Breville Countertop Oven, Brushed Stainless Steel

For home cooks who want one countertop appliance to handle more than toast, the Breville Smart Oven combines everyday baking and broiling with dedicated settings for pizza, bagels, cookies, and reheating. Its nine cooking functions make it a more versatile step up from a basic toaster oven, while the convection setting circulates hot air to speed cooking by up to 30%, according to the maker. The tradeoff is that the listed interior dimensions and capacity are still the details to weigh against the size of the meals you usually make.

How to use it

Choose from Toast, Bagel, Bake, Roast, Broil, Pizza, Cookies, Reheat, and Warm using the LCD display. It also shows when preheating is complete and starts a cooking-time countdown, so you can see when the oven is ready and track the remaining time. For a practical weeknight use, you could select Pizza for a 13-inch pie, then switch to Toast the next morning instead of relying on separate appliances for those jobs.

The Element iQ system uses five independent quartz elements and algorithms to direct power where it is needed. A convection fan moves hot air through the oven, the stated benefit is faster cooking, not a promise that every recipe will finish in the same amount of time. Would that flexibility replace a full-size oven? It can cover a range of smaller cooking tasks, but the interior dimensions put a clear boundary on what fits.

Pros

• Nine cooking functions cover toast, bagels, baking, roasting, broiling, pizza, cookies, reheating, and warming.
• The interior measures 13.5 x 11.5 x 5.5 inches and is listed to fit six slices of bread, a six-cup muffin tray, or a 13-inch pizza.
• The LCD indicates when preheating is finished and counts down cooking time.
• The interior walls have a nonstick coating, which the product description says makes cleaning easier.
• Convection offers a time-saving option when a recipe suits fan-assisted cooking.

You’ll appreciate it if you want a single countertop oven for varied smaller meals and snacks, rather than a basic toaster focused mainly on bread. It may not suit you if you regularly cook portions that exceed the stated interior capacity or need the room of a full-size oven. The capacity figures describe what can fit, but they don’t establish how much food you can cook at once for every type of meal.

Spec sheet

• Name: Breville Smart Oven
• Type: Countertop convection oven
• Material: Brushed stainless steel
• Capacity: Interior measures 13.5 x 11.5 x 5.5 inches, fits six slices of bread, a six-cup muffin tray, or a 13-inch pizza
• Display: LCD
• Cooking functions: Toast, Bagel, Bake, Roast, Broil, Pizza, Cookies, Reheat, and Warm
• Power: 1800 watts
• Interior: Nonstick cavity coating

Final verdict

This Breville makes sense if you’ll use its mix of toast, baking, broiling, and convection functions often enough to justify giving a countertop oven a place in your kitchen. Its clearest advantage over a simpler toaster oven is the broader set of cooking modes, plus a stated convection time reduction of up to 30%. Choose a larger cooking setup instead if your usual meals need more interior room than the listed dimensions allow, for smaller portions and varied everyday tasks, the capacity and controls make the intended use easy to understand.