Hi,

Well the price is more than you mentioned, but we love our Breville Mini-Smart Oven. It is their smallest oven; it does not have convection. Williams Sonoma sells it for $150. DH does not like toatster ovens with manuel timers which most have these days. We're very pleased with its performance and it is easy to use.

Best of luck!

We've gone through many -- currently we have a Cuisinart (for about 8 months now) and everyone in the family seems much happier with this one than any of the ones prior. Amazing how much emotion a toaster oven can evoke . . .

blueiris - can you tell me which one you have?
Thanks!

I have an older Cuisinart (5yrs) which we love. Has a manual timer which I find absolutely necessary.

Stayed for a few months at our daughters and she has the newest model which is very nice and works well, except it does not have a timer. Try to make toast without a timer. You need to stand there watching the bread toast. I don't understand why they took it away.

Jane

We have a few-years-old Cuisinart Classic. No timer, although it has light/med/dark settings on toast. We had a Black and Decker and hated it, so switched to this one. The new model has a mechanism so the tray comes out automatically when you open the door - a nice improvement. When this one dies I'll either get another of these or look at the smallest Breville. We only use it for toasting or broiling a single hot dog or a tuna melt, so a Breville may be overkill for us, too.

I don't see a model number but I'll look it up this weekend and let you know

I have had the Cuisinart TOB-195 for about 2 years and like it very much. It is not cheap but you can actually cook in it. It heats up fast and holds the temperature well. I have baked cookies and brownies in it and they came out great. It bakes/broils salmon and veggies nicely. There is a big difference between the cheap ovens and the more expensive ones - they are worth it if you can afford them.

Here is a link that might be useful: Cuisinart on Amazon

I am watching your thread with interest. I am researching a toaster oven as well. I don't have the $200+ for the Breville.

My brother and SIL have an Oster that they love. Not sure which model.

I am looking for reliable, small, and under $100.

Hi,

I have an old Cuisinart Toaster Oven (for over 6 years now). I'm more than happy with it and it's still working great.

I think now the closest one to the one I have is the Cuisinart TOB-155 Toaster Oven, Stainless and Black.

Here is a link that might be useful: Cuisinart TOB-155 Toaster Oven

We, too, were in the toaster market last fall and read all the good things about Breville, both here and at Cook's Illustrated. We purchased the smaller $150 oven. BUT, we can't get it to toast evenly. One side will be toasted, but not the other. We've taken to always choosing a setting for one more slice than we are toasting to get close to desirable results.

We've wondered whether it's the style of toast. We make a pretty heavy-duty multigrain bread. It could be that's the problem. Since we read so very many good reviews, we had such high expectations.

I have the same $150 Breville as mjocean (and kashmi, I think). We use it all the time! Now that it's just the two of us it's especially convenient because I don't have to heat up a full sized oven. I bake chicken, broil fish or asparagus, heat a frozen pizza or fries, and of course make toast. I like the bagel setting that toasts the cut side a little more than the other. Kashmi, do you have the rack on the correct position for toast? We sometimes forget to move it from the bake position to the toast position. Also, we had to play with the darkness and number-of-slices setting to figure out what worked best.

I never expected to use it for more than toast but it has become so useful.

Here is a link that might be useful: Breville Toaster Oven

idrive: I do agree that this is an amazing oven since it does all those cooking tasks you've mentioned quite well. Unfortunately, for us, it just doesn't toast well. We did check to be sure the rack was in the middle position.

Not to hijack this thread, but here are some pictures we took, thinking that we might send them to the Breville people in case they could diagnose the problem. As you can see, the top side is barely toasted (top pix); the bottom side is more toasted (bottom pix); on the right you can see the setting we had it on: 7 for darkness; 3 for # of slices.

Kashmi,

Your oven is not toasting evenly, which has not been our experience. You should contact the manufacturer because it appears there is a problem. We also toast multi-grain breads and they come out much better than your photos.

Best of luck!

Kashmi has the medium sized Breville. I think mjocean and idrive65 have the extra small version that Williams and Sonoma sell. I have the large one. My guess is the extra small will do the best job of toasting because the heating elements are closer to the bread, and the heat output for toasting is the same on all 3 models.

Alexr is right: we have the "compact" Smart Oven. Others may have the Mini Smart Oven. That's an interesting thought about the proximity of the bread to the toasting elements. Cook's Illustrated, though, did its testing with the regular sized oven and found it to do the best toasting of all the toasters they tried.

In any case, I took mjocean's advice and emailed Breville about the issue. I'll report back what the company has to say.

Sorry! Forgot to look it up- its Cuisinart TOB-40 runs around $70-$80 regularly priced. Good price and so far so good!

A very happy follow-up to report. Thanks to the urging of folks here, we contacted Breville about the poor toasting of our Compact Smart Oven. After a couple of emails + pictures back and forth, Breville concluded that the company should replace the oven.

BUT, we needed our original receipt -- which I no longer had. In contacting Bed Bath & Beyond to see if we could retrieve the receipt from their data base, we talked with the local store manager. She said, "Why don't you just bring the oven back here? We'll give you a replacement."

And so we did. We now have toast in the morning!

All in all a very, very pleasant experience both with Breville customer service and BB&B customer service. Since there are so often complaints, I thought it made sense to report such a positive experience.