The best smart ovens we tested
Best overall smart oven: Breville Joule Oven Air Fryer Pro
Best budget smart oven: Tovala Smart Oven Pro
Best smart oven that isn’t really “smart”: Breville Smart Oven Air Fryer Pro
Best budget “smart” oven: Ninja Foodi Smart XL Pro Air Oven
Smart ovens are the latest do-it-all all countertop cooking appliances, adding connected intelligence to a full-featured countertop toaster oven. Not only can these devices make you toast in the morning, reheat your sandwich for lunch and roast a chicken for dinner, but they also promise to walk novice cooks through unfamiliar recipes.
To find the best smart oven to fit your kitchen (and frankly, to see whether a smart oven even deserves a slice of your precious countertop space) we tested seven popular models, and toasted, steamed, baked and broiled until we were sure we’d found out everything we needed to know to find an oven to satisfy your needs and budget.
The short answer? We don’t think a smart oven is for everyone. If you need to be on the cutting edge, we’ve found a couple of good options, but we think the great majority of home cooks will be better off with one of our favorite countertop toaster ovens, which have some built-in smarts but don’t depend on apps.
This oven aced all the tests, so it will handle just about any task you throw at it, and the smart feature is a connected app with a series of recipes that adjusts the cooking for you and provides access to features you can’t find on the oven itself.
With the ability to add steam to your cooking, this oven is designed to work with the brand’s meal service, but it’s a serviceable oven all on its own if you don’t mind light-colored toast.
Essentially the same performance as our top oven, but without the connected features that will guide you through the cooking, which might be a trade-off more seasoned cooks are willing to make.
It lacks some of the refined details of our top picks, but this oven is a good pick for executing basic tasks like air frying, roasting, baking and toasting.
Best overall smart oven: Breville Joule Oven Air Fryer Pro
$550 at Breville, Amazon and Best Buy
For years, Breville’s range of ovens has dominated the countertop category, and the Joule Oven Air Fryer was a top performer in all of our tests. It only stumbled a bit in the uniformity of the toast test, where it left some slight pale edges near the door, which is common with many smart ovens.
The Joule left better-than-average color on the back side of the bread when other ovens didn’t crisp the underside of the bread at all. It turned out the best chicken in our test, with an even, brown, crispy skin in about an hour. Set to the darkest toast shade, it finished the job in 4 minutes and 25 seconds. And the preset temp and time for cookies — 325 degrees Fahrenheit for 10 minutes — was very close to package instructions for the break-and-bake chocolate chip cookies we used.
As for smarts, the Joule Oven Air Fryer Pro connects to Breville’s app, which provides access to proprietary recipes. Launch one of those recipes and the oven’s Autopilot takes over and adjusts the temperature and time automatically. The app also provides access to a cooking mode you can’t turn on by pressing buttons on the oven: bottom bake. This fires up the bottom heating element alone, sort of like a broiler, and can be helpful to crisp up the underside of things like croissants and pies that would otherwise have a soggy bottom.
The well-laid-out controls make the user interface easy to master, with the most common one-touch settings you’d need — toast, broil, bake, roast and cookies — preset for you. The readout has large, clear digits to indicate temperature and time. We appreciate that the dials have an analog, tactical click as you rotate them around. The only superfluous button on the dashboard is the Fahrenheit to Celsius toggle, for which we blame Canada.
The Joule Oven Air Fryer Pro’s racks add a lot of versatility. You get two oven racks, a 13-inch metal pizza rack, a mesh air frying basket and a 9-by-13-inch sheet pan with a roasting rack. The oven boasts eight different rack positions that fit into four grooves in the oven’s walls. The standard rack has a flared edge that can flip the wire surface upside down, raising or lowering the food by about .75 inch, which offers the greatest customization between your food and the heat source above or below. Some ovens only had three rack locations. Breville prints a cheat sheet on the glass door that helps you decide where to put the racks for common tasks like toasting, air frying or cookie baking.
