The Breville BOV450XL offers plenty of fancy features and a fashionable design, but it hardly seemed to warrant the high cost. You can easily pay less money for a more basic, yet better-cooking toaster oven and be happy with your purchase. Still, the fancy features and chic design would look great in any kitchen and the toaster oven performs better than many other ovens we tested.
We loved the Breville BOV450XL’s touchpad as it was easy to program. The digital display of this device keeps you updated on the current interior temperature and number of minutes remaining on your timer so you don't have to keep guessing. This toast oven took about two and a half minutes to heat up to 350 degrees, which was much faster than the other high-tech toaster ovens we tested.
During our bread slice and bagel test we found that the toasting was relatively even, but the settings didn't seem to correlate to the results. When on low, the bread slices hardly toasted, feeling dry but obtaining no browning. When on high, the toast burned and became inedible. We also noted that the undersides of the toast don't cook at all. In our frozen burrito test, the tortilla was cooked without drying out and the inner contents were heated all the way through and perfect for eating. We then undertook the cookie test, following the cooking instructions on the tub. The cookies were overcooked on the outside and underdone in the middle. After cooking for a few more minutes, the insides were finally finished but the outside had noticeably gotten crispier.
We got mixed reviews when we reheated the day-old pizza slices. The cheese and pepperoni were heated without getting burnt and the bread didn’t get dried out. However, our testers said that the bread was floppy and unpleasant, somewhat like heating pizza in a microwave. Whether or not you like this outcome depends on your taste preferences. At any rate, it's good to know that your pizzas won't get dried out when using this machine, although most compact microwaves will do a better job.
This toaster oven has the widest temperature range, letting you set it anywhere between 120 and 450 degrees. We measured it operating at 13 degrees hotter than the set temperature, which wasn't the worst, but wasn't the best accuracy we've seen. This unit uses 1800 watts, which makes it one of the most powerful units in our comparison. The only other device that uses that much power is the Cuisinart TOB-40N. The Breville toaster oven comes with 8 cooking settings, which include Cookies, Reheat, Pizza, Bagel, Toast, Bake, Broil and Roast. It also has a defrost button so you can use it to warm foods you pull from your freezer. Unlike the other toast ovens we tested, this one also included a button titled "A bit more" which lets you add 30 seconds to your timer. This is a feature that can be incredibly helpful if you think your food just needs to cook a little longer.
This is a smaller toaster oven, so you can only place four slices of toast inside at once. The opening is relatively narrow so you'll want to be careful when reaching in to retrieve the back slices. We were surprised to find that this unit doesn't use a convection fan, especially given how expensive it is. It also has a strangely specific timer that can only be set up to 88 minutes and doesn't feature a Stay On setting. It comes with a baking pan but no broiling rack. For all of its special features and costly price, Breville only covers this unit with a one-year warranty. While this is an average length of time for a toaster, it seems lacking for this one.
When we measured the exterior temperature of the oven, the backsides reached 120 degrees while the sides and top got up to 98 degrees. This is definitely hot, but it isn't the worst temperatures we've seen. It comes with the longest cord, measuring 42 inches, so you should have no problem plugging this unit into an outlet and moving it out away from the wall. The toaster comes with an instruction book filled with pages of detailed instructions and images. It is the only toaster oven that included recipes, 19 in total, covering everything from main dishes to desserts.
While the Breville is a high-tech and fancy looking toaster oven, it didn't perform as well as other units we tested. It offers plenty of conveniences like the simple digital interface and cooking setting, to make the cooking and cleaning process easier. However, it wasn't enough to counteract this device's high cost and relatively average cooking abilities, especially if you consider how much more it costs than any of the best toasters.
