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Best Overall Toaster Oven
Breville Joule Oven Air Fryer Pro
Best for Crispness
Cuisinart TOA-70 Air Fryer Oven and Grill
Best All-Rounder for Small Kitchens
Breville Smart Oven Pro
Best Toast
Balmuda the Toaster
The best toaster ovens aren’t just toaster ovens anymore. The modern oven tends to be a Swiss Army knife for the kitchen counter—not just a toaster but also an air fryer, broiler, slow cooker, dehydrator, defroster, re-crisper of pizza, and maybe even a sous-vide cooker.
But still, it’s nice if the thing also toasts bread. I, alongside other WIRED Gear Team testers, tested more than a dozen ovens to find the best ones for each purpose, whether that’s our top-pick Breville Joule ($500), which will make your full-size oven seem like an accessory; the Balmuda the Toaster ($299) Japanese steam oven that makes the world’s most perfect toast; or the Gourmia All-in-One ($170), a high-temp pizza oven that can stay on your counter and toast bagels.
Below are WIRED’s picks for the best all-round toasters and smart ovens. Our guide to the Best Air Fryers has some overlap with this list but focuses most on the devices that’ll best crisp up your wings and fries. Our guide to the Best Toasters zeroes in on classic, single-minded bread browners. Also check out our guides to the Best Cast Iron Pans, Best Chef’s Knives, and Best Gear for Small Kitchens.
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WIRED has been testing and reviewing toaster ovens since 2016. For this guide, I put these ovens through the paces, cooking veggies, fish, wings, whole chicken, and of course toast and bagels to see if the oven actually manages to brown bread.
To test the evenness of toasting and cooking, I spread bread across the width of the rack. While none attained 100 percent even toasting, our top picks were remarkably fair-minded in distributing brownness across the entire surface.
I waited out the preheating time for each oven, and used a TempSpike Pro wireless meat thermometer to capture the evenness and accuracy of temperature, watching to see if an oven overshot its target and how much it fluctuated—not just over time but around the surface of each oven.
I also assessed each oven’s cooking capacity and its use of counter space compared to its utility, and worked my way around each oven to try out what makes it particularly wonderful, useful, or just plain interesting. If a display is too beepy or irritating, I also took note.
I also assessed whether an oven is wonderfully easy or difficult to clean. Note: Most toaster ovens are a little difficult.
Photograph: Matthew Korfhage
Do I Want a Toaster or a Toaster Oven?
With very few exceptions, the best device for toasting is a toaster, if that’s all you need it to do. Toaster ovens tend to do a whole lot more than toast and can handle a much broader array of foods.
Toasting is the process of very quickly and evenly heating and drying the exterior of a piece of bread at high temperature, leaving the exterior pleasantly browned and the interior perhaps less affected—ideally maybe even still a little moist and chewy, if you’re not charring the thing.
A classic toaster (see our guide to the Best Toasters) is well situated to do this, because it essentially consists of a pair of resistive heating elements that get very hot, very close to the bread. When the element reaches a prescribed temperature—and thus maybe brownness—the toast pops up. Most modern toasters also have a bagel setting that’ll brown one side more than the other.
The toaster ovens in this buying guide can toast bread, but they can also handle far more complicated tasks, like slow-roasting a chicken, broiling a tuna melt, baking bread or pizza, air frying wings, or charring vegetables on a griddle plate.
But because the heating elements are likely farther away from the bread, and the ovens are larger, a toaster oven might toast differently and a little less quickly than a single-purpose toaster. Which is to say, it might bake your bread a little in the process of toasting it. That said, a toaster oven can also better accommodate breads of varying thickness, as well as toast with stuff on it. Do you like garlic bread? Then you probably like toaster ovens.
And in fact, as it turned out, our favorite bread toaster among our toaster ovens can make simple dry toast that’ll shame most toasters. The Japanese-designed Balmuda the Toaster uses steam to keep bread lively, even as it gently browns its exterior.
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Photograph: Matthew Korfhage
Best Overall Toaster Oven
Breville Joule Oven Air Fryer Pro
Saying the Breville Joule is a great toaster oven is a little like saying a house is a good umbrella. This is a powerful device, often more useful than your actual oven. It preheats faster, toasts bread evenly across the oven, keeps temp like a drummer keeps time, broils a grilled cheese or a bagel, and admirably crisps yesterday’s pizza. And yet it’s still big enough to roast a large chicken.
