the single design decision I'd point to if someone asked why this oven beats machines at twice the price. It does make the unit a bit taller than comparable models, though the 16.3-by-16.1-inch footprint is the same as anything else in its class.
For toasting, out of the 20 models we’ve tested, it ranked only second to the Breville Smart Oven Air Fryer Pro, a model that’s twice the price (8.7 versus 9.0). The Medium setting runs exactly 5 minutes and browns the tops beautifully, but the undersides come out blotchy with visible light and dark patches, and Cuisinart won't let you run the convection fan during toasting to even that out. Being analog also means no automatic timer adjustment, so a second batch at the same Medium setting comes out noticeably darker. The good news is that it didn't burn, which is more than most analog ovens manage.
Day to day, the simplicity is the appeal. Turn the function dial, turn the temperature dial, turn the timer, and it's cooking. There's no menu to navigate and no mode to exit. The dials turn smoothly and land precisely, the casing stays manageable to touch even after long stretches at high heat, and opening the door cuts power to the elements without stopping the timer. Personally, I find this a drawback.
Cleanup was quick, which we noticed during our chicken roasting test: the polished stainless on both the inside and outside meant the splashing fat could be wiped straight off, with nothing making it past the element guards. The slide-out crumb tray fits the body better than the one on the older TOA-60.
My one real annoyance is the interior light. Opening the door turns it off, every single time, so you can only see the food clearly while the door is shut.
If you cook actual meals for three or four people and you want the most capable oven you can get without crossing $200, this is the one to buy. It's the cheapest machine here that roasts a whole chicken properly, it's built to survive years of it, and its analog control/aesthetics is simply timeless. Skip it if you specifically want a monitor display, presets, or audio reminders, because it has none of those.
Cuisinart TOA-70 Air Fryer Toaster Oven – Best to Buy
Price: $220
2. Breville Smart Oven Air Fryer Pro – Best High-End ($400)
The Smart Oven BOV900BSS is a large 1800-watt convection oven with an LCD, 3 dials, 6 buttons, and 13 high-performing cooking functions ranging from proofing at 80°F up to a 480°F pizza setting. Inside are six quartz elements, four rails that become eight tray levels if you flip the reversible racks, and roughly 27 liters of chamber—enough for a 14-pound turkey or a 5-quart Dutch oven. It arrives with two racks, a baking pan and broiler combo, an air fryer basket, and an enamel pizza pan. It’s usually listed at $400 on Amazon, with a warranty period of 2 years limited.
Here's the awkward part: it scored 9.4 overall, the highest of anything I've tested. It beat my Best to Buy pick on both design and usability, and lost to it on performance by a tenth of a point. It also costs roughly twice as much. That price gap is the only reason the Cuisinart wears the top badge instead.
It did the best with toast, at 9.0. It produced four evenly golden slices in less than 7 minutes thanks to the four heating elements where most competitors have two. Then the part I actually care about: the second batch dropped to 4 minutes 10 seconds on its own and came out the same color with slightly more moisture inside. No dialing down, no guessing, no sacrificial first slice. The pizza matched the Cuisinart at 9.8, done in 5 minutes at 450°F on the included enamel pan, which gives you a preheated surface without buying a stone.
The chicken and the fries are where I'd tell you to ignore the settings I used: 50 minutes at 350°F, producing a juicy meat when it came out, but the skin only crisped at the wing tips and would soften if the bird sat. I'd run it at 400–425°F for around 40 minutes next time. The fries scored 8.6 after 18 minutes at 400°F, which left the thicker cuts golden but soft while the thin ones browned properly.
Living with it is where the money shows up. Thirteen functions sounds like marketing jargon until you check the ranges against the dedicated appliances they're replacing, and they hold up: slow cook runs up to 72 hours, proof sits at 80–100°F, dehydrate has its own temperature band. Phase Cook chains two functions so the oven switches from bake to broil without you. The Frozen button adjusts time and temperature per function rather than adding a flat block of minutes (the older Breville models just added the same block regardless). The door parks open at an 80-degree angle on a magnet so food can cool inside, and doing that pauses the timer and shuts the oven off after ten minutes. Cleanup was the cherry on top: the enamel interior gave the chicken grease nothing to grip, even the splatter that reached the element guards was wiped away, and there are no nooks to work around.
The trade-off beyond price is physical. At 21.5 inches wide and 23.6 pounds, it's a serious commitment of counter space. The warranty is a year shorter than the Cuisinart's, and there's no way to keep the interior light on; it times out after 30 seconds regardless of what you press.
If you prefer premium features, top-of-the-line build quality, and often find yourself eye-ing either a dehydrator or proofing box, this machine is the investment. It essentially sits at the top of the market, delivering as premium an experience as the current market has to offer.
