Great affordable compact oven
Pros:
Affordable, Attractive, Easy-to-clean, Heats evenly, Quiet, Convection, 8 cooking modes, fast preheat
Cons:
No preheat beep, analog temperature dial
The Bottom Line:
If you're looking for a compact, good-looking, European convection oven, you can't beat the price and features of the Fagor 5HA-196X.
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Overall Rating:
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Author's Review
I bought this without finding any US reviews for Fagor ovens and I am very satisfied so far after 4 months of use.
The oven is very compact, and one of the only affordable 24" Convection ovens available (only other ones I found are from IKEA). While the interior is small by US standards, because there are no heating elements inside the oven, most of the opening can be used for food, and the fan distributes the heat evenly.
There are 8 different cooking functions, adjusted from the left dial, but watch out because there are some errors with the symbols in the manual. The dial programs, in order are:
1 Thawing (very low temperature heating)
2 Traditional heat (top and bottom only)
3 Pizza (bottom element with fan)
4 Gentle grill (top center only)
5 Strong grill (top entire surface)
6 Strong grill with fan (top and fan)
7 Turbo Plus (fan heating only)
8 Traditional heat with fan (top, bottom and fan)
The ninth setting is not documented, but a call to customer service cleared up the fact that it's a fast-preheat setting. It goes from room temperature to 400F in 5 minutes, then you can switch to the desired program after the oven is preheated.
It has 5 different levels on which to place the accessories (included): baking tray (Standard), banking tray (deep), grill (with non-tip safety catch), pull system, removable tray-total accessibility.
My only negatives (all minor to me):
- When the oven preheats, the light goes off, but there's no beep, so you need to be watching the oven.
- The temperature dial is analog and it only has 100 * 200 * 300 * 400 * 500 with dots in between the numbers, so if you're at 350, you only see a dot and have to move the dial to figure out that you're really at 350F.
- There is no separate light switch. Light is always on when the oven is on, so to turn the light on while not cooking, the left dial needs to be turned to a program while leaving the temperature at 0.
There are several timer functions as well. With the simple timer, when the timer alarm starts beeping, the oven automatically turns off until you push the timer button, which gets the oven goes back to manual mode. After setting the timer duration, you can also set the oven to stop cooking at a certain time, in this mode the oven will go off and then turn on so it's done when you want it. Timer can be used without the oven as well.
