Betty Crocker Compact Toaster Oven With Heaters

I Love this toaster oven, compact but yet cooks like a regular oven. I used this during the HOT summer to cut down on heating our house up and make it hotter in the house, and this toaster oven did great. I was able to fix fries, tots, toast, made some apple turn overs, grilled cheese sandwiches,chicken strips,frozen veges and more. Perfect for us and our small house. Takes up very small counter space. I bought the trays to fit, be sure when you do buy pans measure from the inside walls. I bought a couple that measured right but turned out too big by about 1/2 inch. Cook time is almost the same as a standard oven. Happy with this little toaster oven. If you have small space living this would be perfect for you.

This is really quite a small unit; the smallest toaster oven I’ve seen in probably 20 years. Our other one was MUCH larger. We could actually bake food in it, which is why we bought it…so that we didn’t have to fire up our huge oven just to bake something small. But while we could get away with baking say a piece of chicken or fish in it and certainly heating up an entire frozen pizza, it really didn’t behave/bake the way the oven does, particularly anything made with flour. Also, when we baked anything like chicken in there, fat would splatter up against the sides over time. This eventually led to some smoking and burning smell every time we used it, and because of the construction it wasn’t possible to clean the insides of it to eliminate that like we can our big oven. It was also much more expensive, and then for no particular reason it just stopped working…again! This is the third one that’s done that over about a ten year period and we’re done wasting money on those!

So really, we only needed a toaster that could handle big long slices of bread from round peasant loaves or reheating 1 to 2 portion servings of food for us. THIS ONE DOES A GREAT JOB OF THAT, while not taking up much space at all which we also really like.

Another thing. We’ve had every slotted toaster die over the years as the wire filaments that are spaced out evenly on either side burned out one by one, leaving our toast unevenly toasted and finally not toasted at all. This toaster oven has heavy duty bar heating elements on the top and bottom protected by reflector/diffusers that are far and away more robust. Some complain that these dry out their toast rather than toasting them but by just playing around with different combinations of temperature and time to find the right combo, it now does a beautiful job of toasting single pieces to multiple pieces of bread covering the entire rack to perfection. And, because they’re well protected and there is a gap between the metal sides and the heating elements, this should be relatively easy to do even a very thorough cleaning of the unit when necessary without breaking them.

This is a simple, sturdy, old school toaster oven that’s less expensive than a lot of plain old toasters with slots in them, and a great value for the money. We’re really happy with this purchase and hope it lasts for years to come!

External dimensions: 8 3/8″ tall from the counter to the (external) top of the unit; 14.5″ wide; 9.5″ from the rubber stand offs on the back that keep it from being pushed up to close to the back wall to the widest part of the unit at the bottom, but 10″ from the stand offs to the knobs. Inside opening: 9 1/2″ wide x 5 1/2″ high by 7″ deep. Internal shelf (9.5″ x 7″) goes right up against the side and back walls, so the usable space is slightly less to prevent food touching the metal sides, though it’s not a problem for bread/toast to touch the sides slightly.

I would add another half a star if they had them. I’m happy with it I’ll be honest though, I was ready to ‘dis’ it with two or less stars when if first got it. Luckily I did my homework before doing so. It replaces a much more powerful (and larger) model of another make for me, and at first I thought for sure it wasn’t heating up to temp. I figured it was at least 50 degrees short, but found an oven thermometer to confirm my suspicion. Result? It’s almost spot-on temperature wise. I will say that I think this oven has less radiant heating than some of the bigger ovens, I think it heats with primarily convection (i.e. the hot air in there). So, bottom line, you may have to turn the temp up a little higher to get the same speed of cooking. Other than that I think the thing is fabulous: nice and compact “footprint” on the counter (in fact the whole ‘foot’ is compact, only eight or nine inches high. I love the simplicity of the controls – an excellent (albeit somewhat short duration) 30-min timer with little dinger and the aforementioned accurate temperature control. That’s it. The jury’s still out on the quartz vs the more conventional resistance element found in most units: it’s a little brighter, gets red faster, but I think it might cycle on and off more to prevent overheating or something. I don’t use it for toast, so can’t comment on that aspect. Beautiful looking unit, good finish.