The heavy lifting in the kitchen can be done without a large, bulky appliance like a wall oven. The best countertop versions can produce all the power required to finish a variety of cooking activities, including toasting, roasting, baking, and broiling. They are also considerably more energy-efficient because they use much less power.
While smaller countertop ovens don’t take up as much counter space as larger models, they heat up rapidly, allowing you to do jobs like reheating pizza or creating a few chicken fingers quickly. Convection-equipped models have a further advantage.
Because it uses air that circulates at a constant, dry temperature to cook food, a convection oven is a fantastic asset. As a result, meals will cook more quickly and meats like chicken and turkey will maintain their juicy, moist inside while developing excellent, crispy skin on the outside. It works incredibly well with baked goods like cookies, pastries, roasted meats, veggies, potatoes, and other foods.
Quick Overview Of Best Countertop Convection Ovens
Best Overall: Oster Countertop Toaster Oven
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Best Budget: BLACK+DECKER Toaster Oven
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Best Value: Breville Smart Oven
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Best Smart: Brava Oven Starter
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Best Digital: Wolf Gourmet Convection Toaster Oven
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Best Design: Calphalon Air Fryer Oven
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Best Infrared: Panasonic Toaster Oven
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Contents
The 7 Best Countertop Convection Oven In 2022
Best Overall: Oster Countertop Toaster Oven
It has very specific dimensions of 19.29″D x 21.65″W x 12.91″H. It also uses 1500 watts of power and weighs 26 pounds. Despite its relatively large size, this toaster oven is perfect for smaller spaces like apartments or dorm rooms.
With convection technology for fast, even heating, it’s perfect for everything from pizza to baking to broiling. The digital settings make it easy to select the right temperature for whatever you’re cooking. The sleek design takes up minimal counter space.
With a large interior that can accommodate two take-and-bake pizzas, a family-sized chicken, or 18 slices of bread, this toaster oven is versatile enough to handle any meal. Additionally, the easy-clean interior and 90-minute timer with an auto shut-off feature make it easy to use and clean.
With two oven racks, a baking pan, and an integrated broiling rack, it has everything you need to cook a variety of meals.
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Best Budget: BLACK+DECKER Toaster Oven
This appliance is compact and lightweight, making it perfect for small spaces. The dimensions are 11.63″D x 16.9″W x 9.07″H, and it weighs just 7.26 pounds. Despite its small size, it packs a powerful punch, with an impressive 1150 watts of power.
It features four cooking functions – bake, broil, toast, and keep warm – and can easily accommodate a 9″ pizza, four slices of bread, or a variety of other snacks and meals. The toaster oven also has a 30-minute timer with a stay-on function, so you can cook food for the perfect amount of time.
It is designed to circulate hot air throughout the oven, providing even and consistent cooking results. The toaster oven also features a stay-cool exterior, making it safe to touch even when the oven is in use.
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Best Value: Breville Smart Oven
The dimensions are 14.5″D x 18.5″W x 11″H, so it will fit perfectly on your countertop, and the weight is only 22.8 pounds. The Smart Oven has 10 pre-set functions, including bake, broil, roast, toast, bagel, pizza, cookies, reheat, and warm.
It comes with an Element IQ system that uses 5 independent quartz elements. These elements work together to provide accurate and consistent heating, so your food comes out perfectly cooked every time. The Fast 1800 Watt preheat gets your meals on the table more quickly.
With enough room to accommodate 6 slices of bread, 13-inch pizzas, roast chickens, and 9-cup muffin trays, the Smart Oven can help you save time in the kitchen. Additionally, it comes with a 4.4 qt Dutch oven, perfect for slow cooking.
Perhaps one of the most notable features is the auto shut-off feature, which prevents the oven from overheating and saves energy. The independently controlled buttons and LCD display also make it easy to access the built-in smart functionality.
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Best Smart: Brava Oven Starter
The Brava Oven Starter comes with 17.3″D x 16.4″W x 11.3″H dimensions and 54.9 pounds weight. It also features 1800 watts of power, making it capable of cooking food quickly and evenly. Additionally, the oven has a sleek design that will look great in any kitchen.
With over 7000+ customizable cooking programs, you can cook just about anything in this. It also features 10-in-1 cooking settings, so you can easily adapt your recipes to the oven.
It comes with an LED-backlit touchscreen that makes it easier to see what you’re cooking. It also has a rapid preheat time, meaning that you won’t have to wait as long for your food to cook. Additionally, it cooks up to 2-4x faster than a traditional oven, so you can get your food on the table quicker.
