Our top model performed well across a range of common cooking tasks.
Toaster ovens in the $100–250 price range usually include a convection feature. As with a full-size oven, the convection mode on a toaster oven spins a built-in fan, circulating hot air around the food while speeding up cooking. In toaster ovens, the fan is usually mounted behind the control panel, pushing hot air across the food. However, one model we tested, the Cuisinart, mounts the fan on the ceiling, forcing the air down over the food.
The results varied considerably on all fronts. One toaster oven almost burned the toast after running for five minutes, while another left faint, inconsistent coloring after nearly the same amount of time. Five minutes was about the average time for most of the ovens to run their medium-dark setting, with the speedy little Panasonic the fastest, finishing its job in just two minutes.
The Breville developed a crispy crust from the edge of the pie to nearly the center, while lesser ovens left a bigger section of soft, floppy crust in the middle. It also uniformly melted the cheese. The Panasonic, cooking at 390°F , delivered a very crispy crust, though the cheese and sauce seemed hotter than on any other pie—as evidenced by the shredded, raw state of the roofs of our mouths after we bit into it. Some models failed to uniformly melt the cheese after 14 minutes.
The good news is, given some attention to cooking time, many models delivered consistently browned cookies that spread evenly and had crispy edges and chewy centers. The Breville's cookie preset automatically bakes at 350°F for 11 minutes, which just happened to be the exact requirements in the cookie dough's baking instructions, and turns out evenly browned cookies.