When you own the best toaster oven you’ll quickly realize it’s the most versatile small kitchen appliance in your home. Once, there was a time when toaster ovens were merely capable of reheating leftovers, toasting bread, and broiling tuna melts, but the appliance has evolved so much over the years. For some people, a high-end toaster oven can eliminate the desire to use a full-size oven entirely. Many now also function as air fryers thanks to added convection fans, enabling you to get waffles, hash browns, and french fries extra crispy. Still, there are so many souped-up styles on the market that choosing one can be daunting.

We tested different models at a range of price points and found a clear winner (although we admit it is more oven than toaster), but there were a number of models that performed well as both countertop convection ovens or more traditional toaster ovens, some at a fraction of the price.

Keep reading to see our top picks, and for the specifics of how we tested and what to look for in a toaster oven scroll further down.

Best toaster oven overall   Best affordable toaster oven How we tested What we looked for Other toaster ovens we tested The takeaway

The bottom line with the Joule Oven is that it may be more machine than some people need, but what a machine it is. It is both an upgrade from our previous winner, the Breville Smart Oven Compact Convection, and an update to the Breville Smart Oven Air Fryer Pro. It comes with all the basic features of the Smart Oven Compact Convection, like a countdown timer for toast and smart features like the Element IQ, which adjusts heat automatically using built in sensors. During testing it produced perfectly consistent toast and passed the pizza test with flying colors (it comes with a setting specifically for frozen pizza, but also has the capability of baking fresh pizza). But the smart features on the Joule got juiced by the hardcore culinary nerds at Chefsteps, who created the Joule Oven along with Breville. Using the Autopilot feature in the oven’s app (which also alerts you when the oven is preheated or when the cook is over) the oven automatically changed temperatures during baking and roasting. It can also automatically switch between different heating elements for broiling, bottom cooking and convection. Not only did it cook chicken thighs with perfectly crispy skin, it did a pretty good job of mimicking a whole rotisserie chicken through a series of changes between baking and broiling. It made cookies that are soft in the middle but browned on the bottom, and, just because we wanted to see what it could do, found it could handle more complicated items like whole roasted fish or lasagna. The Joule Oven also proficiently air fried tater tots—heck it even made kale chips with its dehydrate function and worked as a proofing drawer for bread. That was what really makes the Joule our top pick: It’s versatility. If you were in a pinch—your gas stops working or your oven conks out—this could be your only cooking appliance.

The two downsides to the Joule Oven, as you might guess from something that can do this much, are its price and its size. At the time of writing it costs $499, but then again, it serves the purpose of three or four appliances. In terms of size it’s 21.5 by 17.3 by 12.8. It’s basically the size of a microwave oven. But honestly, if you have a countertop microwave, you should think about replacing it with one of these.

Breville Joule Oven Air Fryer Pro

Try not to anthropomorphize this quirky infrared-powered toaster oven with an R2-D2 vibe and cube-like proportions. At 12x13x10.25", it takes up much less counter space than the Breville but is designed for visibility—the controls, which include an oven light, are lined along the bottom and the door is situated on top, a feature that puts the food closer to eye level. A light also turns on and off during use, as if the oven is chatting with you.

The most notable feature on the Panasonic was the double infrared heating, which significantly speeds up cooking times. Our bread reached a deep tan color in only two minutes, and frozen pizza emerged crisp-edged and melty on the preset pizza setting. The cookies were nicely browned on the bottom but had to be removed earlier than the recipe specified due to the oven’s accelerated “abilities.” While the Panasonic roasted chicken beautifully, the sputtering of fat did create a concerning amount of sizzle and a little smoke too. (That might’ve been partly our fault, as we didn’t follow the manufacturer’s instructions to wrap meat in foil before cooking.)

There’s only one groove for positioning the wire rack, which took the guesswork out of where it should go for different cooking functions. Another nice feature: The rack is connected to the door, so it pops out automatically when you check your food, eliminating the need to pull it out with your oven mitt–clad hands.

There are some persnickety things about the Panasonic that take getting used to: The temperature is in Celsius and Fahrenheit but clearly favors Celsius, as there are settings for 355ºF or 390ºF, not the more standard 350ºF or 375ºF. The timer only goes up to 25 minutes, so if you want to cook anything for longer, you’ll need to set it more than once, which was the case when roasting chicken. Through several years of testing the Panasonic has maintained its status as our favorite smaller, more affordable toaster oven—but only by a hair. It's top competitor, the Hamilton Beach Stainless-Steel 4-Slice Toaster Oven, had an interface that was easier to navigate. The Panasonic relies on buttons with imagery of the food it suspects you’ll be making (e.g., toast or frozen pizza) and arrows that allow you to adjust brownness, time, and temperature. Hamilton Beach uses intuitive, no-nonsense dials for selecting temperature, function (toast, broil, bake), and time. Ultimately though, it came down to performance. For example, it took nearly 20 minutes to bake cookies from frozen balls of dough in the Hamilton Beach model versus just 14 in the Panasonic. In general the Hamilton Beach was efficient, browning slices of toast evenly and quickly, but the Panasonic was just that little bit better.