There are some thoughtful details built into the Joule Oven Air Fryer Pro that stand out, like the door that folds perfectly flat, which makes dealing with a hot rack easier. The back end of the rack is supported so your food doesn’t tip forward. With the rack in, the center door-mounted magnets help pull the racks forward when you tilt down the door, which means you’re not burying your hands in a 375-degree hole.
At 21.5 by 17.5 by 12.7 inches, plus needing an additional 4 inches of space on all sides while it’s on, this oven is a commanding presence on the countertop. Out of the box, it’s a handsome swath of chrome, brushed steel and glass that feels well-built and is packed with quite a few accessories. The Joule Oven Air Fryer Pro’s beefy size provides the flexibility to slide in a 5-quart Dutch oven, a 12-cup muffin pan or nine slices of bread, yet it churns out toast for one in just over 4 minutes, which was almost the fastest in our test — and helpful on a busy Tuesday morning when you’re already late.
Best budget smart oven: Tovala Smart Oven Pro
$299 at Tovala or $300 $240 at Amazon
The smarts in this oven are impressive. Say you’ve got a box of pizza rolls and the cooking instructions are too much to read. Press the scanner button and the sensor built into the top of the control panel casts a red light down — it kind of feels like you’re working at the supermarket — at the prepared food’s barcode. Once the Tovala recognizes the code, it automatically adjusts the time, temperature and cooking mode to suit. This can be a time-saver if your house leans heavily on frozen foods, whether those be fries, waffles or DiGiorno pizzas.
But really Tovala’s system is built around the company’s fresh meal plans (which the company encourages you to subscribe to; you can often get steep discounts on the oven itself with a long-term plan). The meals start at about $14 for a single-serve meal or you can sign up for four meals per week for about $52 plus $11 for delivery.
We prepared a curry udon with mushroom dish along with a trout and risotto one, and in each, case the prep work out of the box only took a minute or so. Then we scanned the code, and the Tovala took over. It’s a very convenient way to get a quality meal on the table and much faster than even the best meal kit delivery. If you need or want the convenience and can afford the service, it’s a solid option and our only criticism here is that some of the portions can be on the smaller side.
Another feature of the app that is appealing, especially for bread bakers, is the ability to customize a cook and save it as a preset. You can tell the Tovala to start off with steam, then convert to dry baking, and in doing so mimic a high-end bread oven.
On the other hand, the Tovala wasn’t the best performer when we put it to work as a plain old toaster oven. If you want the Tovala to make toast each morning, and if you happen to like toast on the darker side, we’ve got bad news for you. In the toast test, the oven, when set to the maximum cook time of 6:20, turned out just an OK piece of toast that was somewhat inconsistent in coloring. And it was the only oven that failed to broil American cheese, which after 5 minutes under the heat still looked as it did when it was in the wrapper. If you’re still interested in giving it a try as a toaster, the oven holds about six slices of bread.
By far the smallest oven in our test at 18.5 by 12.32 by 11.75 inches, the Tovala Smart Oven Pro is one of the most affordable versions that incorporate steam (we’ve also tested the Tovala Smart Oven, a cheaper model without steam). Out of the box it feels sturdy, though we’re going to keep an eye on the finish, as an earlier generation of this oven developed some discoloration on the top of the oven. You also don’t get much in the way of accessories; it comes with an air fry basket, a sheet pan and an oven mitt.
Best smart oven that isn’t really “smart”: Breville Smart Oven Air Fryer Pro
$400 at Breville, Amazon and Best Buy
The Breville Smart Oven Air Fryer Pro is essentially the Joule oven sans the Autopilot feature and connection to the app. Does this oven have some impressive software inside to keep the heat consistent and did it perform as well as our top pick? Yes. But it’s not a connected device so it’s not technically “smart” — the question for you is whether you really need those smarts.
You can still use Breville’s app to search the same catalog of recipes the Joule oven has access to, but to execute them, you have to adjust the time and temperature on your own instead of software taking over for you. The Breville Smart Oven Air Fryer Pro also won’t give access to special features, like bottom bake, through the app the way the Joule will.
