Why the Breville Smart Oven Is a Serious Eats Staff Favorite

The Breville Smart Oven has long been a Serious Eats staff favorite. Most editors use one on a near-daily basis for toasting bread or bagels, reheating leftovers, roasting vegetables or chicken, and more. It’s also great for holiday feasts, functioning as a secondary oven or a warming drawer when your kitchen is stretched.

To buy: Breville Smart Oven, $255 at amazon.com

Why We Love It

The Breville Smart Oven has excellent accuracy and a wide temperature range—120ºF to 450ºF—so you can roast potatoes to perfection and then drop the temperature to keep them warm while you finish cooking your other dishes. It has dual heating elements above and below its three different rack positions, allowing you to toast, roast, bake, and broil, with a clear indicator of which position is best for which mode. It also features a convection fan that boosts the oven’s browning abilities, crisping frozen foods almost as well as an air fryer. 

Its versatility is why we love this toaster oven so much: It can melt cheese on sheet tray nachos, cook frozen pizzas, bake cookies with a soft interior, and roast a pair of chicken breasts for a quick weeknight dinner. It’s not uncommon for a Serious Eats staffer to toast bread in one for breakfast, reheat leftovers in it for lunch, and make a side in it for dinner, too.

Good to Know

• Temperature range: 120°F to 450°F
• Preset functions: Toast, bagel, bake, roast, broil, pizza, cookies, reheat, and warm
• Dimensions: 18 1/2 x 16 1/4 x 11 1/4 inches
• Accessories: 12 x 12-inch enamel baking pan; 12 x 12-inch enamel broil rack; 13-inch nonstick pizza pan
• Capacity: 6 slices of toast; 13-inch pizza
• Wattage: 1800 watts
• Warranty: 1-year limited

FAQs

What’s the difference between the Breville Smart Oven and Breville Smart Oven Pro?

The Breville Smart Oven and the Breville Smart Oven Pro are extremely similar—they’re the exact same shape and size, only the Smart Oven Pro adds an interior light and a slow cook mode. While we haven’t tested the slow cook mode, the interior light is also a feature of the Breville Joule Oven Air Fryer Pro, and we liked being able to see the progress of what we were cooking without having to open the door. 

Can I use my Breville Smart Oven as an air fryer?

Sort of—the Breville Smart Oven does feature a convection fan, but it’s not quite as powerful as an air fryer (we actually broke down the differences between air fryers and convection ovens and why they aren’t the same). While it might not be as great at frying chicken wings from scratch, the convection setting on the Smart Oven is still able to crisp up frozen foods well, and Breville does make a few upgraded models of the Smart Oven that we reviewed here, all of which include a more powerful, air fryer mode.