Breville the Smart Oven®, Convection Toaster Oven, Small Electric Countertop Oven, BOV800XL, Brushed Stainless Steel Reviews

Breville Smart Oven BOV800XL, Brushed Stainless Steel
The Breville Smart Oven with Element iQ System is for the home cook who needs a convection countertop toaster oven with high performance and versatility; Reduce your cooking time by up to 30% using the convection setting and choose from 9 cooking functions
ELEMENT iQ SYSTEM: Using 5 independent quartz elements, smart algorithms steer power to where and when it’s needed to create the ideal cooking environment for perfect results every time; Fast 1800 Watt preheat gets your meals on the table more quickly
CONVECTION POWERED: The Smart Oven’s convection setting reduces cooking time by up to 30%; An inbuilt fan circulates the hot air within the oven which speeds the cooking process by raising hotter air and sinking colder, less dense air for quicker heating
9 COOKING FUNCTIONS: versatile countertop oven with 9 cooking functions to guide you to perfection: Toast, Bagel, Bake, Roast, Broil, Pizza, Cookies, Reheat and Warm
LARGE CAPACITY: Large 18.5 x 15.7 x 11.1 inch interior with enough room for 6 slices of bread, 6 cup muffin tray and a 13 inch pizza, made to perfection
LCD DISPLAY: LCD display to easily access the built in smart functionality, choose from 9 cooking functions; The LCD also indicates when pre-heat has completed and automatically begins to count down on the cooking time for perfect results
NON STICK CAVITY COATING: The walls on the inside of the oven feature a non stick coating for easy cleaning
INCLUDED ACCESSORIES: 12 x 12 inch Enamel Baking Pan; 12 x12 inch Enamel Broiling Rack and 13 inch Non-Stick Pizza Pan
WARRANTY: 1 Year Limited Product Warranty; Power: 1800 Watts; Voltage: 110 to 120 Volts
Place the oven on a flat, dry surface. Ensure there is a minimum distance of 4” (10cm) of space on both sides of the appliance.

Reviewer: Jandle
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Great counter top oven!
Review: Nice size, heats up quickly, so easy to operate, easy to clean, works well as a dehydrator also. So useful!

