Hamilton Beach Easy Reach 4 Slices Toaster Oven vs Breville Smart Oven Pro Side-by-Side Comparison
Hamilton Beach Easy Reach 4 Slices vs Breville Smart Oven Pro. A small toaster oven with standard features and a large unit with fancy ones.
Specifications
Design
It’s understandable that an oven designed to be this simple would not have additional features. However, the Hamilton Beach 31344DA has some shortcomings in terms of capacity and cleaning.
The Breville showed a lot of investment in its design from the exterior and interior to the accessories, especially compared to inexpensive units like the Black+Decker CTO6335S. For example, its carrying handles, interior safety hooks, convection system, internal lighting, feature toggles, and additional cooking functions. It does have some room for improvement, however.
Usability Comparison
The Hamilton Beach 31344DA is intended to be simple and therefore doesn’t offer much when it comes to user control, ease of use, and cleanability. However, cleaning was quite an issue due to the design limitations.
The Breville also shows investment in features of usability including the toggles and extra cooking functions in the user control as well as automatic mechanisms to increase ease of use. However, the actual delivery left a few things to be desired compared to the ones on our list of Best Large Toaster Ovens.
Performance Test
The Hamilton Beach 31344DA delivered an adequate cooking performance for a small toaster oven—not as high as the Breville BOV450XL. It was able to do the job of roasting a whole chicken, even though the cooking chamber didn’t have enough space. However, our Baked French Fries test exposed the oven’s weakness of low power output.
The strong power output of 1800 W didn’t seem to help with the Breville’s performance in our test dishes as much as other toaster ovens with the same output, including the Cosori CO130-AO. It performed the best in roasting a whole chicken but not to an outstanding degree.
This unit is advertised as having the Element iQ System™ which is a smart heating algorithm for improving heat distribution. However, our test results showed no significant increase in the cooking time or evenness of caramelization.
Overall Scores
Pros & Cons
- Lightweight and small size
- Durable alloy steel casing
- Cool-touch door handle
- Simple control knobs
- Stay-on feature
- Quartz heating elements with safeguards
- Energy-saving
- Useful toggles
- High-contrast digital display
- Non-stick interior
- Sturdy construction
- Easy-to-clean stainless steel exterior
- Cool-touch door handle
- Convenient slide-out crumb tray
- No convection fan
- No internal lighting
- No safety mechanism for the door
- No safety mechanism for the door
- In need of an additional oven rack
- Not very budget-friendly
Conclusion
The Hamilton Beach Easy Reach 4 Slices (31344DA) is a small toaster oven with mostly standard features, whereas the Breville Smart Oven Pro (BOV845BSS) is a large convection toaster oven with some fancy details. Hence, it comes as no surprise that the latter is the victor.
The Hamilton is simply equipped with three analog control dials and no interior light for added convenience. It does have a neat roll-top door that moves out of the way to make it easier to bring food in and out of the oven—a plus in our book.
In contrast, the Smart Oven Pro has numerous cooking presets and additional toggle switches for convection, temperature conversion, frozen foods, and internal lighting. Its interior also has a non-stick coating which is rare for toaster ovens of any size.
Compared to its design and usability, the Breville’s performance is a bit of a letdown. Thanks to its high power output and convection system, the Breville was better than the Hamilton in all of our cooking tests including toasting bread, baking pizza, roasting whole chicken, and baking fries. However, the Breville didn’t make it to our top list because its performance scores weren’t as high as other units with the same advantages.
Behind the Comparison
Alan Nguyen is a writer and product reviewer at HealthyKitchen101. His major in English language teaching taught him to present concise information. In addition to his cooking hobby, he values the practical aspects of household appliances.
Tuyet Pham is an award-winning Saigonese chef passionate about delicious and healthful foods. At HealthyKitchen101, she develops recipes and collaborates with our Research, Testing, and Review lab to evaluate the performance of cooking appliances. Her assessments add a strong authoritative voice to our product scoring process.
Lap is Head of the Research, Testing, and Review Team (RTR Team) at HealthyKitchen101.com, where he directs and supervises the testing of kitchen gadgets and appliances.
