I've decided I do (love it).

I bought a Krups FBC-something because it was top-rated by Cooks Illustrated. For the first year, I just used it for toasting bread - which it does okay if you bump the doneness setting to ''6'' - and occasionally baking a potato or what not.

Recently there was a thread in the Cooking Forum about roasting a 5 lb chicken in a toaster oven. Wow, I thought. So I made a couple of meals exclusively in the toaster oven. Roasted veggies and potatoes with olive oil and salt. Broiled salmon for a miso-mirin sauce. Broiled some pork with a hoisin-BBQ sauce glaze. Roasted a chicken carcass for stock. Broiled some asparagus spears. Etc, etc.

To my surprise, Toasty did it all with aplomb. No fuss, no muss. I don't know if I saved any energy or time versus using the oven, but it was kind of neat anyway. And having the broiling at counter level, with the door open, let me monitor and baste the broilee more easily than sitting on the floor watching my oven broiler.

So now I'm using the toaster oven all the time, and am revisiting my layout to see if there can be a place for Toasty right in the cooking zone.

The controls are digital, but pretty simple. Push ''broil'', ''bake'', ''convection bake'' or ''toast''. Push the up or down button to set the temperature, hi/lo broil, or toast doneness. Push the ''time'' button the set the duration, except for toasting. Push ''Start''.

Three criticisms. First, the broiler isn't as powerful or as fast as a good oven broiler. You couldn't broil a steak to a deep brown char while leaving the interior rare. Second, Toasty is rather compact. He couldn't possibly fit a chicken unless it was spatch cocked - or a fledgling bird aka Cornish game hen. Third, the non-stick broiling rack and drip tray that comes with the oven started losing its finish in no time. Use a liner of aluminium foil (perforated, if you wish) of you care about that.

The Krups is black, which might not work with every decor. People seem to love their Breville toaster ovens too, and I think those are silver-ish.

I was just thinking of posting the same basic question--but I am interested in some of the bells and whistles! So, if anyone has ideas about fancier toaster ovens, please post those, as well. :)

I have Krups Pro Chef Ultra. It's several years old now and still going strong. It's the basic version, no convection feature.

One thing that is very nice about this toaster oven, the sides stay pretty cool to the touch.

I'll keep it until it dies. No upgrading for me. : )

Pepper

Here is a link that might be useful: My version of the Krups toaster oven

I only wanted something that would toast horizontally. I never cook in a toaster oven. They don't really make them to be just toasters now. I ended up with a Black & Decker on loss leader sale. It's bigger than I wanted, but still fits in the drawer, and it only toasts on one side, but it's really light which makes it easy to clean, and easy to store in a drawer, and for the price it can't be beat. One of the very few times I've gone to a department store sale because of an item in the circular. :)

For all around use, one of the best rated is Breville, but it's big and moderately costly.

I use mine every day. I have a KitchenAid. Not alot of bells and whistles. I have had it about 5 years I think. It fits 4 pieces of bread horizontally. I use it for hot sandwiches and reheating of all sorts of things, as well as for the usual things. It also works as a small secondary oven if neccesary. It is also super easy to clean. We use this so much, that I waffled back and forth about getting rid of the microwave during the planning stages. We decided to plan a couple spots for a countertop mw, and did a test run without it for several months. We have never looked back!

Breville for me...replaced a true Black and Decker 15 yr oldie but goodie, that was leaving suspicious brown marks on my backsplash! That one literally was used only for toast, and occasionally chicken nuggets.
The Breville is amazing! We've done cookies, bagels and toast, small pork roast, and frozen foods. It's much nicer than nuking the leftover pizza, and does really seem faster than my B&D, despite the size. Haven't actually tried a 12" pizza yet. Love the fact that the crumb tray is pull-out from the front.
Definitely read Amazon's reviews of it, though. A few 'cons' have surfaced: The preheat timer goes off before actually reaching preheat temperature (it thinks it's 350, but actual temp is really only 275). Some have received ones with the door a little misaligned, or the convection part of the oven has a noisy fan. It's sometimes an electricity hog, so try not to put any other appliances on the same circuit, running at the same time. It does heat up on the sides and a little on the back, so you need a fair amount of counter space devoted to it. It looks huge in my kitchen, and that's sitting next to a 36" Thermador professional range with 6 burners. I put away the coffee maker to make space, since we use a french press anyway.

I decided on this route, though, after last Thanksgiving, when none of the side dishes came out at the same time as the turkey. I only have the single oven. I'm with amberley...this will be my secondary oven, and I'm sure it will have no problems handling green bean casserole, or cream cheese rolls. Oh, and the automatic timer off function is great! If you know how long you want, then just set it, and it shuts off automatically. All in all, couldn't be happier with it! You can look around, and sometimes they will sell refurbished ones, that still come with Breville's 1 yr warranty.

