The Best Toaster Ovens

Look, I can’t help but want the shiniest and biggest and most feature-filled among Breville’s many lovely ovens: That’s the Joule. But if I mention this to friends, they often point to the $500 price tag and shrug. The Smart Oven Pro is the Breville I then recommend instead: about half the price and three-quarters the benefit. This smaller-footprint oven offers Breville’s even cooking and precise thermostat across the standard array of baking, broiling, and toasting but with a slightly less juiced-up convection oven.

This oven’s size hits the sweet spot for smaller kitchens. It’s just big enough to fit a 13-inch pizza pan, a 12-by-12-inch square pan, or a 5-quart Staub Dutch. This last will let you make full use of this Breville’s useful slow-cook feature, which puts chili, stew, and Bolognese within reach during the summer without heating up the whole house. That said, there’s no air fryer or corresponding basket. And though the air fryer on a Breville oven is usually its least interesting feature, I found that french fries crisp up faster and easier on the Joule or the more expensive Smart Oven Air Fryer Pro ($400).

Was it the jets of steam? The top and bottom oven elements that alternate on and off, as if having a polite conversation? The “Ta-Da!” noise it makes when it’s done? Or just the beautifully browned toast that still maintained its moisture, pillowy on the inside and just barely crisped on the exterior? This Balmuda is the toaster oven that WIRED contributing writer Joe Ray fell in love with, even before it was broadly available in the United States (8/10, WIRED Recommends.)

It’s now quite gettable, and it inspires similar devotion from a new generation of customers for its unique facility with toasted bread: moist, pillowy, crisp, gently browned but not relieved of its character, batch after batch after batch. The Balmuda also offers separate settings for pizza bread (hotter on the top element), different styles of bread croissants (high heat blast at the end), and a traditional baking mode. But perhaps alone among toaster ovens, it’s the toast that makes the Balmuda special.

Almost every big toaster oven has the same problem. Cleaning them is awful, an exercise in impossible cranny-scrubbing and dodging of heating elements. If this is what you hate most about a toaster oven, this Cosori is your solution: a fully smooth-surfaced oven that heats via convection with two smooth ceramic plates on the top and bottom. This makes cleaning about as easy as wiping out a microwave.

That said, there are some trade-offs here. The oven runs a little hot, and it also heats better in the middle of the oven than toward the sides, a product of its centralized fan and resolutely square geometries. Mostly this requires turning the food in the middle of a cook, to maintain evenness of toasting or browning. Like I said: trade-offs. But depending on who you are, the easy-clean surface may be worth the slight downgrade in precision.

With the Foodi Flip, Ninja is aiming to solve a classic dad-inventor dilemma. Almost nothing toasts bread quite as well as a classic toaster. And yet, a toaster is a one-trick pony. Nothing wet can stay, and a slice of pizza is out of the question. Here comes the Foodi Flip, a toaster that acts a little like a toaster oven sometimes and takes up almost no counter space in the bargain.

The Flip, like many Ninja products, gives off some real “interstitial YouTube ad” vibes. But it actually works pretty well. When vertical, the Flip looks and acts like a classic toaster. But turn it sideways, lock the toaster down, and insert a tiny drawer that looks like a pizza peel, and the Flip becomes a very, very, very small toaster oven. It's just big enough for a slice or two of pizza, a tuna melt, some fries or tots, or some chicken tenders. But note the Flip's classic-toaster persona runs a little hot, so you’ve got to keep the toasting darkness at the low end of the spectrum. And exercise caution: I have no idea how I’d clean this thing if I made a mess that escaped the cooking tray.

Japanese appliance maker Zojirushi is perhaps best known in the United States for its cult-beloved line of rice cookers. This toaster oven doubles down on the brand’s dedication to simplicity and effectiveness, a mirror-fronted toaster oven controlled by just a single dial and a couple buttons, without a profusion of modes or an air fryer.

Though WIRED contributing reviewer Joe Ray was a little baffled by the lightly domed pans—designed for healthier cooking, so meat grease drops to the side—he was taken in by the Micom’s ease of use and its ability to sail through all the basics (7/10, WIRED Recommends). Within just a few recipes, he wrote, it felt like it had been on his counter for years. The oven has some quirks: namely a habit of browning toast lighter on the bottom, and wimpy broiler common among toaster ovens. But in charmingly straightforward fashion, this Zojirushi does the trick. Plus, it'll fit a 4-pound broiler without the need for a spatchcock.

This Gourmia pizza oven, toaster oven, and air fryer is far from perfect: Temperature regulation can be more than wonky at low temperatures, and the air fryer setting is more like a classic convection oven. But in the bargain, this Gourmia is one of very few countertop devices below $200 that will crest 800 degrees Fahrenheit to leopard-spot a pizza on its included pizza stone. Without claim to great pizza skill, I’ve managed both New York and Neapolitan-ish pies, though I’d caution that the temperature regulation works better if you heat 15 minutes beyond the preheat time in order to heat the stone all the way through.

Otherwise, the oven is a functional but not remarkable convection oven with baskets and racks to make wings, toast, bagels, and freezer fare—not to mention reheat yesterday’s pizza if you didn’t finish. That said, you’re definitely trading away accuracy on lower-temperature baking for the chance to make high-temp pizza. Don’t like this trade-off? Check out the WIRED gear team’s guide to the best pizza ovens, and just get a separate device.