We Tested Cuisinart's Air Fryer Toaster Oven with a Grill — and Here's Our Honest Review

Of all the countertop appliances, air fryer toaster ovens are arguably the most versatile. They pack the benefits of an full-size oven into the size of a large toaster oven to give you a wide range of cooking modes like toast, broil, convection broil, bake, air fry, and more. With such a variety of cooking functions at your fingertips, there are few limits to the types of food that you can make (and even master!) without ever having to turn on your full-size oven.

Cuisinart’s air fryer toaster ovens consistently rank well in product testing and their newest model — the Cuisinart TOA-70 — combines the features of their previous models with the power of grilling. And it’s simpler than you’d think: The oven comes with a grill plate (that’s a griddle on the other side) that sits on the baking tray. To start grilling, you preheat the oven on the highest temperature (450 degrees F) for at least 10 minutes (we found 15 minutes did the trick) with the grill pan and baking pan in the oven. Once the pan is hot, you add your food and get grilling.

How We Tested the Cuisinart Air Fryer Toaster Oven with Grill

Our testers couldn’t wait to get their hands on the Cuisinart TOA-70 and try the gambit of grilled foods in addition to testing out all the other classic functions. But before there was any testing, there was research. Our testers dug into the details of the specifications around the Cuisinart Air Fryer Toaster Oven with Grill, its accessories, functions, cooking guidance and suggested recipes. Then, our testers cooked through every cooking mode, including baking cookies, air-frying fries, roasting chicken, toasting (so much!) toast, and of course, grilling.

Our testers put the grill/griddle to the test with multiple rounds of grilling over several days, including favorites like steaks, burgers, veggies, chicken, seafood and quesadillas. After each round of cooking, the accessories and parts of the oven were cleaned by hand, noting how easily everything came clean after each test.

What We Liked About the Cuisinart Air Fryer Toaster Oven with Grill

The convenience of this air fryer toaster oven is its best feature. With a relatively compact footprint, this oven can cook a large amount of food at once, which is a game-changer for those hot summer months when you just can’t bear to turn on your oven. Did we mention it can fit a 9x9 baking pan, perfect for a pan of summer brownies?

Testers loved the high-quality materials used in the air fryer toaster oven and the stainless-steel air fry basket was easy to clean unlike the ultra-fine mesh of competitors’ that shreds any and all sponges.

Our testers liked that the mechanical dials were easy to use and didn’t pose any confusion, and that the functions were all pretty unique from each other and, therefore, each function felt useful and valuable to have.

The air fry function was (unsurprisingly) impressive, creating perfectly crispy and golden French fries. Similarly, the convection bake function cooked up incredibly juicy chicken that looked as good as it tasted. The bake function brought good, even heat that browned baked goods like cookies and brownies nicely. Finally, the grill function was a nice addition for imparting grill marks on burgers and steak without having to turn on a full-size grill.

What We Didn’t Like About the Cuisinart Air Fryer Toaster Oven with Grill

While the mechanical knobs made for an easy-to-use interface, they also lacked precision. Functions like toast suffered the most from this, as the “medium” and “dark” settings were almost identical, with the “light’ setting looking almost completely untoasted. The knob for the cooking time only went up to 1 hour (which could be problematic when trying to cook larger pieces of protein like a whole chicken), not to mention that it’s almost impossible to set the timer for an exact time (our testers ended up using separate timers for precision). Testers also noticed that the knobs got particularly hot when using the grill function (that requires the door to be open to either remove the tray to add food, or to add food while the pan is still in the oven).

Our testers noted that unlike the other functions, grilling required a significant preheat time. The recommended preheat time is at least 10 minutes, but our testers found that the plate had to be preheated for 15 minutes or more to get grill marks or good grilled-like texture, especially when cooking proteins.

Cleaning the grill plate was also difficult, as oils from the foods baked on at the high temperature of the grill function and became sticky and hard to remove.

Finally, testers noted that with the limited height of the the oven, baked goods could very easily get overbaked (because no matter what level you’re baking on, the food will be close to a heating element). They noticed that baked goods generally took only 75% of the suggested bake time (or less) to be finished, which could cause a learning curve for new users.

Our Verdict

This is a versatile appliance that's good for basic cooking.

Our big takeaway is that the Cuisinart Air Fryer Toaster Oven with Grill is great for someone who wants to be able to make a variety of recipes with one compact and reasonably priced countertop appliance. The Cuisinart TOA-70 easily replaces a toaster and an air fryer while adding the value of convection oven functions like bake and broil (plus convection bake and convection broil) and grilling. Though the unit lacks precision in some areas and requires significant preheat time for the grilling feature, the excellent versatility and sheer variety of foods you can make might be worth the sacrifice. The high-quality materials used in the oven itself and its accessories make for a highly-durable appliance.

Why You Should Trust Our Tester

Joelle Battista specializes in rigorously testing and reviewing kitchen products and appliances. With a professional culinary training and close to a decade of editorial experience, Joelle has developed a keen eye for quality and reliability in both recipe and appliance evaluation. Joelle started her career in test kitchens, creating hundreds of recipes and leading the culinary development of dozens of kitchen appliances including multiple air fryers and small kitchen appliances.

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