Panasonic Toaster Oven FlashXpress with Double Infrared Heating

A toaster oven can bake, roast, broil, defrost, and, of course, brown bread. To evaluate these multitasking functions, we prepared the following foods:

We started by toasting two slices of bread on each machine’s medium setting. Immediately after the first round, we filled each toaster’s rack to maximum capacity (four to six slices, depending on the size of the oven) to see how evenly the bread browned in two different-size batches, and if residual hot air in the oven affected the second round. We also timed how long it took to toast the bread on the medium setting. If it toasted quickly and well, the machine earned points. If it took significantly longer than average or delivered subpar results, that was cause for demerits. But most of all, we were looking for a machine that toasted consistently.

We cooked personal frozen pizzas following the instructions on the box. If an oven had a preset “pizza” setting, we used it. If it didn’t, we set the temperature controls manually, or used the broiler setting. For the machines that did not have preheat settings, we heated each for five minutes before baking.

We made chocolate chip cookies from scratch, portioned them out and froze them overnight. Then we baked four to a rack the next day. For both the pizza and cookie tests, we used the baking sheets that came with the respective toaster ovens.

For those that performed well in the first three tests we roasted a chicken thigh and leg, simply coated in olive oil and seasoned with salt and pepper.

In the machines listed as air fryer–toaster oven combos, we also attempted to crisp up tater tots and chicken tenders.

We wanted an oven that could handle back-to-back rounds of toasting without burning and produce even color on both sides of the bread. When reheating frozen pizza, we wanted a crispy bottom, evenly melted cheese, and a browned crust. For the cookies, we wanted melty insides, golden exteriors, and crispy edges. When roasting chicken, we looked for crispy, golden skin and juicy meat that was cooked throughout. We considered its efficiency, ease of use, design, and aesthetics.

Until being unseated by the Breville Joule, the Breville Smart Oven Compact Convection was our long-reigning product test winner thanks to its consistency, ease of use, and thoughtful features (like a Fahrenheit-to-Celsius converter, a button that tells the oven you’re cooking something frozen, and an indicator that shows you how long the cooking or toasting cycle will be, so you aren’t waiting for who knows how long for your toast). It toasted bread evenly and without incident, though in order to achieve color, we recommend setting it a notch or two past the medium setting of four. It took three and a half to four minutes to brown, well within range of the other countertop ovens we tested, with toasting times that varied from two to five minutes. It produced consistent results in other tests too: cookies were golden on top with browned bottoms and soft interiors; frozen pizza had evenly melted cheese; and chicken was roasted to crisp-skinned perfection. The Breville gave the user more control than any other toaster oven we tested, save the Joule. The digital display asked questions to help fine-tune the task at hand, like how many pieces of toast we were making and how dark we wanted them. Buttons and dials telegraphed their functions clearly, and written cues on the oven door indicated where to place the rack depending on what we were making. True to its name, this is a smart machine that helps you avoid burning your food. The oven features an intelligent mechanism (Element IQ) that self-adjusts the heat if, say, you’ve put bread to toast in an oven that’s still hot from a previous job. Once cooking is done, the oven gently beeps and turns off automatically, eliminating any chance of food overcooking. Breville claims that the “smart” aspect of its oven is what keeps the heat regulated and even, as sensors are continually adjusting to maintain the appropriate temperature for the task at hand, whether it’s manual or preset. With a footprint of of 15x17x10, the compact oven is big enough to bake an 8x8 pan of brownies, cook a 12-inch pizza, or a roast a generous piece of salmon, but small enough to be reasonably discreet.

The Oster Large Capacity Countertop 6-Slice Digital Convection Toaster Oven was conspicuously large and had an inscrutable interface—even the manual didn’t specify the appropriate rack positions for different functions. As for performance, the medium setting for toast lasted a lengthy five minutes 15 seconds and resulted in burnt bread.

Black + Decker’s 4-Slice Toaster Oven toasted the first two slices of bread quickly and evenly, but burned the bread on the second round. It did a respectable job for considering its low price,  but ran hot and featured a somewhat confusing design.

