Hamilton Beach Toaster - Black Toastation Toaster Oven Review

Our toaster eventually decide to meet its maker in the sky when the wiring started to melt (yeah, not a good sign). That only meant it was time to get a new toaster as a result. I started to browse around online to see what new toasters would make a great addition for the household and something that was useful for us. That's when I saw the Hamilton Beach Toaster and decided it was what we needed.

The Hamilton Beach Toaster is a two-for-one deal: It's sometimes a toaster and sometimes an oven. The 10"x17"x10" frame fits nicely on any countertop without taking much room making it a great space-saving unit. It stands upright like a toaster, but it also has a door and a rack to place items in the oven. I like the brushed silver finish with black front panel. It makes it feel like a modern appliance for the kitchen and plugs in nicely into the wall.

Looking at just the toaster part, it is wide enough to fit two bagels, slices of bread, or English muffins. The lever on the top allows you to switch modes between the toaster and the oven; you can only use one or the other and not both at a time (of course that makes sense). There are also two dial switches: one that controls the temperature (ranging between 200-450 degrees Fahrenheit) and the other that controls the toast colour (ranging from 1-6).

The oven itself is really the bonus for us. There are many times that we want to use our conventional oven but not for something so small. Having the Hamilton Beach Toaster changes all of that. If we want to re-heat pizza slices, we do so with this toaster oven. It can fit two large pizza slices at once by placing it on the removable crumb tray. It's also great for frozen hashbrowns, personal-sized pizzas, chicken nuggets, or anything small in that nature. Because it is smaller than an oven, it cooks faster than normal so the timing of the temperature needs to be reduced in order to avoid burning. This also means that the unit becomes hot everything from the base to the glass window except for the oven handle. This is a good thing especially when you need to open the oven door. The automatic shut off safety feature in the toaster mode is a great feature. Once the toast carriage pops up, the unit will shut off when it's complete.

The toaster oven is not so lucky in that department. As I mentioned before, it heats food quicker than usually because of its smaller size so it's best to keep an eye on the oven operation. There have been a few times when I have underestimated the baking time. The downside really is the size of the toaster oven. Remember, only small items can fit into this space. Do not try to force something larger in it at all. It won't fit properly and you can really do some damage to the unit if the item burns. Also, the removable crumb tray gets very hard to clean when food crumbs, especially cheese, burns onto the tray. This is perhaps the most annoying aspect of the device as it makes it very hard to clean the tray. In fact, with the burnt items on the tray, I will be surprised if anyone can get it all off. Seriously, this is probably the major problem to the whole thing.

As a two-in-one unit, we definitely make good use of the Hamilton Beach Toaster. It's very convenient, easy to use, and comes with a limited one-year manufacturer's warranty. I'm surprised at how often we really do use this toaster oven. It really does come in handy for our everyday use. In all honesty I would have been just content with only a toaster so having a small oven attached to it really is a Christmas miracle for this household.