The Best Toaster Ovens (for Making Everything From Roast Chicken to, Well, Toast)

I tested five of the most high-tech toaster ovens on the market... and honestly, they’re all pretty amazing. But which one is right for you?

Toaster oven technology has never been more advanced or effective. The modern toaster oven heats up fast, stays consistently hot and temperature-controlled, and is perfectly proportioned and feature-designed for solo apartment-dwellers or couples who share smaller spaces, although some models also cater to those with families (i.e., they’re tater-tot ready). The ongoing integration of smart technology means that even affordable toaster ovens are loaded with programs that basically take all the guess work out of cooking. Too intimidated to roast a chicken for your date? Want a single-serving frozen pizza baked to cheesy perfection in under 15 minutes? How about a perfectly browned bagel? There’s a button for that — all those, really.

I have a confession. As a professional food writer, I love to cook, and I do it a lot, but in the last year… I have not turned on my “real” oven once. My oven is great for storing muffin tins and cake pans, but I have come into ownership of a highly advanced toaster oven (namely, the Breville Smart Oven Air Fryer Pro — although as you’ll see below, I’ve personally tested many others) that simply does the work better. It’s just that ovens aren’t always particularly good at being ovens; they can take forever to come to temperature, and then often fail to hold that temperature accurately. They are finicky, temperamental, and most importantly, too large. For context, I live alone, but I can count the number of times I’ve roasted a whole turkey on no hands.

But! This is not to say that I don’t roast or bake. This week alone, I’ve braised pork in chili verde, made blueberry muffins from scratch, toasted many slices of toast, broiled mackerel, roasted all manner of vegetables, and baked either Bagel Bites or chocolate chip cookies every single night. And I did it all in my toaster oven. Once considered a bachelor essential or dorm-room staple, the toaster oven is now a do-it-all kitchen workhorse, capable of everything from reheating leftover pizza to melty-mozz perfection to intuitively making frozen hash browns perfectly crispy. They can air-fry, steam, roast, and bake. What a wonderful, miraculous machine.

We’re in the golden age of the toaster oven. So golden, in fact, that it can be tough to choose the right model. I put five of the most popular, well-reviewed, “best” toaster ovens to the test over the past two months, and I can confidently say that each and every one impressed me — albeit in different ways. For this ultimate guide to the modern toaster oven, I’ve taken the guess work out of it for you, reader, and found the perfect oven for every budget, kitchen esthetic, and cooking requirement.

Read on!

Now, let’s meet our toaster ovens.

Breville Smart Oven Air Fryer Pro: The power user’s dream

If you’re the kind of home cook who needs the duck breast skin to brown just as the gratin finishes baking, the Breville Smart Oven Air Fryer Pro is for you. This appliance is more than just a toaster oven — it’s a full-fledged countertop sous chef. With its Element IQ system, multiple heating elements adjust dynamically to ensure even cooking, whether you’re baking cookies, roasting a chicken, or dehydrating fruit. The air fryer function is solid — though not quite as efficient as a dedicated air fryer — and the overall capacity is large enough to fit a 13-inch pizza or a 9” x 13” pan.

Some of the bells and whistles are more impressive than others. The Breville’s convection setting has become my go-to method for crispy-skinned chicken, but I found the app-assisted smart cooking sensors more trouble than they were worth, and deleted the app within days of unboxing the oven.

Hilary Pollack

And of course, all this power comes with a footprint (and a price tag) to match. The Breville is big—you’re going to need some serious counter space for it. And while it’s incredibly versatile, it might be overkill if you just want to toast some bread and reheat leftovers. But if you want a toaster oven that can handle everything from leftover pizza to a small Thanksgiving dinner with ease, then this is the best all-around option.

Pros:

• A big capacity
• Smart features make cooking with precision a breeze
• Can do it all: toasting, roasting, broiling, air-frying and on and on...