Still, the oven did well in nearly any task we asked of it, and if you don’t mind dialing in temperatures and times or don’t see a lot of value in a guided cooking experience, the Breville Smart Oven Air Fryer Pro can save you more than $100.
Best budget “smart” oven: Ninja Foodi Smart XL Pro Air Oven
$330 at Ninja and Best Buy
As with the Breville Smart Oven Air Fryer Pro, the “smart” designation here is more marketing than anything else.
The Ninja scored near the top through the toast uniformity tests, turning all nine slices of bread a mahogany brown, save for a strip of less consistent bread by the door. It also added some nice color to the underside of the slices and finished its darkest toast cycle in 4 minutes, slightly faster than our winning oven. While the cookies emerged a touch pale and needed another minute, the Ninja uniformly melted all the American cheese in the broil test. But it was the roasting performance that made it a favorite. In about an hour, it turned a 5.5-pound chicken from pale to crisp that only fell short in color when compared to the pricier Breville ovens.
Like the two Breville ovens we liked, the Ninja holds nine slices of toast, but the oven is taller and deeper, which might fit better on some countertops. The handle on the Ninja is also the control panel, which is straightforward. The fan in the back of the oven is massive — so much so we could see the parchment paper fluttering in the wind during testing — but relatively quiet.
We like the inclusion of a thermometer and its generous 32-inch-long cable (though the jack for it is situated awkwardly, underneath the handle). The Ninja Foodi Smart XL Pro Air Oven comes with a bunch of accessories, including two wire racks, two sheet pans, one roasting rack and an air fryer basket. Four rack locations, with a generous amount of space between, let you mix and match pans as needed. The height of the almost cube-shaped device means you can easily cook with two racks at the same time so you can crank out a lot of food.
There are a few details we’d love to see Ninja fix, starting with the door. It doesn’t fold flat, which makes getting the large racks in and out, especially in their lowest position, annoying. The walls of the oven don’t hold the racks securely; we noticed a lot of wiggle room during testing, and while we didn’t experience this in testing, it is possible to yank a rack out of place accidentally.
With a broiler this powerful, we’d like to see a door that can remain open a crack as some added insurance against burning (and we’d likewise appreciate an oven light that stays on by default for at least a minute or two). And the all-glass front panel means you’ll want to keep up on your cleaning lest the oven become an eyesore.
While the Ninja Foodi Smart oven isn’t really “smart” in the traditional sense, it would be a great fit for someone who wants a basic, no-nonsense oven that is easy to use.
How we tested
To find the best smart ovens, we ran each through a series of tests and noted the results. Along with those test results, we paid attention to how intuitive the ovens were to use, how easily they paired with a companion app (as well as if one was available) and any frustrations we had with the design of the machines.
While these are all advanced ovens, anyone who buys one will likely expect it to handle the basics like toasting and baking. We focused on testing the basic features across all the ovens to see how consistently they toasted and how quickly. We broiled cheese with them, baked cookies and roasted chickens. For the combi ovens that employed steam, we cooked frozen pot stickers.
Installation and setup
From the initial unboxing to running some of the ovens empty for 20 minutes to prime them before cooking, we noted how easy or fussy the setup was. While we expected smart ovens to require a software upgrade right out of the box, some, like the Brava, had a very frustrating process to sync into our home’s Wi-Fi network. And others, like the Anova, felt like a two-person job to move around.
Usability
- User experience: A smart oven should be smart, but that doesn’t mean complex. At the end of the day, we favored simpler analog dials and buttons over fancier touchscreen options that felt more like using a smartphone.
- Versatility: Most of the ovens shared the same core cooking modes, though others were less clear about it. Not every oven offered both a roast and bake setting, but if the appliance can do the former, it will also do the latter. Other modes, like dehydrate, were nice add-ons but much less of a core function.