The Cuisinart Convection Toaster Oven Air Fryer, is relatively expensive and was truly disappointing. The bulky machine felt and looked like a tank, and for the price, it lacked finesse. The timer was on a dial, which made it difficult to tell how long we were setting it for. It had a The top-heavy design, with the controls set over the door, and the oven ran very hot. The medium setting for toast lasted a full five minutes and produced bread on the edge of burnt, and the cheese on the frozen pizza browned and puffed up instead of melting.

We were hopeful about the Zojirushi ET-WMC22 Toaster Oven, because the company's other products have a reputation as reliable and reliably wonderful (the brand has won our rice cooker review many times over). But the Zojirushi toaster oven was inconsistent, running so hot in the back that the parchment paper we baked cookies on started smelling campfire-y and emerged browned. This made us so nervous to cook chicken, which might spatter oil, in it that we wrapped the whole leg in foil, as the instruction manual recommends—no crisp skin here, though it did emerge juicy and evenly cooked. One feature we did love: The door is completely removable, which makes thorough cleaning a snap.

Instant Omni Pro: This thing is sleek and has an intuitive touchscreen interface, which is why it was so disappointing that it didn’t perform well. Toast came out golden brown on the medium setting, but really dry and brittle, like giant pieces of melba toast. Starting from cold, it takes the oven five minutes 50 seconds to toast on medium, with a set timer that counts down. The oven features smart technology that will adjust your cook times based on the internal temperature, so a second round of toast takes less time. Unfortunately, the Omni Pro toasts really unevenly. Additionally, any part of the bread that wasn’t directly under the heating elements stayed white, though still turned dry and brittle. When baking, there doesn’t seem to be an option to turn the fans off, which was very frustrating because the constant airflow kept blowing the areas of parchment paper not held down by cookies up toward the heating elements, which was very concerning. It did, however, bake cookies in just five minutes instead of 10, but the browning on them was uneven and blotchy, like a bad spray tan. Likewise, a frozen pizza that should have taken 20 minutes to bake took only 10, but the edges got super dark before the pizza reached an internal temperature of 165°F. In fact, by the time the pizza looked done, after about seven minutes, the center of the pizza was still only 130°F. Air-frying was a different matter entirely. We tested both tater tots and chicken tenders, separately, and both came out crispy and deep golden brown after their respective manufacturer-recommended cook times. We were a little surprised by this because the air fryer basket simply sits on the included baking sheet. Oddly, it wasn’t clear whether the basket should go on the baking sheet or the rack—no mention of this is made in the included instruction booklet or Instant’s website. In fact, one of the most frustrating parts of this testing experience came from the instruction booklet, which claimed that you could visit instantappliances.com/omnipro18 for a full manual, recipes, and more. But when we entered that into our browser’s address bar, it brought us to a 404 page. It was also strangely difficult to find the Omni Pro on the company website, as this particular model isn’t listed with the Omni or Omni Plus. We had to search “Omni Pro” using the Instant website’s search function to find it, and when we did, there still wasn’t a link to a full manual. Looking at customer reviews, it seems we weren’t the only person looking for this promised “full manual.” According to one user, they contacted customer service, who sent them a PDF of the user guide included with the box, much to the customer’s frustration. Finally, this oven is fairly limited when it comes to accessories. The unit only comes with one rack, a fryer basket, and one baking sheet, which slides into the same grooves as the rack. The sheet pan is just a hair too wide, so it scratched the interior walls really badly every time we slid it into the oven. This also makes it difficult to remove the baking sheet after cooking because of heat expansion, which caused further scratching. Looking at other customer feedback and another reviewer’s experience, this seems to be a common issue. With Instant’s reputation built on the success of the now ubiquitous Instant Pot, and the high price tag, we really expected a lot more from this machine. While the Oster Digital RapidCrisp Air Fryer Oven toasted more evenly than the Instant brand model, it took the longest of the three at six minutes 30 seconds on medium (setting four of seven). Unlike the Ninja and Instant models, the Oster oven doesn’t allow you to select the number of slices. Despite the long cook time, the bread didn’t dry out like it did in the Instant oven. Two slices toasted up nicely, with deep tan coloring, and soft, chewy middles. However, when toasting six slices, even with such a long cook time, the bread barely changed color, with only the two slices placed in the center of the oven browning at all. When making multiple consecutive batches of toast, the oven does decrease the cook time by a couple of minutes after the first batch. Unfortunately, toasting six slices while the oven was still hot yielded the same pale results. When cooking things like frozen pizza, roast chicken, and baked goods, it performed comparably to the Ninja. However, the oven starts counting down as soon as you press Start, with no built-in preheat function, so we found that we had to add three minutes or so to the cook time, then wait around to put the food in once the oven pre-heated. As far as cooking performance, it produced pizza with bubbly cheese and tan edges, moist chicken with crispy skin, and cookies that were golden brown on top and soft in the middle, all within their respective recommended cook times. When it came time to air-fry, the Oster performed as well as the other combo ovens, producing both chicken tenders and tater tots that were crispy, golden, and cooked through when following their respective manufacturers’ instructions. The interface is simple and intuitive. It uses a dial to select from the nine functions, and buttons to toggle time and temperature, as well as both Start and Cancel buttons, though this oven only lets you adjust the temperature in increments of 25°F. When selecting functions, there is no indicator telling us where to place the racks. This information is included in the instruction booklet, but we preferred the convenience of the other models. This Oster oven didn't have an interior light, but the 12-function model does. One feature we found disappointing was the removable crumb tray. Rather than sliding straight out like the crumb trays in the Instant and Ninja models, we had to lift it up and then out, which inevitably resulted in about half the crumbs spilling onto the bottom of the oven, making cleanup very frustrating.

