As mentioned in a previous thread on toaster ovens, which I can't find now, Costco is having a special this week on the "Oster Digital Toaster Oven With Convection" model 6058.
So since the price was so reasonable, about $47 with coupon ($59 reg price, $12 coupon), I picked one up the other day.
So far, I'm pleasantly surprised. My old Oster toaster oven had its timer go out in about a year, and I finally wound up giving it to Goodwill last summer. It had a wind-up type of timer, was very difficult to set for toast. It did ok on TV dinners, but when the timer failed I lost interest in that as well.
What I like about this Digital Oster toaster oven:
* The digital controls resolve the issue of cheap plastic windup timers failing over time. Of course the pc board could fail on this oven as well... time will tell.
* The digital timer seems to do pretty well for toast. No more squinting and trying to guess how many minutes the mechanical dial is pointing to (a big problem with 1 hour timers with the last few minutes for "toasting"). So far I toasted a hoagie roll and it came out pretty good. Also toasted some mini bread slices with good results. These would have been lost in a conventional pop-up toaster, but were easy enough to do in a toaster oven.
* The oven has a light. Nice touch.
* The styling is sort of retro, actually fairly attractive. Stainless steel shell, chrome plated front, big tubular handle, black membrane type control panel.
* The oven is big enough to handle a 10 inch pizza on the rack - maybe even 12 inch if you don't mind it hanging off the rack front and back, and maybe smearing the door glass with pizza sauce/cheese ;-). I notice that the Costco website claims this oven can fit a 12" pizza, too.
* The convection feature seems to work well enough. I found it did well with a TV dinner and also with a couple of afore mentioned mini-bread loaves (Bridgeford frozen whole wheat bread).
* It beeps at you three times when it's finished. And not in an annoying way.
* The controls offer multiple cooking modes: oven, convection, pizza mode (20 min @ 400F), defrost, dehydrate, toast, grill. Haven't tried the defrost, dehydrate, or grill modes yet. Probably will try the defrost mode soon enough (might work better than a microwave for that).
What could be improved:
* The controls are hard to read - small thin white letters on a black background. I have the oven set up on a standard table, about four inches lower than counter height. So I have to stoop down to read the controls. Additionally, while the main LED display is large and bright, the extra information - such as the various modes: oven, fan, pizza, toaste, etc, are in very small red letters that are hidden from view from above - you have to be looking directly at the display at its level to see them. It would take just a minor redesign of the black mask surrounding the display panel to fix this issue. But it's not a show stopper, as one can pretty much tell what the oven is doing from the button presses and its behavior.
* The large interior and convection feature mean that the exterior dimensions are substantially larger than the average toaster oven. I guess the convection feature means that the walls have to be a bit thicker, with air space for recirculating the hot air and to house the fan.
* While the convection works, I didn't find that it reduced cooking times and temps as much as I expected. Initially I reduced the temp and time about 25%, and wound up with underdone results. I'll have to see if longer preheating might change that, though. I will probably go to trying a 10% reduction in time and temp, and see how that goes.
* The instruction manual is clear enough but doesn't contain any advice on cooking times, etc.
Here's a photo of the same model, but with light colored control panel, which might be easier to read, from the Costco web site. The online price is also discounted, but for about $15 more than one can get in-store.
Would I get one again? Probably. I'm having fun trying out the different features. In the winter I don't mind that it adds some heat to the kitchen. I don't know if it uses less energy than the well-insulated GE P*7 wall oven, but I suspect it does simply because there is less to warm up.
So since the price was so reasonable, about $47 with coupon ($59 reg price, $12 coupon), I picked one up the other day.
So far, I'm pleasantly surprised. My old Oster toaster oven had its timer go out in about a year, and I finally wound up giving it to Goodwill last summer. It had a wind-up type of timer, was very difficult to set for toast. It did ok on TV dinners, but when the timer failed I lost interest in that as well.
What I like about this Digital Oster toaster oven:
* The digital controls resolve the issue of cheap plastic windup timers failing over time. Of course the pc board could fail on this oven as well... time will tell.
* The digital timer seems to do pretty well for toast. No more squinting and trying to guess how many minutes the mechanical dial is pointing to (a big problem with 1 hour timers with the last few minutes for "toasting"). So far I toasted a hoagie roll and it came out pretty good. Also toasted some mini bread slices with good results. These would have been lost in a conventional pop-up toaster, but were easy enough to do in a toaster oven.
* The oven has a light. Nice touch.
* The styling is sort of retro, actually fairly attractive. Stainless steel shell, chrome plated front, big tubular handle, black membrane type control panel.
* The oven is big enough to handle a 10 inch pizza on the rack - maybe even 12 inch if you don't mind it hanging off the rack front and back, and maybe smearing the door glass with pizza sauce/cheese ;-). I notice that the Costco website claims this oven can fit a 12" pizza, too.
* The convection feature seems to work well enough. I found it did well with a TV dinner and also with a couple of afore mentioned mini-bread loaves (Bridgeford frozen whole wheat bread).
* It beeps at you three times when it's finished. And not in an annoying way.
* The controls offer multiple cooking modes: oven, convection, pizza mode (20 min @ 400F), defrost, dehydrate, toast, grill. Haven't tried the defrost, dehydrate, or grill modes yet. Probably will try the defrost mode soon enough (might work better than a microwave for that).
What could be improved:
* The controls are hard to read - small thin white letters on a black background. I have the oven set up on a standard table, about four inches lower than counter height. So I have to stoop down to read the controls. Additionally, while the main LED display is large and bright, the extra information - such as the various modes: oven, fan, pizza, toaste, etc, are in very small red letters that are hidden from view from above - you have to be looking directly at the display at its level to see them. It would take just a minor redesign of the black mask surrounding the display panel to fix this issue. But it's not a show stopper, as one can pretty much tell what the oven is doing from the button presses and its behavior.
* The large interior and convection feature mean that the exterior dimensions are substantially larger than the average toaster oven. I guess the convection feature means that the walls have to be a bit thicker, with air space for recirculating the hot air and to house the fan.
* While the convection works, I didn't find that it reduced cooking times and temps as much as I expected. Initially I reduced the temp and time about 25%, and wound up with underdone results. I'll have to see if longer preheating might change that, though. I will probably go to trying a 10% reduction in time and temp, and see how that goes.
* The instruction manual is clear enough but doesn't contain any advice on cooking times, etc.
Here's a photo of the same model, but with light colored control panel, which might be easier to read, from the Costco web site. The online price is also discounted, but for about $15 more than one can get in-store.
Would I get one again? Probably. I'm having fun trying out the different features. In the winter I don't mind that it adds some heat to the kitchen. I don't know if it uses less energy than the well-insulated GE P*7 wall oven, but I suspect it does simply because there is less to warm up.
