Despite the lack of interior light, I was able to see through the glass to see my food cooking, although I would have appreciated a light for a better view. This is a fairly large oven that eats quite a bit of countertop space. We’ve read some user reviews regarding hamilton beach juicer food catching fire in this oven. Though we never experienced this in over two years of long-term testing, always be sure to place food at least an inch from the heating element. Also, clean the heating element and the bottom of the unit before operating.
We found the same heating map inconsistency when toasting bagels. The half-bagel slices in the front toasted perfectly, while those in the rear of the oven hamilton beach juicer were paler and less crispy. Overall, we gave the Easy Reach higher than average marks for toasting and feel it does an acceptable job with this metric.
When you want to make perfect toast, and plenty of it, it’s easy to toast six or more slices of bread at once in a toaster oven. But if more than just toast takes your fancy, all Hamilton Beach toaster ovens can bake and broil, and some have even more cooking functions, such as air frying and convection cooking. Bread toasted on the medium setting came out beautifully golden brown, without any scorching or charring. Other models we tested toasted bread unevenly, with extreme light and dark patches.
The biggest drawback to this model is the toast shade setting on the timer dial. You have to turn the knob past the 10-minute mark and then reverse it to the desired shade setting. However, it’s difficult hamilton beach toaster oven to determine exactly where the dial should be placed for your preferred toast shade. Eventually, we were able to find the sweet spot on the dial for our desired doneness, but it took multiple attempts.
To test how well the toaster ovens maintained a set temperature, we stuck an air probe thermometer into their cavities and monitored them for 20 minutes. We also tested the unique features on certain models, such as dehydrate modes or the steam feature on Balmuda’s The Toaster. Additionally, we took note of any excessively loud beeps and evaluated the usefulness of each model’s accessories. 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.
The included rotisserie spit removal tool worked, but I felt it was a bit silly. In the end, I preferred to don my waterproof grill gloves and just reach in and grab the spit. The De’Longhi Livenza Digital Convection Oven did not toast evenly in our tests. It also had a difficult time maintaining its internal temperature (which fluctuated between 322 °F and 369 °F when set to 350 °F). We also ran a bonus round to evaluate how well each oven could crisp up the skin on chicken thighs—a very telling test, as very few models excelled at this task.