Reviewer: Dave D.
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: More Lexus than Fararri – Intuitive, Quality Construction, Simple Elegance
Review: After fairly extensive research, this is the single best toaster oven on the market, and if you can afford the price tag, totally 100% worth it. I bought one and loved it. I gave one to my sister for her birthday and quickly it became the desired item within my family … In the end I think I purchased 5 of them. I love well-designed products with simple interfaces. Analog toasters have a nice simple interface – time, temp, mode (toast / bake / broil). Digital toasters have better components, but tend to have cluttered and unintuitive interfaces. This Breville toaster is a nice blend between the two. The interface is at least as intuitive as a simple analog toaster, but the quality is so much higher.Pro: * Construction Quality – The construction quality is excellent. It has a solid feel and is aesthetically quite pleasing. The handle is nice and wide, and despite a few reviews that mentioned issues with burning one’s hand while opening the toaster, I’ve never had an issue, nor do I fully understand how that would be possible. The door is balanced such that it opens easily, yet doesn’t fall into the counter if you let it go. The elements are ridiculously over-engineered. My previous $50 toasters would burn out after a few years when the elements wore out. Due to the quality of the quartz elements, I don’t envision ever having that issue with this device. It seems solid and built to last. And the quality and sturdiness provide a simple beauty that makes the over pleasant to look at and use. * Design & Aesthetics: Controls – The four controls are intuitive and simple – time, temp, mode, GO. The digitized rotating knobs are faster, more intuitive, and more pleasant than the crappy up/down buttons or number-pad found on most other digital devices. Toast longer? Spin the bottom knob. Toast hotter? Spin the top knob. Toast the same as last time? Press GO. Rather than spinning freely, each knob has discrete positions that are subtle but can be felt tactilely. Most of the time my oven sits at a single setting, and I just press the GO button, and it works with the simplicity of an old-fashioned toaster. The “GO” button is also the “STOP” button – when running, the GO button instantly lights up a red perimeter, making it blindingly obvious … toggle it back and forth like a light switch and there will be zero confusion what is happening. * Design & Aesthetics: Display – The display is large, high-contrast, and uncluttered. When idle, the screen is passive, readable with the lights on, but emitting no light of it’s own. Touch any control and the display lights up, readable at any light and or sobriety level. * Design & Aesthetics: Racks&Magnets – The magnetic bits on the door cause the rack to pull out about half-way when opening the oven — this is a nice touch and very convenient in a subtle way that you don’t even notice after a few days. I was a bit surprised at my parent’s house when the rack _didn’t_ pop out, and I had to reach into the oven to pull out a piece of toast. To me, that is the hallmark of this device, and indeed of any truly well designed consumer appliance – you stop noticing the features that were so deliberately engineered into it and use it intuitively. For a longer discourse on the subject, check out “The design of everyday things” by Donald Norman. * 5 High Quality Heating Elements – The 5 elements are excellent. Being a bit wider, they distribute heat more evenly. They heat up quickly and do a good job maintaining consistent temp. Bread will toast consistently to the same level every time and evenly across the surface. As if that wasn’t enough precision, Breville added something called “ElementIQ”, basically a fancy branding name for the logic that reduces toasting time when the toaster starts hot, providing fairly consistent results between the 1st set of toast and the 2nd despite the difference in starting conditions (cold-start vs hot-start). They did that right too; the adjustment happens at the beginning and time is still counted in seconds for the actual toasting session. Want something to keep toasting for longer? Just spin the time knob to the right and the “seconds remaining” will keep going up. * Like a Swiss Army knife, closed. – The oven has lots of “features” – broiling, multi-hour convection baking, a bagel mode, etc – but these modes are all subjugated under that smaller “mode” knob. You could probably bake a turkey in this oven, but I have a real oven for that. 99.99% of the time it sits in “toast” mode and does what any $50 toaster would do, just with more elegance, precision, and consistency. If you are looking for one of those ovens that can multitask, that box is definitely ticked. The other modes are intuitive too. Rotate the mode knob and the display shows the list of 10 or so different ways to heat food. The mode list is one level deep, so no complicated submodes or “settings” or anything like that.Con:* The one surprise I had was that there is no “full power” mode. Toast is the only mode to use all 5 elements, but refuses to use convection. The convection modes use 4 or fewer elements. Also, toasting temp is measured in slices of bread up to 9, vs the degF temp for the baking modes. In the first week I had the device, I really wanted to put it through it’s paces and run it on HIGH with convection and watch it do to a piece of bread what a magnifying glass under the sun does to an ant. :). This is sadly not possible. Even on toast on the highest temp setting, the device does not run at full power. It uses those 1800 watts to come to temp really quickly, but 1800 watts continuous would probably exceed the design temp by quite a lot and melt something metal. Don’t worry, it will toast quite well. After the first week, I stopped caring about seeing how much power I could pump into one unsuspecting starch vessel, put the toaster on medium (~6 of 9), and let it give consistent tasty results every morning. I guess that makes this toaster more Lexus than Fararri.There are a bunch of other high price premium toasters on the market sporting a variety of features. None of them seem to have the same elegance, simplicity and thought-through design. Buying a basic $50 analog controlled toaster makes sense if you want to be frugal. But if you want to take a step up and own a nice appliance, you won’t regret this choice. Just don’t make the mistake of splurging $200 on a half-assed hack that has whizz-bang features poorly implemented. This is the only high-end toaster I’ve come across that justifies paying a premium.Well done Breville. In a world with very few truly well designed products, this is one. Then again, at 5x the price point, it damn well should be.

Reviewer: pne2970t
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Good product
Review: I did a bit of research and came up with the decision to buy this. So far, it’s a smart choice: well built, easy to use, good price, and gets the job done.