Though we didn't like it as much as either Breville, the Ninja Foodi was still an excellent air fryer/toaster oven. Setting four produced toast that was deep tan but still had some moist chew in the center. Like the Breville ovens, the interface allowed us to customize the cook times based on how many slices we were toasting, and the level of browning desired.  When it came to baking food with short cooking times, like cookies, we ran into slight frustration with the preheating though. The packaging says that the machine preheats in 90 seconds, but we found that it actually took quite a bit longer, usually an extra minute or two, to get up to the proper temperature. The cookie recipe we used called for a 10-to-12 minute bake time, but we found that it ended up taking closer to 13 to 14 minutes before the cookies were tan around the edges, golden brown on top, and soft in the middle. We were, however, very happy with the air fryer function on this oven. Following their respective manufacturers’ instructions, we cooked both tater tots and chicken tenders in the oven, and both came out beautifully crisp and golden brown. We used this function to reheat cold pizza we’d had delivered the night before—just three minutes at 400° produced reheated pizza that tasted just as hot and fresh as it did the night before. Ninja claims that this oven has two-level cooking and browning, which is supposed to cook evenly and eliminate the need to rotate pans (it sounds basically like a gussied-up convection setting), and we were pleasantly surprised to find that it actually worked. After our initial tests using the bake function to cook one tray of cookies and one batch of chicken thighs, we wanted to test the two-level cooking. As advertised, we were able to bake two pans of evenly browned cookies without having to rotate them. Rather than roast two trays of chicken, we wanted to test the Air Roast and two-level functions together. We roasted the thighs for 25 minutes and then placed a tray of broccoli tossed with oil, salt, and pepper in the oven for the last 10 minutes of cooking. The thighs were deep golden brown with crispy skin and juicy meat, while the broccoli was nicely roasted, tender with crisp, browned edges.

The Crux Artisan Series Digital Air Fryer Toaster Oven is looked and operated much like a Breville oven, with similarly designed features and performance as the higher-end models (excluding the Joule) in their line up. It just wasn't quite as nice. The convection fan had a regular setting and turbo setting for air frying, and came with a removable air frying basket and drip tray.  The oven could also run for up to 24 hours, making extremely slow cooking and dehydrating very doable. While it performed exceptionally well, it doesn't have the ElementIQ technology that makes for more precise cooking on the Brevilles. The biggest complaint people have with the machine though—and something we also noticed—is that the toaster beeps very loudly anytime you press a button or turn a knob, and there is no way to turn it down or mute it. One other issue we found: the  knobs and buttons on the control panel are very sensitive, especially while the oven is hot. Say somebody just used the toaster and you went to toast after them, the buttons might scroll through settings way too quickly and cooking might begin before you actually press the start button. While this was easy to remedy by pressing cancel, it did seem to signal a cut corner in build quality. To this point, we've noticed that that within a year of regular use, the LCD display image has become slightly burnt out on the side closest to the oven.

The Breville Joule Oven Air Fryer Pro will do everything it promises with consistent results. It’s also very forgiving and incredibly easy to use. If you have space in your kitchen for a countertop oven, prefer a low-maintenance appliance, and don’t mind paying a little extra cash for quality, this is the best option. If you want a compact toaster oven at a lower price, the cheerful-looking Panasonic is your guy.

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