Sometimes, you just want to cook a meal without any stress. For a smooth, easy cooking experience, combination ovens such as the Breville smart oven are the way to go.
Most people associate cooking with traditional — not to mention large — ovens. Yet it doesn’t have to be that way. Increasingly, convection ovens are pushing the boundaries of cooking. Many perform the same functions as a typical oven, but they take up less space and carry a lower price tag.
Comparison Table
What Is the Breville Smart Oven?
The Breville smart oven is a combination oven that can cook, toast, and roast all your favorite food.
Seen as an alternative to a traditional oven, the Breville range comprises many different models. At the lower end of the scale, there is the Breville Smart Oven BOV800XL. At the more expensive end of the scale is the Smart Oven Plus BOV810BSS, as well as the Smart Oven Pro BOV845BSS.
Although the models are all the same compact size, there are additional features available in the more expensive models.
Breville Smart Oven BOV800XL
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Breville Smart Oven Plus BOV810BSS
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Breville Smart Oven Pro BOV845BSS
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Compact size
Breville BOV900BSS The Smart Oven Air
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They say that good things come in small packages. The Breville smart oven is no exception, coming in at around 18.5 inches wide and 12.5 inches tall on the outside. It’s not hard to find space for Breville brand.
Intuitive controls
Any oven worth its salt should give the user some degree of control over how their food cooks. The Breville Smart Oven Pro, as an example, offers many different modes to cook or bake how you like.
Breville BOV845BKSUSC Smart Oven Pro
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There are three separate dials in the control function. They regulate the oven’s various functions and preset options, as well as dials that allow you to set the oven’s temperature and cooking time.
It also couldn’t be easier to cook, with four simple cooking buttons. Together, the buttons control the start and end of the cooking and everything in between. For instance, you can tell the oven that you’re cooking food from frozen, you can set temperatures to Fahrenheit or Celsius, and you can turn the oven into a convection oven if you wish.
All these simple options, and the intuitive control over them that the Breville offers, mean that evenly-cooked food has never been easier to achieve.
Safety First
No one wants to buy a dangerous appliance, and consideration should always be given to how safe an appliance is in your home. If you have small children, then you’ll want to be especially careful that any combination oven you have won’t pose a risk to them.
The Breville smart oven has a magnetic catch on its door, which partially pulls out the cooking rack on its own accord. This safety feature means you won’t have to put your hand in a hot oven to pull out your food. Additionally, there are mechanisms in place that prevent the oven rack from falling out of the oven.
Although a level of common sense will still be needed when using the oven, given the high temperatures inevitably involved, the Breville smart oven does assure peace of mind, as safety is a design feature.
Pricing
As there are quite a few models within the Breville smart oven range, understandably there’s no single price.
Although the Breville smart oven is at the upper range of combination ovens in the market, it offers a lot of features for its price.
However, if you’re looking for a more entry-level combination oven, you can select cheaper ovens. It depends what you’re looking for in your oven and your budget.
How Does the Breville Smart Oven Compare to Other Major Brands?
The Breville smart oven is not a new player in the compact oven market. As such, there is plenty of competition to consider. Notable mentions include Cuisinart Chef’s Convection Toaster Oven TOB-260N, and Kenmore Elite Digital Countertop Convection Oven 76771.
Cuisinart TOB-260N Chef’s Toaster Convection Oven
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Kenmore Elite 76771 Digital Countertop Convection Oven
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Although Breville smart oven has seen mainly positive reviews since its release, it’s always worth knowing whether its models can suit your needs, and what the competition has to offer.
With that in mind, we examined some of the key differentiators between the competitors, including safety, performance and price.
Emphasis on Safe Cooking
As noted above, Breville smart oven does offer some safety features, including a magnetic catch on the door. Thankfully, both Cuisinart and Kenmore have given some consideration as to how to make their ovens safe as well.
Although a more low-tech solution, Cuisinart ensures its oven doors are secure through the use of a hook. Kenmore, equally unwilling to compromise on safety, also has a safety catch. However, Kenmore has no automated option to pull out its oven racks.
Differences in Performance
How well an oven can cook, toast, or bake, is obviously a key item to consider. With that in mind, it’s worth knowing how the three ovens fare against each other when it comes to these basic cooking functions.
In terms of toasting, all three combination oven ranges performed very similarly. However, the Kenmore does appear to toast a bit faster than the other two models. So if speed is a key deciding factor for you, the Kenmore may beat out the Breville.
Moving on to roasting, the Cuisinart seems to offer a better overall roast compared to Breville and Kenmore. On the other side of the spectrum, Kenmore takes a little longer to get roasting but still produces a good result. This means that Breville is in the middle of the spectrum for both models.
Another benchmark for any oven is how well it can cook pizza — the ultimate in convenience and comfort food. Both Kenmore and Cuisinart models offer pizza stones within its price. However, you need to purchase a pizza stone separately for the Breville range. Alternatively, you can do away with pizza stones altogether and cook the pizzas directly in the combination oven.
How your pizza turns out will mainly depend on what settings you use on the Breville, Cuisinart, or Kenmore. But Kenmore appears to offer a more even cook. On the other hand, the quality of cook in Breville, could be slightly more even, but there’s not much difference between the two models.
The Pros and Cons of the Breville Smart Oven
As we saw in the comparison above, every combination oven has its unique features. This also means that every oven has areas where it can improve. We’ll take a look at some of the key benefits and drawbacks of the Breville smart oven below.
Pros
- Easy to use controls
- Smaller than other combination ovens
- Fast cooking time
- Easy to clean and maintain
- Could even replace a traditional oven
- Magnets to keep doors closed
Cons
- A premium combination oven, with a price to match
- Pizzas could stand to cook a bit more evenly
- Smaller capacity than some other combination ovens
Final Thoughts
The Breville smart oven range is a reliable range of combination ovens that deliver consistent results time and time again. With its compact space, the Breville smart oven still manages to make room to fit almost all items you’ll usually cook. What’s more, Breville range of products offers a wide range of cooking options, and its ease of use will be sure to win over many fans.