Calphalon - Quartz Heat Countertop Oven - Dark Stainless Steel

This is the first toaster oven we have owned. Up till now it was either the traditional toaster, standard oven or microwave as an option. This Calphalon Countertop Oven is a great, convenient option to the standard size kitchen oven. It is also a great option for students or those without a full size kitchen. We've found that it's very convenient to use instead of warming up our larger, standard oven. The look of the oven itself is very sleek and modern. It blends in quite well with kitchens that have stainless steel, dark stainless steel or black appliances. It will take up about 12" x 19" of countertop space and fits easily under upper cabinets. I do have ours pulled out a few inches from the wall just to ensure adeqaute space for heat to dissipate. The oven does get warm to the touch so you'd want to ensure that there is space around all sides of it with nothing touching the oven. It's nice that the oven comes with a baking pan, pizza pan, dehydrator rack and wire rack. The quality of the oven itself and the accessories is quite good. The controls are easy to use and operate very smoothly. This Calphalon oven has 11 preset cooking functions: Bake, Pizza, Broil, Toast, Bagel, Roast, Defrost, Warm, Reheat, Cookies and Dehydrate. We have tried many of these so far and found them to work well. The high-contrast lcd display will flash pre-heating while the oven heats up. Temperature and time can be adjusted to one's particular needs. There is a built in interior light so cooking of food is easy to monitor. It's nice that the capacity of the oven will fit up to a 12" pizza. The quartz heating element is stated by Calphalon to deliver 40% more even heat. I'd strongly agree that one of the biggest positives about this oven is that it cooks very evenly and consistently. No burnt sides or undercooked insides of your food. My family would highly recommend this Calphalon oven due to its great looks and design, plentiful features, high quality and fantastic cooking results.

If needing a secondary oven or if in a small apartment/dorm where space is limited and you need a multi-function unit - this will serve you well. Comes with a very skimpy manual. Oven itself is nicely constructed with 2 rack positions and nice large glass window for viewing cooking action. Comes with dehydration rack, baking pan, pizza pan and wire rack. Also has internal light which you can manually turn on from outside. Also bottom tray to catch any drippings, etc. is easily removed and washed. Nice large digital display and controls were easy to learn after a couple of uses and they are; Touch buttons used for light, start, cancel/off First rotary dial used to select food “function” which has time/temp presets for; Toast Bagel Bake Roast Broil Pizza Cookies Reheat Keep Warm Defrost Dehydrate 2nd rotary dial is used to change time/temp if needed. Has turbo/convection function which can be turned on/off. Anything we used it for came out great – rolls, pizza, toast (takes longer than toaster), small pork tenderloin, re-heating. Did not try de-hydrator but am looking forward to giving that function a try. Really nice is fact don’t have to heat a huge oven when you don’t need to. 3 year warranty Downsides; Preheat function is automatic with no timer count down. Turns itself off at end of timed cooking. Sure this is a much needed safety feature to insure you done forget about it. Its use is only limited by internal oven size. Which is mostly due to where the elements on top are located. This makes real usable interior space you can use for cooking smaller than it appears from the outside. This is disappointing as we were not able to cook some items (6 lb ham, whole chicken, etc.) due to this lack of interior volume. Outside gets pretty hot which I found a tad surprising. Make sure it is an area with ventilation and keep “little” hands away.

I have had a toaster oven for as long as I can remember, but it’s usage was a bit limited due to inconsistent behavior - but that has changed since I got this Calphalon Countertop oven. This oven has nearly a dozen built in settings, and has a granular level of control over time and temperature, that perform perfectly. It may take a little bit of playing with to learn the oven, and what settings prepare the food in the way you like it, but it cooks food the same way every time so you can really get the most out of this oven What I really loved about this unit was its flexibility - ; it has 11 built in settings: Bake, Pizza, broil, toast, bagel, roast, defrost, keep warm, reheat, cookies & dehydrate. Within each setting, there is a level of control on temp and time for cooking. The digital display is very easy to use, having default settings, as well as adjustable settings for things like 1-7 for toasting doneness. The manual settings take a bit of time to get used to. Most presets work perfectly, but there are always exceptions, in like figuring out what level is needed depending on thickness of bread and how dark you want your bread or bagel. Once you get the hang of the settings based upon your personal preference, you will get a consistent toast every time exactly how you want it. Despite it taking longer, I found myself using this for toasting bagels over a traditional toaster, because it easily out performed my toaster with a consistent even cook, no more burnt edges or over/under toasted bread. I like my toast just south of burned, where my wife likes hers barely toasted - and this oven makes that a breeze. It does take longer though on initial heat up, so a good toast will take 5 or 6 minutes over the 2 to 3 minutes of a normal toaster. Where this appliance really shines is with its cooking functions; I have had great success with pizzas, chicken fingers, fries, when cooking food for my children. It’s nice not to have to heat up the “big” oven just to warm something up. This oven though can cook just as well as your normal full size oven - we used it to make cookies, as well as roast and broil vegetables on Thanksgiving freeing up valuable oven space, and it performed perfectly. I found that the oven was large enough for anything I would want to use it for, keeping in mind that it is a counter top stove! After using this for cooking in every scenario possible, and being quite happy with its performance, I did decide to try the dehydrator. It seemed like a bit of a gimmick to me and I was skeptical of just how well it would work. I actually own a large dehydrator that I make jerky and dehydrated fruit in fairly often, and did not think a shelf top oven would be able to actually produce something I would like, but I was quite surprised how well it dried out fruit. I was able to make apple and strawberry chips that were great. It is a bit small of a unit though to do any real dehydrating in quantity, like meat, but it does work really well This really is more than a toaster oven and I see why they call it a Counter top Oven, it is like having a smaller second oven, that can do everything a full size oven can, just faster and in smaller quantities.

