Just awful performance

I had a Black and Decker toaster oven, probably manufactured in the late 1970's. It was small but worked very well. Eventually, after a good 20 years of use, the control for making toast broke and would not lock in place. It was replaced with an Oster - I'll never make that mistake again - that gave out with a thermostat that had only one temperature - ON! That was so dangerous I called Oster and reported the problem to the Feds. Not kidding.

Ok, I figured going back to Black and Decker for performance and reliability would be a good bet. Was the drafting and research department asleep when they designed the TRO700? Did they spend far too much time designing that really cool looking curved glass door? Did they even plug it in?

If there are any pluses: It's sturdy. And least in my case I haven't had any problems with knobs breaking off as others have reported. And it does have a removable crumb tray. (Some Oster models do not. And lack of a slide out crumb tray makes cleaning a royal pain.) It will fit up to a 9" round cake pan. But it's all down hill from there.

It don't understand. How could a company that has made toaster ovens for decades put one in the market place that does such an abysmal job at toast? Tops come out uneven - darker toward the outside walls of the oven. And bottoms are barely toasted at all. If you wanted to bother getting even toast of of a TRO700 you would have to flip the toast over - outside edges in - half way through the toasting cycle. English muffins might be golden brown on top, but pale and soggy feeling on the bottom. Positioning the items in different places in the oven does little to improve toasting performance.

And speaking of toast, what happened to the toast sensor? It's been replaced in this model by a purely mechanical timer. So, how far to you turn the timer for white bread? A bagel? Thick or thin slices? It's a total crap shoot and you have to figure it out. And you need to sit there and watch - too much time will only leave you with burned toast. Too little and you have to crank the toaster knob to turn it on again. But since you need to flip anything you are toasting over half way through the cycle anyway I suppose Black and Decker doesn't think this is much of an inconvenience.

As an oven if fares little better. Forget this model for even small frozen dinners. Ok, I know the packages say you shouldn't cook them in a toaster oven. But we all do it anyway, right? On larger toaster ovens this doesn't seem to be a problem. But the TRO700 will melt a plastic tray on the outside edges while leaving the food cold in the center. Even when cooked at 25 degrees below the reccomended cooking temperature. Ok, me bad - I sure won't do that again. Not in this oven anyway.

But for other items the same uneven toasting performance shows up again as well. When cooking a commercial frozen 8" round pot pie in it's aluminum pan you need to tent the left and right edges of the crust with foil. Otherwise the crust burns on the left and right edges before the pie is cooked. It performed only slightly better when baking a 9" cake round. It baked evenly enough to eat, but again the left and right edges were more done than you really want.

Sorry I didn't return this one within the store's return period. As soon as I get fed up with it - that shouldn't be much longer - it's heading right out for a yard sale.