These virtues tend to hold true of Breville’s other similar models. Its product line looks like a Russian nesting doll of Cadillac toaster ovens. What makes the Joule truly special is its autopilot function on the Breville+ app that adds genuinely new capabilities to your kitchen. Just as with AI-piloted jet planes pooh-poohed by Maverick in the new Top Gun, the autopilot does things that humans won’t or can’t, cycling a whole 5-pound chicken through 13 settings of air fry, broil, convection broil, and low-temp roasting to attain crispy, browned, but still juicy chicken. The cycle is meant to mimic the evenness of rotisserie without a rotisserie, and it attains results that range from “better than expected” to “kinda terrific, actually?”
I’m still wandering through the hundreds of autopilot recipes, most of which were tested by actual humans on a Breville device, but the most consistent benefit is making use of the oven’s multiple functions to create a reverse sear: a slower cook, followed by high-temp Maillard browning with convection. It’s an old trick. It’s a good trick. Just exercise caution if cleaning near the quartz heating elements, which are oddly under-protected.
Honorable mention: For $100 less, the Breville Smart Oven Air Fryer Pro ($400) is a lot like the Joule—and the recipes on the Breville+ app still apply. You’ll just have to press all the buttons yourself.
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Photograph: Matthew Korfhage
Best for Crispness
Cuisinart TOA-70 Air Fryer Oven and Grill
This little Cuisinart is brilliant at all things crisp. This means toast, of course. It also means genuine char on veggies and meat, as provided by a Foreman Grill-style ridged plate that should be a much more standard accessory for accessory ovens. The oven’s air fryer feature offers the crispiest wings and fries I’ve seen on any non-basket air fryer.
That said, this is an old-school device, and it feels old school, with analog dials for temperature and time control. This can feel like imprecision, though my thermometer showed the temperature is as accurate as it gets among similar ovens. In fact, it toasted bread the most evenly across its surface of any toaster I tested.
Its general crispiness can be a fault in one area, however: cleaning. I wish that the aluminized steel baking tray didn’t irrevocably brown up as fast as it does, or that the advertised “nonstick” oven interior were easier to spiff up in general. But for food and flavor, crispness wins the day.
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Photograph: Matthew Korfhage
Best All-Rounder for Small Kitchens
Breville Smart Oven Pro
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).
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Balmuda
Best Toast
Balmuda the Toaster
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.
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Photograph: Matthew Korfhage
Easiest to Clean
Cosori 26-Quart Ceramic Air Fryer Toaster Oven
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.
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Photograph: Matthew Korfhage
Best Super-Compact
Ninja Foodi Flip Toaster
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.
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Best for Charm and Ease
Zojirushi Micom Toaster Oven ET-ZLC30
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.
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Photograph: Matthew Korfhage
A Budget Toaster Oven That Makes 800-Degree Pizza
Gourmia All-In-One Pizza Oven and Air Fryer
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.
Other Toaster Ovens We Liked
Anova Precision Oven for $949: OK, OK, it’s not a toaster oven. But this hefty Anova combi steam oven (8/10, Wired Recommends) is a powerful and versatile oven that can serve a role quite like the modern multifunction toaster oven—though I don’t know that I’d heat up any oven this large for a couple slices of toast. WIRED reviewer Joe Ray was impressed by the steam oven’s ability to mimic sous-vide-style cooking in a large format, whether on poultry or seafood, alongside the usual gamut of baking and roasting. That said, while the original Precision Oven is still available, Anova has moved on to a new generation of the device we’re still waiting to test.
Photograph: Matthew Korfhage
Gourmia 9-Slice Digital Toaster Oven Air Fryer for $139: I was quite affectionate toward this Gourmia oven, from its handsome French doors to its line of colors that include a charming Easter egg green. The oven’s broad enough for a 13-inch pizza, it keeps temperature better than other Gourmia models I’ve tested, and the $140 price tag is quite reasonable for an oven with such broad functionality. What kept it off the list as a budget pick was that the glass on those French doors gets quite hot while the oven is cooking—and if you open or shut one door with one hand, you’ll send another hot door swinging the opposite way.
Not Recommended
Photograph: Matthew Korfhage
Instant Pot Omni Toaster Oven 7-in-1 for $200: Unlike Instant’s basket air fryers, this oven model had a tough time keeping its temperature below raging-wildfire levels: The Omni overshot advertised temperatures by as much as 50 degrees.
Photograph: Matthew Korfhage
Ninja Doublestack XL Countertop Oven for $350: The Doublestack is a large convection oven with a dedicated toaster plopped atop it, for fast bread browning. Alas, the heat bleeds badly between the two ovens, toast burns even at medium-low settings, and the temperature in the large oven is all over the place.
Brava Smart Oven for $1,295: At about the price of an actual full-size oven and range, this Brava promises multi-zone cooking with the power of pure light. But contributing reviewer Joe Ray lamented the lack of flexibility in many recipes, and while basic foods came out well, it was hard to justify the price when other ovens will do the same or better for far less.