Cuisinart Air Fryer Convection Toaster Oven

Perfect when it works. We have cooked and warmed up so many things in this appliance besides bread. The convection feature with the large fan is quite an improvement over the previous model iterations with smaller side fans which didn’t produce much of a convection effect. Quite the opposite in this model. However as I said in the tile, the top elements stopped working in any of the heating modes yesterday (1.2 yrs of use). I would expect this appliance to last like the previous Cuisinart toaster oven that lasted 9 years of similar daily use. We do not have the knob selector issue in this model, as it is one of the major complaint of the silver colored TOA-60 model. Will see what kind of service Cuisinart Support will offer to us.
Edit: took only 4 hours to have a customer service rep call me. Very helpful, sent in pictures and will get my new replacement in 5-10 business days! Unfortunately this model is no longer in stock and in production, so ill get a bright Stainless Steel finish, not the darker and black sides SS. Great service otherwise Cuisinart! (bumped from 1 st to 4 star due to great customer support -edit)

I’m very pleased with this Air Frier/ Toaster Oven. Calling this segment of ovens “Air Frier” is in my opinion a marketing ploy and misleading. Frying is not what these do, they are essentially convection ovens that cook very fast and effectively by circulating very hot air around your food. The result is wonderfully crispy fries, fish, chicken, etc. in half the time of a conventional oven.

There’s a lot to like about this unit: as an air fryer, it has the largest surface area I found, larger than the biggest Phillips or GoWise units (and surface area, rather than volume, is what really matters). It makes some delicious food and ticks some excellent boxes. Unlike the GoWise air fryer I had started with, but returned because the coating on the pan was coming off after only 3 uses, these trays are more durable. I debated whether to give it 2 or 3 stars, and overall I am keeping it so I gave it 3. But there are some pretty serious drawbacks.

The first is quality control. On the first unit I had, only 2 of the 4 upper heating elements would ever work on any setting. (Note that only the outer 2 are enabled on some settings, such as broil, so that appears to be at least somewhat normal.) Moreover, the timer was wrong — set it to 10 minutes, and you get 14. Set it to 20, and you get 24. Very consistently off like that. On these grounds, I returned it.

The replacement has working heating elements, but its timer runs 6 minutes long: 15 minutes gets you 21. This is very consistent. The label on the timer clearly had an inappropriately large gap between 10 minutes and 0, and this seems to be a design defect for the entire unit. I saw a lot of people here complain about the unit being too hot. I did not experience that, but it is possible that the timer’s inaccuracy would cause people to think that. The replacement unit also had uneven feet and doesn’t sit quite still on the counter.

Secondly, the Cuisinart service. They could not tell me the difference between convection bake, convection broil, and convection air fry. Moreover, they promised to have a replacement for my timer problem at my door in 7-10 days. It’s been more than that, and all they say when I call is that the warehouse is “processing”. They said it could take weeks for “processing”, and it would be 7-10 days after THAT. They also outright lied to me (saying the warehouse didn’t have a phone; found the number on the Internet).

So if you’re wondering about the different settings, here’s what they do:

Convection bake: both bottom elements and outer two upper elements

Convection broil: outer two upper elements only

Air fry: all 4 upper elements only

This isn’t clearly stated in the manual and Cuisinart doesn’t seem to know what their own product does.

All three of these have the fan on high. The non-convection bake and broil have the fan on low but are otherwise the same.

Bottom line: do not buy this for the warranty. It is so slow as to be indistinguishable from not existing. Buy it and a $5 digital kitchen timer.

This is a solid toaster oven/air fryer (TO/AF) depending on what your needs are. If you’re the type that doesn’t like to watch your food and just likes to toss it in the TO/AF and walk away, then this is NOT the one for you. As many other reviews have mentioned, this TO/AF tends to run very hot so you do need to play with the temperature and time and keep an eye on your food, to get the outcome you want. But I don’t mind monitoring as I go so this was definitely a good match for me. I researched several brands at this price point as well as both lower and higher price points, and they ALL have their issues. I steered clear of brands that had the AF fans on the sides or back panels of the oven because those are not true air fryers, those are convection ovens. Convection ovens and air fryers do use the same technology, however, where the fans are placed within the oven, is what separates out the two. The air has to blow directly from the top onto the food for it to truly be considered air frying and that is how this TO/AF is designed. Next thing I looked at was digital panel vs turn dials to operate the TO/AF. I opted for the turn dials because I found for the digital panel, many reviews complained of them malfunctioning with error codes and I didn’t want to deal with that. However, I do have 2 complaints with the turn dials, 1) the timer dial starts at the 10 minute mark and increase by every 5 mins, all the way up to a total of 60 mins. So for example, if you want to cook something for say only 7 mins. or 12 mins., you have to ballpark it; 2) dials run hot to the touch when in use so be careful. As far as clean up, one negative is, all the interior pieces need to be handwashed, they are not dishwasher safe. Clean up of the rack and AF basket were easy, however, the drip pan did require some elbow grease. Going forward I’ve been putting a piece of foil in the pan for easy clean up. The manual says not to do that because it will make the unit run hotter but again, I monitor very closely and it’s been fine. Interior was easy to clean with a sponge and Mr. Clean eraser. Lastly, what have I cooked in it so far. Well the one thing that was definitely a bust was making toast. I have yet to meet a toaster oven that can make a decent piece of toast so I still use my regular pop up toaster for that. Otherwise, so far I have air fried chicken nuggets, vegetable egg rolls, assorted hors d’oeuvre, Brazilian cheese bread, french fries and pizza. All of which came out perfect except for the pizza, the crust was a little over done so next time I have to just adjust the time and temp a little bit. Hope this helps someone to decide if this is the right TO/AF for them.

Addendum: air fried bacon did not cook evenly but air fried chicken wings came out excellent and so did grilled breakfast sausages. So definitely have to experiment with different thing’s to see what cooks up nicely and what doesn’t.

Much easier to clean. Heat is more accurate