Cons

• She’s a beast, and takes up a lot of countertop real estate
• The price tag, you get what you pay for but this oven is not cheap
• App integration has potential, but I didn’t find it super useful

Ninja Flip Toaster Oven & Air Fryer: The space-saving multitasker

For those with tiny kitchens, dorm rooms, or studio apartments, the Ninja Flip is a game-changer. Its claim to fame is its ability to flip up and store vertically, taking up far less counter space when not in use. Despite its small footprint, it still manages to pack in air frying, baking, and broiling functions, making it a solid all-in-one option for people who don’t have room for multiple appliances.

Hilary Pollack

The downside? It’s relatively small. Sure, it can bake an endive-shallot-goat-cheese tart to perfection (as you can see above), but depending on the demands of your dish of choice, you might have to adjust certain recipes or cook in smaller batches. The Ninja doesn’t boast the height of our other picks; it can handle pizzas and pork chops with aplomb, but good luck squeezing in even a Cornish game hen, let alone a crown roast. And while the Ninja does bring the heat — Bagel Bites came out mouth-scalding, Brussels sprouts perfectly crispy — it lacks the precision of more expensive ovens like the Breville.

Pros:

• This is one of the most affordable multifunction ovens
• Gets hot fast and produces enough heat for pizzas and air-frying
• The “flip” means it takes up less space in your kitchen

Cons

• Vertically challenged and is best for one or two people
• Lacks smart functionality of any kind
• The interface is fine but less intuitive than its competitors

Our Place Large Wonder Oven: The stylish statement piece

Let’s be honest: a lot of toaster ovens look, at best, utilitarian. The Our Place Wonder Oven, on the other hand, looks like something you’d happily leave out on the counter in a Silver Lake show kitchen. Available in Our Place’s signature earthy color palette and two sizes, standard and large, it’s clearly designed for people who prioritize aesthetics as much as functionality.

Hilary Pollack

Beyond the looks, it has a wide range of functions, from baking and broiling to air frying, and it delivers solid (if not standout) performance across the board. However, compared to some of the more specialized options, it doesn’t quite excel in any one area.

The oven gets hot fast and stays that way, but doesn’t have intuitive options for preheating or more advanced temperature controls, so my fellow testers and I found it prone to slight overcooking. All that fast, powerful heat did serve the air-frying function, which was the best of the bunch.

Hilary Pollack

Also, the Wonder Oven is the only oven aside from the Balmuda (see below) to offer a steaming function, but I found it less effective than the Balmuda in this regard, and the setting is touted by Our Place as an option for heating up leftovers more than for baking.

It’s also not the most budget-friendly machine on our list, so you’re paying a premium for the design as much as the performance. If looks matter as much as function, though, this is a great pick.

Pros:

• This is one stylish oven, available in several attractive colors that add countertop panache
• The large Wonder Oven has the largest capacity, alongside the Breville, of all the ovens we tested
• Great for leftovers
• Versatile bake, broil, and air fry features
• The steam feature sets it apart from other multifunction ovens

Cons

• Pricey for its performance
• Lacks preheat and other smart functions
• Our Place’s signature aesthetic is not for everyone

Panasonic FlashXpress Toaster Oven: The overachiever

Panasonic FlashXpress, I think I love you. With your retro-futuristic looks, I love your aesthetic, and that you’d be at home on the countertop of a neon-soaked Tokyo micro-apartment, and are available in a trio of finishes (I personally like the white). I love your quirks, like the fact that your designers reserved two of your four preset buttons for curiously specific options like hash browns and chicken legs. I love the way you flawlessly toast in less than three minutes —with perfect browning on both sides of the bread — and I love your self-assured intelligence: You cooked frozen pizzas at a totally different temperature than recommended on the pizza box in nearly half the time, and you were so right. I love your size — you fit perfectly on the corner of my kitchen, taking up as much space as a traditional toaster. And finally, I love your price tag: a reasonable $169.99 for your wealth of features. I would have paid so much more.