Breville Smart Oven Air Fryer Pro – Best High-End
Price: $400
3. Ninja Flip Toaster Oven 8-in-1 – Best Mini ($250)
The Ninja Flip is a 1800-watt countertop oven with a rather gimmicky design: two indents on the sides let it stand up vertically against your backsplash, which means you can essentially cut the footprint of the appliance in half whenever you’re not using it. It boasts 8 cooking functions utilizing 6 quartz elements, a convection fan inside a 16-liter chamber, and you also get a baking rack, a baking pan, an air fryer basket, and a removable crumb tray in the box. Most importantly, it’s arguably the best mini toaster oven we’ve ever tested out.
Out of the 8 different mini oven models we’ve examined, this Ninja Flip sits on the very top thanks to its 8.7 total performance score, with most of it attributable to the outstanding pizza score of 9.8. Baked at 450°F in 4 minutes 30 seconds on just the wire rack the crust came out golden and crisp bottom to top with no dead spots, and the toppings charred well. Fries scored 9.0 (which is mind-blowing for the category) as it produced evenly golden, delicious-looking pieces with the shorter pieces crisping more than the longer ones.
For mini ovens like these, I roast 10 middle-joint wings instead of a whole chicken. Here, the oven handled the meat beautifully, scoring 9.2 at 400°F over 35 minutes. The wings stuck to the rack on the flip attempt, so only the basket got rotated, and the result was a deep golden brown with plenty of rendered fat, only a touch less juice than perfect.
Toasting was also outstanding: bread’s top had a solid gold color, with a slight fade towards the edges. The second batch came out a shade darker than how I’d personally enjoy. But overall, it scored a solid 7.6, which is the top 3 best results we have seen out of the test (the highest score is the Breville Mini Smart’s 7.8.)
Usability-wise, I’ve found the Flip to be a darling to use on a daily basis: the door handle stays cool through a full cooking cycle, settings can be adjusted mid-toast without restarting, and the display greets you with "hello" on power-up and warns "hot" when the exterior isn't safe to touch. Preheat takes about 90 seconds and finishes with an audio cue, and the door will hold open to let food cool without you standing over it.
The only drawback, really, is within the interior: the walls aren't non-stick or polished, so grease splashed onto the elements needed a baking-soda paste and real scrubbing to get off. Everything else, from the crumb tray, the basket, to the enamel pan, wiped clean fast.
For something that delivers innovative, space-saving design and outstanding cooking performance in the same package, the Ninja Flip deserves more recognition. If you're feeding 1-3 people and the counter space is tight, this is the best mini oven to buy.
Ninja Flip Toaster Oven 8-in-1 – Best Mini
Price: $250
Close Runner-Up: Breville BOV450XL Mini Smart Oven ($160)
The Breville BOV450XL is easily one of the best compact toaster ovens you can get if your primary goal is killer toast and quick reheating. Packing 1800 watts into a sturdy 10-pound stainless frame, this little unit cranks out perfectly crisp, golden-brown toast faster than pretty much anything else on the market. It’s super well-built, surprisingly easy to wipe clean thanks to its non-stick interior, and small enough to fit seamlessly on tighter countertops without feeling cheap.
That said, you definitely shouldn’t buy this thinking it’s going to replace a full-sized oven or a dedicated air fryer. Because it lacks a convection fan, heat circulation isn't great, meaning things like frozen fries and pizzas come out a bit dry or pale, and roasting a whole chicken is a tight, messy squeeze. Between the lack of an interior light, a door that doesn't like to stay cracked open, and a few impractical features, it's definitely a top-tier toaster that can bake—not a mini culinary powerhouse.
Overall Verdict
Buy the Cuisinart TOA-70 unless you have a specific reason not to. It cooks savory food better than anything near its price, it's built to last years and years of service, and the analog aesthetic never goes out of style. Admittedly, its toasting is only good when it could be great, but that's the entire compromise.
If you prefer premium features, top-of-the-line build quality, and often find yourself eye-ing either a dehydrator or proofing box, spend up to the Breville BOV900BSS and its reliable, consistent performance. This particular model currently sits at the top of the industry in terms of quality as well as popularity, delivering as premium an experience as the market has to offer.
Take the Ninja Flip if you’d like an all-round mini oven that saves space and churns out some very tasty pizza. It cannot compare to the other two larger models—to state the obvious—but it’s a fantastic choice nonetheless for its standout performance and features.
For more toaster ovens, including the ones that didn't make this list, see Shouldit's best toaster ovens, tested in a lab and used in our kitchen daily.
Luna Regina
Writer, Author- Cherry BlossomI've picked up the Breville BOV450XL recently and loved it.