Hamilton Beach Sure-Crisp Toaster Oven Air Fryer Combo

I’ve only had one other toaster in my lifetime, and it’s been a long time using one. I picked Hamilton Beach because my microwave of the same brand is about 7yrs. old and never a problem with it. This little oven is exactly that, little. I’m single so that works for me. My daughter has one with 4 in her family and it gets the workout daily. I think she could use the toaster oven that holds a twelve inch pizza. But she said until this one breaks down, no doing. She’s had hers for about 6 yrs. Yay Hamilton Beach!!! So far I’m happy with mine. Great for tots, 9 inch Totino’s pizza, melting cheese on toast. All the small stuff like that, which is why I wanted it. No heating up the whole kitchen. When my kitchen is hot, the whole house is. I haven’t tried the air fryer yet. My son-in-law does cook everything like that. It’s messier than just toasting though. If you’re cramped for room or just don’t want a large oven, try this one.

This is easy to use but I honestly can’t say there’s much of a difference between the different functions (toast, air fry, oven, etc.). We pretty much just leave it on air fry for everything. Bought it in July 2022 and use it pretty much daily for things like chicken nuggets, fish sticks, meatballs, etc.
In the last few months it hasn’t been working as well. The timer will stop moving and it looks like it shuts off. I have to turn it all the way to 20 or 30 minutes and watch it and hope it stays on long enough to cook what I need. Will be buying a new one and will go with a different brand. I know they don’t last forever but less than 2 years doesn’t seem great.

I’ll have to grudgingly say this is a pretty good toaster oven. I say “grudgingly” because this toaster oven, like every other toaster oven I’ve seen on the market today, falls short in its primary function – making toast. There’s a reason these appliances are not called “oven-toasters.” We use ours every day to make toast, and once in a while we use it as an oven. Old fashioned toasters had a dial where you set your desired level of “brownness” once, and from then on you just dropped in the bread, pushed down the slider, and it made toast. Consistent, evenly toasted bread, day after day. Sunbeam even made a wonderful toaster where you didn’t even have to push a slider. Drop in the bread, it descended into the toaster, and then majestically rose again when it was toasted.

Now my family likes to toast bread, bagels, English Muffins, and other baked items that don’t fit in an old fashioned toaster. Our first toaster oven had a brownness knob and a start button so you could make toast just as easily as with a conventional toaster. It had separate knobs for the oven controls. That was a great toaster oven. Then manufacturers started integrating the controls, and suddenly you had two or three knobs that had to be turned to the correct position just to make a slice of toast. Put your bread in, turn on the toaster oven, fry an egg, and discover you just had warm bread because someone left the knobs set to “bake” instead of to “toast.”

This toaster has multiple knobs that have to be twiddled to the correct position to make toast, but as long as you do that it does a good job making toast. Unlike other users, I don’t have any trouble turning the knob to set the desired degree of brownness. It toasts evenly, and I can get consistent results with it. On the rare times when we’ve used this as an oven, it did a good job of that, too. You just have to remember to turn the knobs back to “toast” when you’re finished. We haven’t tried the air fryer. It seems to me that frying in an open mesh basket would spatter grease everywhere, but I haven’t tried it so you’ll have to look at other reviews to see how good that feature is.

Our old one started making strange noises, so I went to the local big box store and grabbed a new one. Big mistake. It burned everything it touched and left things raw in the middle. So I searched the internet for reviews and this one popped up. It is fantastic! It preheats quickly and cooks evenly. It also holds a very steady temperature. The high quality heating elements on this one are worth the bit extra in cost. Also, the controls are easy enough for some household members who are technology challenged. My only problem is that it is a quarter of an inch too small for my round cake pan that I usually use for making cinnamon rolls. The interior is just *that* much smaller than the two I have had previously. Not a real problem, but it is something to be aware of.