Reviewer: Chandler
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: With convection baking, perfect toasted sandwiches, faster cooking and preheating in a snap you might just break up w/ your oven
Review: As a chef, I love all kinds of kitchen gadgets but I ditched my toaster oven in the 90s and never looked back.GIVES YOU A FASTER SPARE OVEN FOR THE HOLIDAYS AND PARTIES OR THE ONLY OVEN YOU WILL NEED:Recently some folks began talking about their toaster ovens and it made sense–they preheat in no time at all so you not only save electricity, but loads of time if you cook a bunch, they cook faster so ditto; I got one and discovered how they have changed in the years since I thought I didn’t need one…Some may think they are just for the person who rarely cooks because it’s just simpler and easy to clean but for someone who cooks a bunch this is really fantastic because you not only have an extra oven in your house for things like the holidays when you want more than a couple items cooking at once or you want items cooking at variable temps, but it also has a warming setting so that you can pre-make something and keep it warm for your guests or your honey who has to work late at the office and still wants a hot plate. Because it’s convection, it also won’t dry out the items as a normal oven would when you have it on warm. Even though I cook daily, I find myself now almost exclusively only using this one due to the time savings and the results. Because there is no large family here, it’s perfect for almost everything I do and in many cases far better than my fancy-pants old school oven. It heats up so fast I have pretty much broken up with my oven and microwave.PLATE WARMER: And speaking of hot plates, the top of this one is a built-in plate warmer. So, like a restaurant that does not serve you a hot dish on a cold plate since that equals a tepid dish very quickly, put your ceramic or glass plate on top while you cook your dish and your plate is warm to the touch when serving.CONVECTION OVEN:So let’s talk convection oven. Regular ovens heat by the heating elements whereas convection ovens also blow the heated air around the oven cabin to result in faster cooking with more even results and a crisp outside while retaining all moisture inside. That’s great if you eat meat, but there is no better oven for baking because you get perfect crumb and crust like you just can’t get in any regular oven that’s not convection. Breads are moist and springy and perfect inside (perfect crumb) with a great crust outside. Cookies are tender yet have a bit of a crisp on the outside. True pro cooking. Because convection ovens also speed up cooking time, I often also lower the recipe directions by 25 degrees. The convection setting is optional. It’s default for some cooking settings but if for some reason you want to ride out the baking time old-school cooking, just press the “convection” button and you can turn that on or off.TOASTER HEAVEN:I ditched the toaster. If you take 2 pieces of toast and make a sandwich you get a very dry sandwich. However, you can put the entire sandwich in here and get melty cheese, hot insides, the most perfect crisping on the outside that I have seen in ages, and still not have it dry on the inside. This has become my addiction–fancy Sammys. There is a reason Subway uses toaster ovens for their hot sandwiches. You can’t melt cheese in your toaster.AUTOMATIC SHUT-OFF:There are several pre-programmed settings but no matter what you set it on, it turns off automatically for you when it’s done. Your regular oven can’t do that trick. So if you want to go about your business and go upstairs and vacuum or do laundry and are away from the oven–no worries, when the timer goes off or the automatic cooking time goes off, so does your oven. Of course, if you want more time, you can just hit the start button again if something takes longer to cook but this is a safety and convenience feature.COOKING IQ:If you are not aware of this part, and you are testing your oven temp, you might do it wrong. First, I want to point out that you have to leave an oven thermometer in for 30 minutes to get an accurate reading. As a chef I frequently check my ovens for accuracy both at home and work and this one never fails…always accurate. So back to IQ. What is it? It does things to ensure what you are baking exceeds expectations so if you do your part, you’ll get great results. For example, on the toast setting it asks you how many pieces. If you input one you’ll get the heating elements just in the center of the oven. Put in 4 and you get the whole oven but it pulses the heat in order to not overdry out your bread while toasting. Really the best toast ever. On toast it does this on the top and bottom of the oven, whereas you can put a bagel or English muffin in on the bagel setting and you get less toasting on the bagel bottom where it’s already cooked so it does not dry out. Smart, huh?CELSIUS RECIPE CONVERSION:Set this up wrong and you will always wonder why your oven is the wrong temperature. It has F and C cooking. What’s great about that is that you can use any recipe you find online even if it’s from another country and written all in Celsius. Push the button and all the temps are C. Push again and back to Fahrenheit . So it’s an instant recipe converter. But if you feel your oven is running wrong temp, look for the F after the number and be sure you didn’t push the button.FROZEN FOODS BUTTON:Are you cooking from one of the pre-set easy settings but your items is frozen? For example, if you want to pull a bagel out of the freezer to toast it? Just push the “frozen” button first and it automatically warms up the item and adds the extra time to your toaster setting so you don’t get crispy outside and frozen middle or undercooked or undertoasted. You can add this to any setting like the pizza setting.RACK PLACEMENT SMARTS:The outside of the oven door tells you where to position the rack for proper cooking. For example, if you are broiling, you will want a different setting than if you are toasting. It is easy to forget this on regular toaster ovens and get poor results because of it. Just look at the small guages on the right of the glass and you will never make a mistake. Top rack height position is for broil, middle rack is for toast, bagel, pizza, and cookie functions. The bottom rack height is for bake, roast, reheat and warm functionsREHEAT FOODS WITHOUT DRYING OUT:Got leftovers but don’t want to dry them out while cooking again? You don’t have to. Choose the “reheat” setting. It will reheat your foods but will not brown the top since that has already been done.MAGNETIC AUTO-EJECT RACK:Why