Items sent back to us without first requesting a return will not be accepted.You can always contact us for any return question at Michael Sullivan has been a staff writer on the kitchen team at Wirecutter since 2016. Previously, he was an editor at the International Culinary Center in New York. He has worked in various facets of the food and restaurant industry for over a decade.
They’re also not moved or banged around as much as slot toasters, making their electrical components less susceptible to failure. We like the Breville Air Fryer Pro’s sleek design and easy-to-navigate interface. The Breville also has a Phase Cook feature (similar to the Cuisinart’s Dual Cook Mode), which allows you to program two back-to-back cooking functions. Like the Cuisinart, the Breville’s rack glides out when you open the door so you don’t have to stick your hands deep into the oven cavity to retrieve your food. It comes with two oven racks so you can cook more food at once—an addition we appreciate with the Cuisinart too.
This convection toaster oven has a slightly more powerful fan for air frying than the Cuisinart, plus convenient markings on the door and the easiest-to-clean interior. It also has additional settings for proofing bread, slow cooking, and dehydrating. If you like the functionality of an old-school toaster but also want a mini oven for heating up leftovers and cooking smaller items, the 2-in-1 is perfect hamilton beach toaster oven for that. I have teenagers, so the oven gets used a lot for cooking frozen pizza and entrees as well as breakfast fare like cinnamon bread and frozen waffles. The oven operates on a timer that you have to set past 10 minutes for it to start and it automatically shuts off after 60 minutes. This seemed odd to me at first, but with kids in the house, I’m glad to have the auto-shutoff safety feature.
The Hamilton Beach is the only toaster oven we tested with a door handle that becomes very hot to the touch at a temperature of 146.8 °F. The oven is extremely quiet as it operates with a dBA reading of 50.4; we virtually couldn’t hear it when it was running. Also, we found the middle shade setting for toasting (setting 4) to be a bit dark. We recommend using setting 3 for making perfect golden-brown toast. The Cuisinart has a three-year limited warranty, whereas most similarly priced competitors include just one- or two-year warranties.
The 2-in-1 combination oven and toaster allows you to do more in less space. Bake, broil and toast by switching cooking modes easily with the slide of a lever. Hamilton Beach’s new version of the Toastation is the 2-in-1 Countertop hamilton beach juicer Oven and Toaster. It has the same great dual functionality as my old Toastation, but it’s even better. The oven can fit a 9-inch pizza — the old Toastation couldn’t — yet the overall size of the entire unit is not that much bigger.
However, for the best results, we’d still recommend waiting a couple of minutes for the unit to preheat. Some toaster ovens, like our budget pick, are equipped with only two heating elements. But fewer heating elements aren’t necessarily an indication of poor toasting performance.
But in all our research and testing, we didn’t see consistent correlations between element type and either price or performance. For instance, our budget pick, the Hamilton Beach, has the same quartz elements as the Cuisinart Chef’s Convection Toaster Oven, which costs more than $200. And the Wolf Gourmet Countertop Oven we tested, which normally costs over $700, uses Calrod elements, which are typically found in cheaper models. So, it’s not always worth paying more for certain elements, as performance varies with every oven.