Like many people, you may have grown up with a Black & Decker toaster or convection oven on the counter without realizing how useful these small appliances are.
These aren’t your mother’s old toaster ovens anymore. They are powerful, easy-to-use appliances that make everyday cooking and baking simpler.
One complaint about countertop convection ovens is the fan noise. In our testing, the oven’s fans that circulate warm air were audible, but much quieter than a vent fan or microwave.
For a small countertop oven, it has enough interior space for a 9-inch pizza or six muffins. Despite its capacity, it doesn’t take up too much countertop space. Its compact size fits even tight areas, and the stainless steel exterior matches modern kitchen appliances perfectly.
The toasting function works great, especially when toasting four slices of bread at once. It performs equally well on waffles or garlic bread.
And reheating cold pizza is a breeze with this Black & Decker convection oven.
Time Constraints
It takes slightly less time than a regular microwave. Unlike a microwave, the pizza comes out crisp and browned instead of soggy.
The crumb tray is front-accessible and slides out completely for easy cleaning. The interior has a non-stick coating, so food doesn’t stick to the walls like it does in most microwave ovens.
This Black and Decker Convection Oven is Not Perfect…
While the positives far outweigh the negatives with the Black & Decker, there are a few design items we found that would probably be easy fixes.
The knob design on the timer is not the most accurate. There is no way to really dial in the precise time as this knob slides into an “approximate” timer setting. A digital timer would be preferable, but then again, this is not a $200 deluxe countertop oven.
And our other complaint is with the actual timer settings on this countertop oven.
They are simply microscopic; and if you have less than perfect vision, reading the timer settings can be a chore.
Even with bright lighting in our kitchen, we found ourselves checking the timer settings three or four times to insure that they were set where we wanted them.
Again, making these settings a little easier to read would have been an easy factory fix; but it is a minor irritant.
Overall, this is a nice, economical, easy to use countertop convection/toaster oven that does a great job for those smaller snacks and foods that are normally a pain to start up the regular oven for.
The Black & Decker does what it’s supposed to do very well; and rolls, cookies, garlic bread, and pizza come out tasting great.