didn’t all oven manufacturers think of that? There are two magnets on the back side of the oven door, when you open the door, the magnets automatically pull the oven rack out for you so you don’t have to REACH IN and grab your hot food or cheese toast. Really great if you have kids on the go grabbing something–safety first and no more burns and I usually don’t even need an oven mitt if juts grabbing my toast or sandwich.CUSTOMIZED TOAST BROWNING:Pick how many slices and how brown you want your toast and it will automatically return to that setting the next time and display it. Should you vary the number of slices often, just one turn of the dial will give you a new number so it’s easy to change that up as you cook. The pulsing ensures you simply can’t get better toasting.BAGEL FUNCTION:Top and bottom elements cycle on and off but you’ll get a tad more browning on top where the bagel is totally uncooked with a perfectly crisped base where it’s already browned. All other toast options are the same as the toast options as far as auto-memory etc.BAKE:It will default for cooking convection 325 for 30 minutes. It should be noted that that’s 350 in a regular oven. The hot air circulates the heat so you get faster cooking so adjust all recipes by 25 degrees. You will far prefer the results of convection baking to a regular oven but that is why it defaults to 325 rather than 350. To increase temp or time, just one roll of the top and bottom knob does that. You can also turn off the convection baking if you want. Just push the “convection” button. I never turn that off while in the baking mode. Regular baking can’t do what convection can as far as better results.ROAST FUNCTION:Top and bottom elements cycle on and off to get the correct temp overall but middle element is off so as not to dry out. It is suggested the max weight to roast be 4.5 lbs for best results. Also, many like to roast poultry in juices that contain lemon. Citric acid damages broiling pans of toaster ovens so line yours in foil if you use anything with citric acid or lemon juice.BROIL:While the top rack is suggested, this is a guide. You can also brown the tops of casseroles by having the wire rack lower. It still works. You can melt cheese on your sandwiches on broil, or crisp something up. You can even broil seatood, meats, and veggies. On this setting you want to use the broil rack. That’s the rack that sits inside the baking pan that came with it. Use them both. It has slats in it but is not as open as your wire rack. This way, melting cheese, oil, etc that you have won’t drip onto the base of the oven but air will circulate through those vents in the rack.PIZZA:It does a really great pizza and I highly recommend the pizza stone that’s an option for this oven. To use a pizza stone, don’t ever wash it. It will wind up getting seasoned (black from cooking on it) in time but the high temp kills off bacteria…always scrape it after use, don’t wash a pizza stone. The seasoning will make it non-stick eventually but until then, just throw a little cornstarch on it. You want to heat the pizza stone up WITH the oven. Don’t put it in the oven cold with the pizza. It won’t work. The point of a pizza stone is to crisp up the crust and so heating it up as you preheat the oven makes it do that. I have a pizza oven so I never thought I’d use my toaster oven for that. I thought I might use it for frozen pizza now and again so I bought the stone. But now I love it! You can put it on the “fresh” setting and use dough or your can put it on the “frozen” setting for store bought frozen pizzas. It asks you the approximate size in order to use it’s smart technology to heat perfectly. I do recommend the pizza’s suggested temperature of 450 at convection for great results. You can just pop it in and put the size and it will automatically tell you how long it thinks you should cook it at that temp., Of course you can always change that.COOKIE FUNCTION:Use the convection on this one. It comes on as default but you can’t get better cookies than your convection oven. It also does perfect biscuits, cinnamon rolls, croissants, etc. You can cook from frozen cookie dough simply by pushing the “frozen” button. I recommend getting some silicone baking sheets. You can cut them to any size you want and then your cookies never stick to the baking pans you use and you need no grease. I use them whether I make cookies in the oven or in the toaster oven but it’s nice for the toaster oven since you need small pans and they often are not as well made so you get flawless non-stick from them.EASY CLEAN-UP:The bottom pan pulls out so you don’t have to do the cleaning by reaching into the oven. You can also line that with the non-stick foil but I have not found the need to as it cleans up easily. I throw the racks in the dishwasher for anything that drips onto those. You are not supposed to put the broiler pan in the dishwasher though. I handwash the cookie sheet because I want it to build up non-stick seasoning. It may be dishwasher safe though; I just know never to put any cookie pan in the dishwasher if you want it non-stick.KEEP WARM:When I am having a dinner party I use this often. I can bake a loaf of bread or a side dish and have it done while I begin other dishes. I set it in the toaster oven on the warming setting and the heat cycles on and off with convection air That means it does not dry out the dish, but it keeps it hot until I am ready to serve it. I made jalapeño bread for a recent Tex/Mex party and the bread was in there a couple hours until I was ready to serve it. It came out hot and fresh and moist and perfect as though I’d just taken it out of the oven. You never have to worry about perfect timing again. Of course, this also means that you can cook dinner for the kids when your spouse works late, and keep their meal hot until they arrive home and everyone eats happy with hot fresh dinners.That’s my recap having been using mine for some time now. I had no idea how toaster ovens had changed and how invaluable one would wind up being to me. Cooking time is reduced considerably as is clean up and during the holidays I have a full extra oven for that casserole so all my foods are timed perfectly no matter what is in the other oven. I thought I’d use it some but I have rarely used my pro full-size oven since and I actually have nearly broken up with my microwave. I can preheat the whole oven in a couple minutes and since it’s convection, everything cooks better so I now only use my regular oven for large baking for parties. Everything else is done in this one. Including meals I used to microwave.Easy clean up, great features, this one is simply a winner.