Or, you could take the next step up to an actual countertop oven that holds a half sheet pan and goes to 600F (pizza?) with broiler, water injection, and who knows what other interesting features. At $700-1,000 it is a pretty big step, but there might be used ones around. Not sure if they toast bread so well, though.

Here is a link that might be useful: Vollrath countertop oven

We use our Kitchenaid a lot, mostly for convenience meals for one or two people - chicken nuggets, small pizza, salmon burgers, fish sticks, french fries or sweet potato fries, also garlic toast and toasted buns for hot dogs or burgers. A warming oven for a plate of pancakes. Checking food is so much quicker than the big gas oven, and it doesn't seem to heat the kitchen as much. We tend to put liquids in the microwave, and crunchies in the toaster oven.

Mines a cuisinart that I bought on sale at Amazon. It has convection but I don't think I have used that feature yet. I LOVE that little oven! It's attractive and roomy enough to do a good bit of basic baking. I rarely ever use my big oven in the summer so I know that saves a good bit on the power bill.

I had an old Black and Decker that I loved. I used it mostly for toast, cjicken nuggets, etc. However, it broke and I ended up getting a newer B&D. I don't like it nearly as much. It seems to take longer, has a timer up to 60 minutes that automatically shuts off when done. The problem with that timer is that the area for toast (0-10 minutes) is so small and uncalibrated it's hard to tell where to set it for toast, even when using it frequently. The new one is also huge.

When we move, I would like to get a smaller toaster oven. I would say more basic, but I feel like a B&D is pretty basic as it is!

I have the same type of Krups toaster oven as johnliu (FBC2?). I bought it during our kitchen remodel in 2007-2008 to replace a worn out Black & Decker and it's held up very well. We use it to reheat anything that needs to be crunchy. It does have convection, but I've never used it. I bought it based on size. It needed to be deep enough to hold a frozen pizza (bought during remodel), but not huge.

Thanks for the responses everyone! I had seen in my research that the Breville is loved by most, it is just more than I would like to spend and also takes up more counter space than I would like. I certainly don't want anything bigger than my current B&D (all the ones with convection seem rather large).

I'll take a look at the Krups; I also found this, which I really like the looks of, though DH is concerned because he is suspicious of small appliances that try to accomplish more than one task (this one is a toaster oven and a pop-up toaster, he thinks it should be one or the other)...Reviews I have found are mainly good, and the cost is okay:

Here is a link that might be useful: waring pro toaster oven

The 2-in-1 Waring Pro is cute. The oven seems kind of smallish.

A regular toaster oven will toast bread fine, it takes a little longer than a slice toaster because the heating elements are farther from the bread. Unless you're okay with the bread being toasted on only one side, in which case you can set the racks near the top and bottom elements.

But if you want many-in-one, how about a toaster oven + coffee maker + griddle?

Here is a link that might be useful: Kalorik

I love having a toaster oven, not sure if I love the one I have . . .

I have not found a regular toaster that will handle a thick slice of home made bread. And it works great for melting a bit of cheese on top of a chuck of focacia too.

Now that I'm post kids, it doesn't get used for much else.

Cathy

Breville for us. Well made and does have all the Bells and Whistles. Used one of the 20 percent off coupons at Bed and Bath so the price was right. Not cheap but you get what you pay for.

Bought a Cuisinart toaster oven when my vintage range's ovens became too unreliable (yes, a refurbishment is in order). Love it for the two of us - it doesn't heat up the whole kitchen and since its cavity is small, it gets hot quickly and cooks things efficiently. It has a beeper to notify you when the oven has reached its preheat temperature, and I'm still not used to it beeping after 3-4 minutes, from ice cold to 400 degrees. It has bells and whistles but I've only used regular 'bake' and broil, for a tray of cheese toast.

Only caveat is that the exterior gets very hot, and you need to use an oven mitt to open it, as the handle is close to the glass door and you'll burn your fingers/knuckles if you're not protected.

Here is a link that might be useful: Cuisinart toaster oven from Amazon

We have a (reconditioned, cheapo) Hamilton Beach 6-slice convection toaster oven. It gets used daily, sometimes as a plate warmer, sometimes for reheating (things get quickly heated in the MW then crisped in the toaster oven), sometimes for cooking, sometimes even for making toast! We use it more often than the big oven, which gets used for making cookies, drying breadcrumbs, and cooking large batches.

