Top pick
The versatile Cuisinart Chef’s Convection Toaster Oven TOB-260N1 is one of the best toaster ovens we’ve found for bigger jobs, like cooking a 13-inch pizza, roasting a whole chicken, or toasting up to nine slices of bread at once.
It toasted bread more evenly than the other toaster ovens we tried at this price level, and it has a better warranty, more accessories, and one of the shortest preheating times. Plus, the two-speed convection fan means it’s also good at air frying (even though it’s not advertised to do this).
It toasts to a near golden-brown perfection. Corner to corner, no other oven was as consistent (aside from the exorbitantly priced Wolf Gourmet Elite Countertop Oven with Convection). Similarly priced large toaster ovens concentrated heat in the center of the oven and had more significant fall-off of heat toward the edges.
It has among the best accessories of any model we’ve tested. The oven comes with two racks, a baking pan, and a broiling tray, and it’s the only model we’ve tested since 2013 to include a ceramic pizza stone (most competitors offer a flimsy metal pizza pan). The stone makes a crunchy golden-brown pizza crust and is also great for baking bread and pies.
Cuisinart also sells the oven’s accessories separately, should you need to replace them.
The oven cavity is roomy. It’s large enough to fit a 5.5-quart Le Creuset Dutch oven or a 6-quart Lodge Dutch oven (with aluminum foil in lieu of their lids)—just know that their weight causes the oven rack to bend slightly.
It can also fit a standard quarter-sheet tray (and if you put a quarter-sheet tray on each of its two racks, that’s equal to a standard half-sheet pan you’d use in a full-size oven). Additionally, most 12-cup muffin tins or 13-by-9-inch baking pans (without handles) fit inside the oven.
The Cuisinart toaster oven also has four slots for the racks, with metal hooks that pull out the middle rack when the door is opened.
It was one of the fastest models to preheat to 350 °F. It took just over three minutes.
It can automatically change temperatures midway through cooking. The Dual Cook setting allows you to program two cooking cycles back to back. For example, if you’re baking a pumpkin pie, you could use this setting to bake the pie at 425 °F for 15 minutes, then automatically reduce the temperature to 350 °F for the remaining 30 to 40 minutes. Our upgrade pick, the Breville Smart Oven Air Fryer Pro, also has this feature, which Breville calls Phase Cook.
The Cuisinart toaster oven also has a “+30s” button that allows you to add 30 seconds to any cooking function—if you hold that button down you can also adjust the volume of the beeps or turn them off entirely.
Two convection speeds give you more control. Most toaster ovens have only one fan speed, but this Cuisinart model has two: high and low. For air frying, we’ve found that the high setting works better, since it cooks food a little faster.
However, if you plan to air fry often and you’re looking for an oven with a slightly more powerful fan that will cook even faster and get food a little crispier, we recommend our upgrade pick, the Breville Smart Oven Air Fryer Pro (or, check out our guide to the best air fryer toaster ovens for more options).
We appreciate the three-year limited warranty. Most competitors offer just one- or two-year warranties.
One caveat: If the oven becomes defective under warranty, Cuisinart won’t repair it—they’ll ask you to cut the cord and send them a picture of it, then send you an entirely new unit. They’ll even do this if the lightbulb burns out, which feels like a wasteful downside to this otherwise excellent warranty.
If something goes wrong with the oven after the warranty expires, Cuisinart will offer you 20% off the retail price of a new oven and provide free shipping.
How the Cuisinart Chef’s Convection Toaster Oven has held up
Flaws but not dealbreakers
- The single dial control is not as intuitive as other models. The single knob functions as a combined selector for cook time, temperature, and toast setting. Once we familiarized ourselves with it, however, we appreciated this sleek, pared-down interface.
- The timer starts counting down as soon as the oven preheats. This can be annoying if you’re not quite ready to put your food in the oven, but it’s easy enough to adjust the timer once you’re ready.
- The middle shade setting for toasting (setting 4) is a bit dark. We recommend using setting 3 for making perfect golden-brown toast.
- The oven door lacks a handy rack-position key. A clear key would tell you where to place the rack for different tasks (toasting, roasting, and more). Instead, you’ll find rack position numbers printed on the side of the oven cavity and have to consult the user manual to decipher them.