If looking for a full size oven replacement, look no further. This little countertop oven is fantastic. It’s way more capable than a toaster oven and, although larger, has a similar footprint. It makes a wonderful addition to any kitchen or a small limited space area like a dorm room. We've cooked a wide range of foods in this oven, many of which a normal toaster could never handle. We’ve baked seafood, game hens, vegetables, pizza, cakes, cookies, brownies, pasta dishes and more. There isn't much we haven't cooked in this yet. Food cooks nice and evenly and the convection feature works wonderfully for roasting when needed. The controls are very intuitive and easy to use. The high contrast LCD is bright and easy to read and all controls are well laid out. We really don’t use our full-size oven much these days unless it’s an event where we have to cook for a large amount of people like this past Thanksgiving. For day to day baking, this little oven handles just about all of our cooking needs, size permitting. The finish and design are attractive as well and it looks very nice on our counter top. It also fits nicely under the upper cabinets and leaves plenty of space above the top for heat to dissipate. This is the best and most useful addition to our kitchen in a while.

This is first and foremost a beautiful and well equipped toaster oven. I have a small kitchen, so this is actually rather large for my space, but it is nice to have it as an auxiliary toaster/oven when the main one is in use (especially since I cannot fit a double oven in my kitchen!). This unit comes with ample trays and baskets. This is something I appreciate as it works with many different types of foods. The oven is large enough to fit a standard 12" pizza which along with simply toasting things, is my primary use for this unit. The most annoying thing about this unit is you have to "preheat" it every-time you change the temperature, or, even to pull one thing out and put in a second at the same temperature! I also find this unit toasts bread super fast, so you level 2 seems to be the highest you'd ever need to go for any bread. However, the oven seems to operate at a lower temperature than you set. I haven't actually measured with a thermometer, but my main range cooks a 12" pizza at 400 degrees in about 10-15 minutes and this smaller, and I would assume more efficient oven takes about 25-30 at the same temperature. Overall usage is very simple. The buttons and dials are intuitive and easy to navigate. It has many preset settings for things most people will use (pizza, cookies, toast, bagel, etc...) The timer and "ding" is loud enough to hear in another room. Overall, for my needs this works, but as a second "oven" it falls a bit short. It does the job, but not as efficiently as I would expect a smaller, more compact space to do. It is attractive in my kitchen, and I won't look to replace it with anything else anytime soon and for basic needs, I would recommend this. For any series cook or anyone expecting to get more "oven" out of this, look elsewhere.

I ordered this oven after seeing ads for it on TV and after experience with other Calphalon products. It works very well but is very different from my previous countertop oven. There are limited instructions included for use, so I have found I need to experiment a lot. The only function I have used thus far that I wish were faster is the Toast function. My previous oven was much faster than this one, and a standard toaster would be. I have found that the adjustable toast intensity is accurate, however. Bake and Reheat work very well and frozen food bakes quickly and evenly. There are a total of 11 available functions, so the oven is very versatile. I am overall happy with this purchase.

I have really enjoyed cooking with this toaster oven. I have had three toaster ovens, and this one is the best. (also the most expensive) To be fair, the cheap, analog one actually worked well, and lasted a long time.. 10 years after college. But it is truly nice having some extra whistles and bells and settings on this one. Esp. a Convection option. Great for French Fries, Pizza, burritos, tater tots, roasted vegetables, spanikopita, hotpockets, Salmon, etc. etc...

Since there are only two of us it's foolish to crank up a full size oven for a small meal. However, there are some dishes that just don't fare well in a microwave oven such as roast anything. So a long while ago I shopped around for a counter top oven that would suffice for the meals I prepare. For over a decade I had been using one made by another manufacturer which did the job well even tho' the user interface wasn't the best in the world. The top elements failed recently so I decided to get another one. I settled on this one since it seems the one that failed isn't available anymore. So after looking at various other models I chose the Calphalon model. It did not disappoint me. It perfectly roasted a nice sized turkey breast and does a bang up job of cooking sausages and peppers. The only reason I gave it 4 stars was because the instruction booklet, which you have to download, is a bit sketchy. For example, it doesn't show you how to set the rack and tray up and as far as functions goes there's just a small chart. Also I'm not too fond of the dial method of setting the functions. I prefer a keypad. One big plus tho' is the built in light. Makes a big difference when it comes to checking on the cooking progress. On the whole this oven will do most of what a full sized oven will do. Be advised that the outside of the oven gets wicked hot and needs adequate space away from a wall or anything that will be damaged by heat.