It replaced a new B&D which we returned to the store (uneven cooking, really tinny cheap construction). It's not that big, sits on a shelf next to the MW so it's at eye level: a little too high for me, I need to move the shelf down the wall.

We switched to Breville about a year ago. It does the best job with toast out of all the t.o.'s we've had over the years (1st a Panasonic infrared that we liked a lot, then a Black and Decker that we didn't like.) It hurt spending the money but since we use it several times a day, it was well worth it.

If we only have something small to bake, we'll use the Brevelle instead of the oven. The only problem is that glass isn't supposed to be used in it (since the rack is so close to the elements) and many of the things I want to reheat get stored in pyrex.

@zelmar, we are planning to get the compact Breville...but I didn't know that you couldn't use glass in it! That would be a big issue for us too since we store virtually all leftovers in Pyrex. Is that just a "not recommended" thing for toaster ovens (in which case I'd worry less since we use glass regularly in our current old school GE oven) or are the heating elements actually closer to the rack in the Breville than in other ovens?

I never used a TO until we remodeled. When it became obvious our remodel was going to take longer than the 4-6 week estimate, we decided to get a TO. After much research, we got the Cuisinart TOB-195. It's convection and fits a frozen pizza. We used it every day, several times a day and it worked great! But, we did need to use potholders to open it as it did get hot, as I recall.

However, since I had not considered a TO during the design phase, I didn't make a place for it so it now sits on the floor of our pantry...and I don't think we've used it even once since we moved back into our kitchen. I sort of wish I had a place for it now, but we're surviving without it...just like we did for the 13 years before!

artemis78,

I very may well be spreading misinformation. I wish there was some way to change my above post.

I just looked through the Breville manual and didn't find any mention of not using glass--it merely states to use caution when using glass or ceramic. I'm not sure why I was pretty positive that glass wasn't supposed to be used in this t.o. Thank you for asking for the clarification---you just made life a little easier for me.

I'm a bit overly cautious with pyrex and heat because I've had a couple of dishes explode on me in ovens--I think one was because I shocked it too much going from very cold to very hot. The other one was a very old dish and maybe it didn't take as much of a temp change to shock it.

So please DISREGARD my above post about Breville and glass.

We purchased the Breville because we've been really happy with our Breville blender and panini press (but the hand blender was a big disappointment.) The small oven has been great.

We recently replaced our Delonghi TO with a Breville Compact Smart Oven. I'd purchased the Delonghi at the start of our kitchen reno--Dec 2006 (yes, I have been hanging around here that long! LOL). Had to return the first one right away--the oven rack wouldn't slide in/out as it should. We used the TO for about about 1 1/2-2 yrs. The timer knob broke right off. Same thing happened with its replacement early last month. There are only two adults in our home, no kids, and we're not particularly hard on our things. These knobs are plastic and not made to last.

I didn't like most of the other TO's (some just looked too ugly to have on my kitchen counter IMO, and some seemed downright flimsy, too). I really didn't want to spend the big $ for the Breville, didn't need convection, nor did I want something as large as the full size Smart Oven taking up all that counter space. I decided to give the compact Breville a try.

It seems sturdier than the Delonghi, which is a big plus in my book. It's a bit smaller (interior) but suits our needs perfectly fine. Still figuring out the desired settings, but I'm getting there!

We have the Krups, which has been used pretty heavily, I'd say, for the last 2 1/2 yrs. It has convection, but we've rarely used it. (It did get a turn to bake a little when we were without an oven for a week and a half and the kids couldn't stand to go any longer without cookies! One dd even baked a cake.) We just needed a sturdy, reliable toaster oven that would fit as many pieces of bread at a time as possible. We'd had Black and Deckers before that did a reasonable job, but all too soon were discolored and had pieces falling off. We use a toaster oven all the time, but I always hated having it on the counter. I decided it was because of the chintziness of the B&D and went looking for better.

The Krups definitely looks better and is sturdier. It was amazing at first, but now we find it doesn't seem to toast the same in the same amount of time...We often have to toast things twice. And the main button to start it doesn't always respond without pushing it several times, which is a PAIN. :-( So, loved it at first, but not as much now.

The B&Ds also toasted better at first, then seemed to lose some of their power. Is this normal with toaster ovens? I can't figure out why. Either the elements work or they don't, so why work but do a lesser job?

I love my Hamilton Beach Toastation. Yes it does look cheap on the counter, but it fits our requirements exactly. It toasts vertically or horizontally and I can't find any other device that does that. I also use it to roast small amounts of nuts or veggies like potatoes when I don't want to heat up the oven and it works great for that.

