Decent Little Toaster Oven at Very Low Price

If you don't expect great things from this cheap little oven, you'll be quite happy with the it. That may seem like "damning with feint praise," but this little oven does exactly what it's designed and priced to do.

How we use it:
We cook at home very often, but we use our home range for most baking. We purchased this Toaster Oven to be a multi-tasker and light-duty oven. Borrowing a line from Alton Brown (Good Eats, Food Network), the only uni-tasking device allowed in our kitchen is a fire extinguisher. That said, we didn't see any point in buying a device that would only toast bread and small bagels. We wanted something that could also slowly toast nuts, re-crisp a small loaf of bread, warm certain leftovers, and most importantly, roast garlic! We do not use this oven to actually bake anything- our convection range/oven is the tool of choice for baking cakes, breads, etc.

Purchasing Decision:
We needed a Toaster Oven to replace the Black & Decker over that I brought to our marriage. It was 21 years old. We were hesitant about purchasing this Toaster Oven (oops- sorry, that's "Toast R Oven") after having read reviews on this site and others, but given our past experience with Black & Decker, we decided to give it a try. Besides, for only $10, we couldn't resist. Why $10? Linen's N Things offered the toaster oven for $29.99 (before tax) with a $20 rebate.

Packaging/First Impressions:
If you purchase this item, be certain to check your oven carefully before purchasing it. The packaging is very cheap so some damage in shipping is certainly possible. Our oven came with a brightly-colored flier warning us that, in the event of problems, we were not to return the item to the retailer. Fortunately, there were no problems with the unit, but I wouldn't want to have to work with B&D at distance to resolve any problems.

Right out of the box, the unit feels really cheap, but so did the B&D unit we had for 21 years. After removing the unit from the box, you have to remove lots of packaging tape, the instructions, the broiler tray, and the rack. There's a lot of tape, some of it well-hidden on the bottom. It wasn't until 3 months after purchase that my wife noticed one little piece of packaging tape on the bottom. Ooops! No wonder we had a little smoking during the first few uses!

Design/Ergonomics and Features
The product includes a broiler tray and a single rack. The rack has two guides on it that allow the broiler tray to be "hung" from the bottom of the rack. The idea is that when broiling, any drippings will fall through the rack and be collected in the tray. This is a nice design. Of course, the rack is designed to be used without the broiler tray when toasting or baking. The rack can be positioned at one of two different heights in the oven. Both possible positions have proved to be useful- the lower position for toasting nuts (slow toast/brown), the higher position for quick, more intense browning.

The front door, hinged at the bottom, folds down, but never really clears out of the way because of the handle. The handle is designed to stick out from the door far enough that one won't get burned by making contact with the door, but the negative externality here is that the handle sort of "props up" the door when opened. When you're used to a fold-flat oven door, this can cause a burn point, allowing you to brush your hand against the inside of the open, hot door. I've found that sliding the unit to the front of the counter just before opening it allows the handle to hang over the edge of the counter, allowing the door to open flat.

There are three little dials that must be used in connection with each other. For example, to make toast, you move the top temperature-setting dial all the way to the left (set to "Toast On/Bake Off"), you set the center timer dial in the 9 o'clock position ("off"), and turn the bottom toast dial to the desired darkness. Sure, that doesn't sound that difficult, but it is ergonomically "fussy." Since it's possible to leave the temperature dial set to 350, even when the oven is off, if you've last used the oven, that's a lot of dial twisting first thing in the morning just to make toast. The single-slider-control on my 21 year-old toaster oven was much more intuitive.

Cleaning up the item is easy- it wipes off easily, the crumb tray can easily be removed (if you've removed all of the packing tape!), and because of the fold-down door, the glass can be easily cleaned. Clean-up is a snap.

Usage Experience
Making toast can take longer than expected, especially if you're used to using a toaster. The heating elements are placed much farther apart than in a traditional toaster. This is expected, of course, as they need to be farther apart to allow for oven-like use. Once you get the dials set correctly, it does make toast very well. We were quite surprised, as we expected the dual elements (one top and one bottom) to produce toast that was not evenly browned. We were quite surprised that this is not the case. One, two, even four slices of bread all toast evenly. Note that, even though B&D claims 4-slice capacity, 4 slices will fit only if they're small. We make homemade bread often, and we cannot fit 4 slices at once. It will accommodate 2 slices very easily.

Re-crisping bread is where this oven shines- place the remainder of a loaf of bread in the oven, dial up 250 as the temperature and set the timer to 10 minutes. Voila! In 10 minutes, you get a warm, crisp-crusted bread that tastes very much like the moment it came from the oven.

It reheats pizza very well, toasts nuts very well (the timer is a nice way to be sure that you don't burn them), and makes absolutely wonderful roasted garlic. (Quick unsolicited recipe: We roast garlic by trimming off the very top of the whole bulb, rubbing it in a small amount of really good olive oil, sprinkling it with a very small amount of coarse salt, and placing it cut-side down in a hand-fashioned tray made from aluminum foil. 250 degrees and 30 minutes later, wonderful roasted garlic! This oven has had more garlic roasted in it than anything else. OK, end of the recipe.)

Final Thoughts
So far, this has been a very dependable little oven. It works just as intended and perfectly meets our needs. Given how cheap it feels, I don't expect it to last for 21 years, but I didn't expect that of our previous unit, either. Given how cheaply we were able to acquire it (with rebate), I'd recommend holding out for a sale/rebate offer before buying one.