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Best Digital: Wolf Gourmet Convection Toaster Oven
This toaster oven has 16.7 x 22.4 x 12.5 inches dimensions and 6.38 pounds weight. It comes with interior lighting, precise temperature control, and convection heating. With these features, the toaster oven can provide even and thorough cooking for various types of food.
With its large capacity and powerful heating elements, the toaster oven can handle even the most demanding cooking tasks. The seven cooking modes include bake, broil, toast, reheat, warm, pizza, and rotisserie, allowing you to prepare a wide variety of foods with ease.
The advanced convection technology circulates hot air around the food for even cooking, and the digital controls make it easy to set the perfect temperature and cooking time.
This toaster oven also has 2 easy-glide oven racks that make it easy to remove hot food from the oven. It provides the control to cook meat to an exact preferred internal temperature for tender, precise results.
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Best Design: Calphalon Air Fryer Oven
With its 15.8″ D x 18.7″W x 11.6″H dimensions and 32.1-pound weight, this oven is large enough to accommodate a turkey up to 22 pounds. And with a 26.4-quart capacity, there’s plenty of space to cook multiple dishes at once. It also features 12 preset functions, including air fry, convection bake, broil, toast, pizza, dehydrate, warm, and many more.
It can preheat 40% faster than most ovens. Additionally, the Quartz heat technology ensures that heat is distributed evenly throughout the oven, so your food will cook evenly every time. The Turbo Convection feature circulates hot air around the food, so it cooks faster and more evenly.
The cool touch exterior keeps the outside of the oven up to 75% cooler, making it safe to use in your kitchen. The premium glass door design provides a sleek and modern look. The unit features touchscreen buttons with a high-contrast LCD screen, making it easy to navigate the menu options.
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Best Infrared: Panasonic Toaster Oven
The toaster oven also has a compact design that makes it easy to store in your kitchen. And, at just 7.5 pounds, it’s one of the lightest toaster ovens on the market.
Despite its compact size, the Panasonic Toaster Oven still packs a powerful punch, with 1300 watts of power that make it able to handle even the most challenging cooking tasks.
With six preset one-touch cooking functions, it can quickly and evenly cook frozen pizzas, chicken nuggets, fish fillets, and more. The auto shut-off feature helps to prevent overcooking and burning. It has a large interior space that can accommodate a variety of foods.
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Factors To Consider Before Buy
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Heating Options
The better ones have an additional heating element by the fan, which maintains a constant temperature in the air moving around the oven. In comparison to devices with just a fan, an oven that maintains a constant temperature will cook food more evenly. Search for terms like “Third-element Convection,” “Genuine Convection,” or “European Convection” when you are looking for ones with the additional heating element.
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Dehydrator
Given that it has a dehydrator setting, your oven can be used to dehydrate food. Even if an oven doesn’t have a dehydrator feature, you can still use it to dehydrate by manually adjusting the parameters. Some convection ovens don’t have a dehydrator setting or have a warm enough interior to dehydrate food.
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Proofing
Commercial proofing convection ovens are perfect for bakeries, delis, catering businesses, or any cuisine that relies heavily on delectable, freshly baked items, like Italian or French. Space, labour, and energy expenses can all be reduced by combining the proofer and convection oven into one device.
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Air Fry
A convection oven uses a fan to move the hot air about the cooking surface, much like an air fryer does. Because the air doesn’t just stay on top, everything cooks more uniformly. Although it looks simple, it has a big impact. The tops of your pies won’t burn while the middle of them is still gooey. The roast chicken has even browning. Even better, you can be certain that food on the bottom rack will cook in the same length of time as food on the top rack.
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Steam
Regular ovens heat the air with a gas or electric heating element; convection ovens employ fans to move the heated air more quickly around the meal. In contrast to conventional ovens, steam ovens heat water, and when the water is heated to 212°F, it produces steam.
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keep warm
In a convection oven, reheat food similarly to how you would in a standard oven. Use a metal pan or an oven-safe plate, put the meal on the pan or plate, and heat the oven to 250°F while covering it with foil to prevent the food from drying out due to the oven fan.
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Presets
The majority of convection ovens only have 3.12 pre-set cooking functions, allowing you to choose what and how you want to prepare food. These functions include roasting a whole turkey, baking desserts, air-frying fried chicken, slow-cooking for up to 10 hours, roasting vegetables, dehydrating jerky and fruit, baking crisp-crust pizza, and more.