- Operation: Are the racks and pans easy to use and interact with? Do the racks feel sturdy when you’re moving them in and out of the oven? Can you grip things with an oven mitt easily? Does the crumb tray do its job? Some models, like the GE, opened in such a way that made wiping the inside of the door clean very difficult.
- Cord length: Short, stubby cords limit your placement options on the countertop. We noted which ovens had an issue with a below-average cord length.
- Ease of cleanup: Smart ovens see a lot of use, and because they live on your countertop, it’s important to have a model that’s easy to clean. We read each manufacturer’s instructions for basic cleaning, including the glass door. After the chicken roasting test, we noted how funky each of the ovens became. And while the ovens are not dishwasher-safe, we checked to see which parts were.
Performance
- Toast consistency: We loaded up the wire rack with as many pieces of full toast as we could, from six to 12 slices, and set the ovens to their darkest toast setting (or if a model didn’t have a toast setting, then we used the oven’s highest setting and pulled them when they were a consistent, deep brown). Once the toast was done, we evaluated the samples for consistency of color, noting the edges and the areas near the door which are prone to less heat, and also the underside of each piece of bread.
- Toast speed: We put two pieces of toast in the middle of the rack and set the ovens to their darkest toast setting (or if a model didn’t have a toast setting then we used the oven’s highest setting and pulled them when they were a consistent, deep brown). We noted how long the cycle took, which ranged from about 4 to more than 8 minutes.
- Baked cookies: Using store-bought break-and-bake cookies, we fitted each oven with its metal tray, lined with parchment paper. We set the ovens to 350 degrees F and baked the cookies for 11 to 12 minutes, letting them go the extra minute if the color required it. If an oven had a cookie preset, we used that and noted the time and temperature.
- Broiling cheese: We topped slices of bread with American cheese and set the racks in the ovens at the same position as the toasting tests, which were roughly in the middle of the oven. We set the broiler to high and checked the cheese toast at 5 minutes and then at 10 minutes, and noted how consistently the cheese melted and burned. We let the cheese burn because the scorching showed up easily in photos.
- Roasting chicken: Using chickens, from 4.5 pounds in the smallest oven to 5.5 pounds in the larger ones, we tested how consistently they roasted when set to 425 degrees F and using convection when possible. We noted how long it took to roast, but gave that less credence, since the weight of the birds varied. Instead, we paid closer attention to the uniform color of the chicken when it crossed 165 degrees F in the white meat.
What is a smart oven?
It’s worth noting that there is no consensus on how manufacturers decide to label an appliance as a “smart” oven. Some of the ovens in our test connected to a Wi-Fi network or to a mobile device over Bluetooth and allowed you to monitor the cooking remotely via an app or voice control. These ovens are smart in the sense that “smart home” products are. They connect to your other stuff and, at least theoretically, give the user — that is, you, the home cook — more options that you’d otherwise get from such a product.
Many other ovens with “smart” in their product names have no connected features at all. These ovens do have onboard “smarts” in the sense that they use software that can adjust their cooking times and temperatures based on information they gather from internal thermometers or other sensors — but they don’t function with companion apps, and likely aren’t what shoppers have in mind when they think of a smart oven.
The thing is, when it came down to performance, this second type of “smart” oven performed just as well as the connected ovens. These ovens, like the best toaster ovens these days, gave us accurate and consistent results on par with or better than anything we tested that offered a connected app.
The ovens we tested shared a set of core features, including broil, bake/roast, toast and, increasingly, the ability to air fry with a convection fan. A few of the models we tested also had water reservoirs and thus the ability to steam food; others worked as food dehydrators.
Do you need a “smart oven” or just a smarter toaster oven?
Some of the ovens we tested, such as the Brava or the Anova, let users set time and temperature from a smartphone and adjust settings while the meal is cooking. They basically walk you through the process, which might be helpful or educational for a novice cook.