Hilary Pollack

If you don’t need all the bells and whistles and just want a great, compact toaster oven that punches way above its weight, the Panasonic FlashXpress is the one. This little oven heats up incredibly fast thanks to its infrared heating elements, which eliminate the need for preheating and deliver exceptionally even toasting. The compact size is perfect for small kitchens, and it’s surprisingly attractive for a budget-friendly option.

Pros:

• Punches way above its weight for the price
• Makes perfect crispy toast
• Gets hot super fast
• Smart functionality cooks everything from hash browns to frozen pizza to perfection
• This oven is a looker!

Cons

• The FlashXpress is small — no roast chickens here
• This oven really shines with toasting and reheating, and is not a full replacement for your traditional oven
• The Japanese retro-futurist aesthetic does not fit with every style of kitchen decor

The Balmuda Toaster: The ultimate toast experience

If you believe toast is more than just a vehicle for peanut butter, the Balmuda “The Toaster” might be your new obsession. This sleek Japanese toaster uses a steam function to keep bread crispy on the outside and incredibly soft on the inside—perfect for Japanese-style toast, which is typically thick-cut and lightly crisped on the exterior while staying pillowy in the middle. It’s also fantastic for reheating pastries and baked goods (even croissants!), reviving them to bakery-fresh status.

The trade-off? It’s expensive for what it is. This isn’t an all-purpose toaster oven—it’s just a front-loading toaster, albeit a very, very good one. If you want something that can bake, air fry, and do a dozen other things, look elsewhere. But if you want perfect toast every time, this is the ultimate luxury pick.

Charley Lanyon

There’s also something ineffably charming about this toaster. I just like having it around. It doesn’t beep like a vulgar Western toaster oven; it chirps and clicks and bonks. And it has a kind of inviting formality, not like a gala, but like a luxury train car. I don’t know how to explain it exactly, but I always picture the Balmuda wearing a tiny little uniform, offering friendly service with a smile.

Pros:

• Makes perfect toast
• Can actually reheat a croissant to textural perfection (magic!)
• Looks and sounds like a damned dream

Cons

• This is a unitasker — it makes toast, nothing else.
• Crunchy-toast obsessives may balk at the soft-centered toast it turns out
• It’s expensive for being solely a toaster

Finally, a word about toast…

One place where several of these so-called toaster ovens fell short was in the making of toast. Despite its many advantages, even the Breville with precision temperature control and the intelligence of a golden retriever turned out just passable toast: uneven, dry, and routinely underdone.

Balmuda’s “The Toaster” is an exception. The purpose-built, cult-favorite Japanese steam toaster delivers flawless toast every time, as it should.

Another winner when it comes to toast is the Panasonic Flash X-press. I was dubious, as I had been burned (sorry) by many more expensive and sophisticated ovens. But Panasonic toasts like Turner paints sunsets.

Here’s where things get tricky. The toast from Balmuda and Panasonic could not be more different. As I’m sure you’re aware, there is a war waging between toast aficionados. Toast lovers from the UK insist on toast that is toasted uniformly all the way through — a crunch from top to bottom. The preferred toast of the Commonwealth is crisp and perfect for dipping in a runny egg. The Panasonic FlashXpress makes textbook UK-style toast.

Hilary Pollack

The other competing school of toast — and where Balmuda shines — hails from Japan and has taken root as the toast across Asia and the US. This style of toast is a study in contrast: a crisp, browned top and bottom giving way to a soft, doughy, and warm interior. This type of precision toasting requires a steam oven like the Balmuda.

What about the storied Mitsubishi ST1-T bread oven, you might ask? Well, I refuse to seriously consider any toaster that only toasts one uniformly shaped slice at a time and can cost — when you take into account the toaster and power converter it requires to run in the US — up to $600. Though if you’re reading this, Mitsubishi, feel free to let me take one for a test drive and change my mind.

There you have it! A toaster for every occasion. In a world consumed more than ever with uncertainty and dread, I hope you are able to take some solace in this: When it comes to countertop ovens, there has never been a better time to be alive.