Customer Review
- Reviewed in the United States on July 23, 2016When our toaster oven finally gave it's last effort, we began looking around for a replacement. There are so many to choose from, but we were drawn to the Oster Extra Large Digital Countertop Oven due to it's Capacity, Convection Oven Setting and Price.
What we received was a severe disappointment.
The day we received our product, we immediately set it up and began cooking to test how well it would work with our usual uses.
Test 1 - French Fries - Convection Oven:
Understand that the purpose of a Convection Oven is to force air through the heating chamber, spreading the heat around foods to help them cook faster and more evenly. In a true convection oven, not only does this cut down cooking times significantly, but it also is fantastic for browning and crisping foods.
We tested the Convection setting with typical frozen french fries on a slotted sheet, which is meant to allow air to pass through the pan and assist in even cooking for foods of this type.
This product failed miserably as a Convection Oven. The first thing you will find is that the air is blown in from a vent located on the right and I would equate it to less powerful than you blowing on your own food. It works more as an extremely light exhaust fan into the heating chamber, not a forced air system meant to circulate air properly.
After 20 minutes at 400 degrees running "Turbo Convection", our test fries had not even browned, let alone crisped. Absolute failure.
Test 2 - Pizza - Pizza Setting:
If you're looking into a Toaster Oven, you're probably expecting to cook frozen pizza in it. They know this, which is why nearly every countertop oven you come across will have a Pizza setting.
In this case, Pizza setting means 400 degrees for 20 minutes. That's all it is, a convenience feature to preset the heat and timer. In higher end models, a Pizza setting typically heats the lower portion of the oven to a higher temperature than the top, ensuring a crispy crust without burning through toppings. That is not the case here, but it wasn't expected either.
We tested this two ways: With and Without a Pizza Stone.
Long story short, it was another miserable failure. Both standard Safeway, Rising Crust, 5 Cheese Pizzas came out very unevenly cooked.
The first, without the Pizza Stone, was particularly bad as we had to rotate the pizza to finish the left side, which also meant further over-cooking the right side that had already begun to burn on top.
The second, with a Pre-heated Pizza Stone (20-Minutes at 400 degrees to heat the stone, then placed Pizza atop 20-Minutes at 400), resulted in a somewhat more even crust, but another half-burned top.
Test 3 - Tuna Casserole - Bake / Broil:
You may wonder at this point: Why would you continue testing anything? It's clearly not working out... But we wanted to give it one more chance, maybe something would change. Optimism!
This test is your typical Tuna Casserole, no need to get into a recipe. The idea is to bake it and finish with a short broil to brown up the top.
We decided to observe the temperatures inside via probe while the casserole baked. That turned out to be extremely frustrating due to the constant wild fluctuation of temperature inside. It is understood that the heating elements turn on/off in order to maintain the heat, but perhaps the internal sensor for this on ours is malfunctioning or it's poor quality. In our case, temperatures would drop a significant amount, 20 to 30 degrees, before rising again. As you can imagine, this isn't the desired method to bake foods.
After careful temperature probing of the dish, we determined sufficient "doneness" had occurred, though somewhat later at 40 minutes; twice our cooking time. Crisping the top with the Broil setting gave us that wonderful half-done finish to the right side.
At this point, we were thoroughly finished with any form of testing. I certainly feel like we gave it plenty of chances to come through.
There are plenty of positive reviews regarding this oven. Your results may prove us wrong. Perhaps our machine was faulty. We can only speak of what we've observed in our own kitchen and provide an honest review from a typical family home.
Our conclusion: We feel this is a poorly constructed, misrepresented (Convection Oven? Really?) product that is more likely to leave you disappointed and frustrated. We would not recommend this to anyone.