Reviewer: Cliente de Amazon
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: Es un horno estupendo. Tengo dos semanas con él. Amazon entregó en tiempo y forma.Es una pequeña gran inversión y vale la pena. Las indicaciones en español, la conversión de grados F a C, el sistema de convección que lo caracteriza, funciona muy bien…Me gustaría complementar con otra rejilla para poder sacar más provecho a todo el horno.

Reviewer: mady
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: My Smart Oven just arrived today. Firstly, I need to clarify that this is the first time I ever bought anything from Amazon.ca. The whole process was a breeze. I placed the order last Thursday and by the following Tuesday, I received everything, wrapped tightly in big boxes.The oven is beautiful, sturdy and looks “smart”. I made naan bread to try out the intensity of the heat (bought a 13″ pizza stone that fits perfectly in it). Since it is brand new and it will take me a few trials to get to the right temperature, I did not think my pizza stone was hot enough to give my naan the baking it required. However, I can definitely see the potential this oven offers. The features are very easy to use and the makers have really taken a lot of the guessing out of the way. Like many reviewers have previously mentioned, the oven does get excessively hot so you need to be extra careful when handling the oven door (I place a small towel on the handle and I don’t think it will be a problem).The crumb plate at the bottom will be super easy to clean I suspect (as long it is crumb and not major sticky, oily stuff). I cannot vouch about anything else right now as it is still too early. I will provide an update in a few months after I have had a chance to use it and judge its efficiency/reliability in greater depth.EDIT: I have now had my oven for a month and I love using it to toast my bread. Always well done as I like them, unlike the old one that consistently under toasted my bread.

Reviewer: RUL ROME
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: Excelente producto lo mejor en hornos

Reviewer: RR
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: I have had one of these for over a year and I bought another as a gift. The recipient is as pleased as I am.Here are the features that I like:1800 watts with 3 elements means that heating is reasonably constant throughout and 500 degrees is actually attainable in a few minutes…great for pizza, toast, frittata etc.To maintain the set temp all ovens oscillate between a high and a low temp with the set temp being somewhere nearthe middle, ideally the range should be small..the Breville’s range is much smaller that the last three large ovens that I have owned this means that there is much less overheating.The unit is set for automatic turnoff when the set time is reached and it can keep this time, for subsequent uses..I don’t have to worry about setting time or turning off the oven …valuable for absentminded folk like myself.We rarely use the large oven since this is large enough to handle most of the oven required tasks…this results in energy savings.Now for some quibbles.The sides and top do get hotter than we like. We use the top to keep some food and dishes warm but you need to keep away fron the sides..when the oven is on.The knob that changes the settings from broil to bake etc. has the feel of a cheap product.I expect better from Breville.The Convection fan is starting to make a bothersome noise for a few minutes after startup.I expect better from Breville.I hope that this helps

Reviewer: Jeduan Cornejo
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: Tengo este horno desde hace 4 meses y lo uso a diario. Desde pan tostado que sale increíble hasta hacer pollos enteros, pizza, albóndigas o cualquier cosa que necesite una cocción precisa. Desde que tengo este horno hemos cocinado mucho mas en casa y estamos comiendo más sano. Muy recomendado.