Beyond that, we aren’t clear on the utility of app control. You can turn the oven on remotely, but how useful (aside from preheating) or safe it is to turn on an oven when you’re away from home is debatable — and since you can’t actually load food into the oven while you’re absent, we aren’t clear on the application. Some have a slow cooker feature that, in conjunction with a Dutch oven, can maintain a low temperature for hours. Others can hold a low temperature, below 100 degrees, for use as a dough proofer or yogurt maker, but such functions don’t really require smarts.
Remote notifications can save you from having to use timers to remember to attend to your cooking while you’re home and doing other things, and remote monitoring of cooking temperature can save you from having to use your instant-read thermometer, but these features are not really game changers.
Some apps have limited functionality, like letting you turn the light on and off from your phone. Others add functions that are otherwise hidden or inaccessible from the front panel or simply offer recipe guides, the usefulness of which depends on how much you like the supplied recipes.
Several ovens that connect to your home network over Wi-Fi even offer voice control via services like Alexa or Google Assistant. The GE Profile Smart Oven works with Alexa to set the temperature of your cook.
Considering that you have to use your hands to prep your food, load it into the oven and remove it, the utility of any of these features is a bit unclear, aside from the appeal to novice cooks of having an app set cooking time and temperature. We think for most users, voice and app control likely won’t be very useful.
What is useful is an oven that can manage cooking time and temperature to optimize performance — regardless of whether or not a connected app comes into play. And many conventional toaster ovens already have onboard software that managers these factors pretty well.
Other smart ovens we tested
Anova Precision Oven
$699 $596 at Anova
It can be hard to tell from photos, but the Anova Precision Oven is nearly as big as a full-size microwave (22.4 by 18.1 by 14.1 inches). As such, during testing it took longer for the oven to complete basic tasks like toasting the 12 slices of bread it’s capable of holding — the task took about 8 minutes. During the roasting test, the Anova turned out a moist chicken, but the skin was not crisp. The Anova isn’t a bad oven, and the connected features let you cook from a bunch of proprietary recipes and the voice commands can tell you the temperature of a roast that’s in the oven. If you’re interested in working with steam to bake bread or geek out about sous vide cooking, this oven is worth consideration. But at this size and price, it’s hard to justify having this thing in the house when it won’t nail toast.
GE Profile Smart Oven
$450 $350 at Williams Sonoma
Performance is not the GE Profile Smart Oven’s issue, as it’s a capable oven and performed about on average in our testing, except in the broiling test where it was inconsistent. The door is this oven’s drawback. It opens like an overhead garage door and requires way too much effort to close, something we can see being a problem for someone who wants to make toast first thing in the morning before others get up. The way the door opens also means getting to the interior of the glass for cleaning is a challenge.
Brava Starter Set
$1,295 $1,195 at Brava
The Brava Starter Set smart oven performs admirably, and if you take the proper care, it can live up to the company’s promise of all the elements of your meal cooked to the same doneness simultaneously. But the Brava Starter Set has a user interface that is far too fussy for most users. Out of the box, we had issues connecting to it, but when we did, it worked well on basic tasks including turning out a nicely roasted chicken. The oven cooks using a radiant light source rather than traditional heating elements, so it doesn’t have a glass door, but instead a metal one. This would be fine if it bumped up the efficiency of the elements, but in our testing we got similar results to traditional ovens with glass doors; the bread nearest to the door still emerged a little pale. We’re not huge fans of cooking from a screen, but it’s unavoidable with the Brava Starter Set. (Brava does also offer the Brava Glass, a model with a double-layered, high heat-resistant glass door so you can see your food cooking, like a traditional oven).
For cooks who enjoy nerding out on cooking potatoes, green beans and salmon, all in one go and each to their ideal doneness, the model we tested could be a fun oven to use. You’ll need to put in the work of cubing the vegetables to the same size and arranging everything in an orderly fashion to fit the oven’s cooking zones (the oven uses multiple heating elements to target different regions within the chamber), and if you’re going to put in that amount of prep, you could just as easily do a sheet pan dinner in the oven you own already. The Brava Starter Set smart oven is an expensive proposition for a device that is interesting technologically but doesn’t even make great toast.