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Qualities To Look For
When purchasing a countertop conventional oven, it’s a good idea to check for features like accessories to get more value for your money; the more accessories, the better. Large capacity to fit more food inside the oven. Digital controls offer exact control over cooking time and temperature. A countertop convection oven can be pricey, so you should seek one with a long warranty to protect your investment.
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Price Range
The greatest countertop ovens available today range in price from $150 for a fancy toaster to over $1,000 for the most recent generation of smart ovens, which have zone cooking, preprogrammed recipes, and an in-oven camera so you can watch steaks sear from your phone.
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Ease of Cleaning
Cleanup should be simple for the best countertop convection oven. Because you don’t have to stick your entire hand into the oven to wipe a crumb tray that slides out, cleaning is made simpler.
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Energy Efficiency
A countertop conventional oven uses roughly 20% less energy than regular units. Compared to ordinary versions, an ENERGY STAR-certified electric convection oven saves businesses roughly $680 annually and $7,450 in power costs throughout the product’s lifetime. Businesses can save roughly 660 kWh a year by using an electric convection oven that is ENERGY STAR certified.
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Size
Look for an extra large capacity if you want to fit more food inside the oven. A high capacity can provide greater culinary freedom because you can prepare several dishes at once and large items like a large pizza. This makes it perfect for making substantial dishes for family gatherings or parties.
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Space
For safety reasons, make sure the convection oven has at least 12 to 24 inches of space on all sides between it and any cabinets or other objects nearby. A fire hazard and potential source of significant damage is inadequate clearance.
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Nonstick Interior
A nonstick interior is perfect as food won’t stick to the surface. The interior can be kept tidy with just a quick wipe. You can quickly and easily wipe up any spills with non-stick inside.
FAQs
Convection ovens, which use a fan to circulate the air inside the oven to help food cook more quickly and uniformly, do not require ventilation. There is no need for additional venting if your new oven is installed with the proper clearance advised by the manufacturer. You should check the laws in your area if there are any differences in the rules that apply in a commercial setting.
Around the food in a convection oven, hot air will be circulated. But you should stay away from employing this feature when preparing delicate dishes. The rise and crust-formation processes of baked foods can be sped up by hot, dry air. So that it doesn’t burn, you should periodically check the temperature of the dish.
Some fans have a louder sound than an ordinary oven. They cost more than conventional ovens. The fan occasionally tends to scatter foil or parchment paper, which will mess with your meal. Incorrectly adjusting the cooking time makes food more prone to burning.
You must consider where a huge piece of equipment will fit in your kitchen before purchasing it. Convection ovens are pretty adaptable, which is good news. They can be constructed as deck ovens, which stand alone without a range on top, or as range ovens, which have a conventional range on top. Additionally, countertop convection ovens consume more electricity than conventional countertop appliances, so you’ll need to be sure your electrical system can support them. Convection ovens can also be stacked if you require a lot of room to maximize your space.
What characteristics you desire in your convection oven will be heavily influenced by your menu options. For instance, glass doors on your convection oven are a requirement if your cooks will need to observe the food being prepared. Alternatively, if you cook a lot of different-sized foods, you should ensure your pan racks are adjustable. For the convenience of your kitchen staff, many convection ovens also have programmable cooking settings.
If speed is a top priority, you might want to think about purchasing a microwave/convection oven combination. Even though convection ovens cook food considerably more quickly than conventional ovens, using a microwave can speed up the process even more. If you operate a fast-food restaurant, this function will enable you to produce food that is evenly cooked in a significantly shorter period, making the cost unquestionably worthwhile.
Even if this query might seem straightforward, it is yet crucial. You must choose an electric model if your kitchen does not already have a natural gas connection running into it. In addition, you should think about local utility expenses. You should pick the option that will save you the most money on utilities if both are available. Additionally, buying an Energy Star convection oven will continue to save you a significant amount on gas and electricity each year.
Conclusion
In summary, a countertop convection oven is a multipurpose device that can cook practically anything faster than a regular oven. A countertop convection oven will help you get your meals on the table more quickly if you are bored of waiting for dinner to finish. This oven cooks your food by moving hot air all around it. The constant hot air circulation of a countertop convection oven results in more even cooking as opposed to the uneven “hot patches” cooked by traditional ovens. To achieve crispier cooking outcomes while roasting foods like vegetables or meat, the exhaust system of a countertop convection oven can lower the quantity of moisture in the oven.