Look at the number of elements and how they are spaced in the top and bottom of the oven. Most TO have only two elements per which won't brown toast evenly. I have the Krups oven which has three elements per and it does a solid B job of evenly toasting. Mine was over $100 but I bought and returned a couple of other brands before I realized, you get what you pay for.

Also, check out the broil function on the brand you chose. I tried an Oster and when it broils, both the top and bottom elements heated. Even the lady in the customer service department thought that was odd. When I broil, I only want the top element to heat!

We also have the Cuisinart TOB-195. I love it! I use it to toast, make baked potatoes, muffins, cookies, chicken nuggets, frozen pizza... It replaced a Black & Decker regular size toaster oven. Yes, it does take up more space but I feel like I'm saving money not by heating up the whole oven. I don't see going back to a small oven anytime soon.

I love the Breville. During this remodel, it is the only oven I have in my makeshift kitchen but even before we started I used it most of the time. They now have one that is a little smaller and doesn't have convection-- and of course it is less expensive.

My husband and I are empty nesters getting ready to build our retirement home. I'm thinking of the full-sized Breville as a toaster and second oven. I don't bake much anymore except for holidays (doc says to knock off the carbs and sugar). I would like to locate it in a cubby above my wall oven. I've emailed Breville to find out how much clearance I should allow in the cubby.

Breville owners, any thoughts on this scheme?

We've had the Breville for a little more than six months. We have been using it to cook everything during our kitchen remodel - toast, pizzas, roasts, full size casseroles, chicken tenders, cookies, dinner rolls. It's a 'must have' in my kitchen even though it does take up a lot of counter space. I love the idea of creating a cubby for it. I'm also curious to hear Breville's response about the clearance as it does get pretty hot on the sides.

I had a Delonghi model previous to the Breville. It was broken beyond repair within a year. I also had a basic Black & Decker model that lasted for many years (only used for basic toasting).

We have the Krups as well. I LOVE IT. It has to be front and center somewhere in the new kitchen.

I never heat anything in the microwave that has a bread like substance in it. The Krups is good for just a "few" cookies, or heating up a slice of brownie, I use it every day. My son just moved out, and he begs me every time he comes home to give it to him and buy me another. Haha, I'll get him one for Christmas, but he's not getting mine!

I saw one at Tuesday Morning online that is a discontinued model, (I don't think it's a Krups), but it has brick stone all around it, they say it retails for over $400, and they have it for $139. I'm thinking of getting him that one for Christmas.

I, have the Cuisinart. The best toaster oven,I, have ever owned. Costco, sell's it for $99.99.They have it on coupon until Nov 7 for $20 dollar's off.

Oh, one neat thing about the Breville--even the Compact one; the top is intended to be used as a plate warmer. I can just fit two dinner plates on the Compact oven, with some overlap. Cool! I mean, warm!!! LOL

Since this thread seems to be still going on -- I am in love with my Breville. Agreed that it's pricey but for a small family, you will use it a lot more than regular oven. I never used my regular oven because it was way too big to just toast two waffles for breakfast! Now I use it everyday and it works great!

I asked Breville about clearance around the Smart Oven and here is their reply:

"In regards to your inquiry, we do not recommend the unit be in an enclosed or recessed area. The unit needs to be an open area with 4 inches of space on all sides at the least."

I have to say that I've had my Panasonic NB-G100P toaster oven in a pretty small cubby for years and have had absolutely no problems. I think if the cubby has lots of space all around (maybe 5 inches?) the Smart Oven would probably be fine.

@cat_mom, it's funny because we actually originally had the bigger Breville on our wedding registry and I had added some of the accessories, including the cutting board top so you can put things on it without worrying about the heat....DH saw that and wanted to know why on earth you would do that when the main point of the top of a toaster oven was to be a plate warmer! :) (He'll be glad to hear that dinner plates fit on the compact, too---they don't on our current toaster oven.) Now if only it will stop being backordered so they'll finally send it to us...

I'm pretty sure it worked even though the plates had to be overlapped to fit.

I picked mine up at BB&B. I had to drive to another BB&B to get it, but they had looked it up in the computer, and found at least two locations that had them in stock.

BTW, congrats on the wedding artemis78!

I bought a Dualit toaster oven to preclude recurrence of the fish-and-cupcakes-in-the-oven-at-the-same-time debacle that my daughter and I co-experienced.

I haven't had it for very long, but I like it: The oven is pretty powerful and gets hot quickly, and the heat is even. It is great for small things and for heating up leftovers. It gets a lot of use, and I will definitely find a place for it in the new kitchen. Minimal bells and whistles. Also, it is very cute :)

I bought it from Amazon. It is on sale (and there is an open-box one at the moment at an even better price):

Here is a link that might be useful: Dualit toaster oven