Breville BOV450XL review

What the maker puts in writing

• “ELEMENT iQ SYSTEM: Using 5 independent quartz elements, smart algorithms steer small oven’s power where and when it’s needed, creating a tailored cooking environment for precise results; Fast 1800 Watt preheat”
• “8 COOKING FUNCTIONS: …Toast, Bagel, Bake, Broil, Pizza, Roast, Cookies, and Reheat”
• “SMALL CAPACITY: 11 x 10 x 4 inch interior capacity fits 4 toast slices, bagels, cookies, tuna melts, 6 cup muffin tray, and 11 inch pizzas; 3 rack positions, pull out crumb tray and auto shut off”
• “LCD DISPLAY: LCD display allows for easy access to all of mini oven’s built in smart functionality”
• “NON STICK CAVITY COATING: Small countertop oven’s inside walls feature a non stick coating for easy cleaning”
• “INCLUDED ACCESSORIES: 10 x 10 inch Enamel Baking Pan”
• “WARRANTY: 1 Year Limited Product Warranty; Power: 1800 Watts; Voltage 110 to 120 Volts”
• Reference BOV450XL · Catalog: 4853 g (171.2 oz), 362 × 406 × 216 mm (14.3 × 16 × 8.50 in)

Five elements, driven separately, which is the idea here

“Using 5 independent quartz elements, smart algorithms steer small oven’s power where and when it’s needed.”

A toaster oven normally has a top element and a bottom element, and most machines run them in fixed pairs: both for baking, top only for broiling, both for toast.

But the eight jobs on this page want different distributions.

Toast is radiant and wants even heat top and bottom across the full width. Pizza wants heat from below, to set the base before the topping overcooks. Cookies want gentle even heat with nothing fierce near the top. Broiling wants everything at the top, hard. Bagel wants the cut face toasted and the crust only warmed — which is a distribution, not a temperature.

Two elements compromise. Five can bias. And “independent” is the word carrying the claim: five elements driven at different powers at different moments, rather than five wired together.

Quartz is the other half of it. A conventional element is a wire in a steel sheath — it warms the sheath, which then radiates, so it is slow to come up and slow to stop. A quartz element is a wire in a glass tube and radiates almost immediately, which is what makes steering possible at all.

The Elite Gourmet ETO449X at $34.99 is the only other machine here to publish quartz (“dual quartz elements”). The two BLACK+DECKER ovens answer the same problem differently, with EvenToast heat distribution — one element shaped well. And at least five of the twelve machines on this shelf say nothing about their elements at all.

1800 W is the other figure, and it is at the ceiling: at 120 volts that is exactly 15 amperes, the full capacity of a standard American circuit. The voltage note in bullet eight — “110 to 120 Volts” — is the only one on this shelf.

And power density is where this machine is unusual. 1800 W into 7.2 liters is about 250 watts per liter. The others: Elite ETO449X 89 · Elite ETO2530M 60 · NutriChef 50. Four machines publish no wattage at all. A dense cavity comes up fast and recovers fast — which is what “Fast 1800 Watt preheat” is claiming, though no preheat time is published, where two cheaper pages here publish ten minutes.

Seven and a bit liters, which is the smallest cavity on this shelf

“11 x 10 x 4 inch interior capacity.”

That is 440 cubic inches — 7.2 liters.

The shelf, converted to one unit:

this — 7.2 L · Elite Gourmet ETO449X at $34.99 — about 9 L (9.5 quarts) · Elite Gourmet ETO2530M at $84.99 — about 26 L (its 25L, 0.9 cuft and 13.25 × 13.50 × 8.95 in all agree to within 5%) · NutriChef at $149.99 — about 28 L (30 quarts)

So the $34.99 machine has a quarter more cavity than this $159.95 one, and the $84.99 machine has three and a half times as much with a 12-inch pizza and three rack positions.

On volume per dollar this is the worst value on the shelf by a wide margin.

What you are buying instead is the five-element system above, the non-stick cavity below, eight functions, an LCD, and the only published warranty on a full-price machine here.

And the shape is cleverer than the volume suggests. The cavity is 4 inches high and 11 inches wide — a deliberately shallow, wide box.

A shallow cavity puts the elements close to the food on both sides, which is exactly what toast, cookies and a thin pizza want. It is exactly what a roast does not.

So read the shape as a statement of purpose. This is not a small oven; it is a flat one, built for flat food. The four-inch height is why “Roast” appears in the function list and a chicken does not appear in the capacity list — where the Hamilton Beach at $59.95 publishes “a 3 lb. chicken in an 8” x 8” pan” and the Elite ETO2530M an “11lb roast”.

The capacity list it does publish is unusually specific and worth reading: “4 toast slices, bagels, cookies, tuna melts, 6 cup muffin tray, and 11 inch pizzas.” A 6-cup muffin tray and an 11-inch pizza are both dimension statements in disguise — and an 11-inch pizza in an 11-inch-wide cavity is exact, with nothing to spare.

Three rack positions in a four-inch cavity is more than it sounds: three heights within four inches means the bias can be fine rather than coarse, which is the five-element argument again from the other direction. Only the Elite ETO2530M also publishes three; the ETO449X publishes two.

The non-stick cavity, which nothing else here has

“Small countertop oven’s inside walls feature a non stick coating for easy cleaning.”

This is the only machine on this shelf to publish it, and it is the feature that decides what a toaster oven is like to own after a year.

Here is why. A toaster oven cavity is small, the walls are close to the food, and everything that spatters lands on them. Baked-on fat on bare enamel or steel, cooked on repeatedly at 450 °F, becomes a brown varnish that does not come off with a cloth. That is the state most toaster ovens reach and stay in.

A non-stick coating means a wipe works — and it works for the same reason a non-stick pan does: there is nothing for the residue to key into.

The practical caveat the page does not give: non-stick coatings do not like abrasives or scrapers, so the cavity must be cleaned with a cloth and not a pad, and ideally while still slightly warm.

And the two cleaning features pair sensibly. The pull-out crumb tray handles what falls; the coating handles what spatters. Every machine on this shelf has a crumb tray — crumbs that reach the cavity floor sit near the lower element and burn, which is the smell of an old toaster oven — and only this one has an answer for the walls.

The NutriChef at $149.99 is the machine that most needs one and does not have it, offering a “stain resistant housing” instead, which is the outside rather than the inside — on a machine with a rotisserie, which spatters more than anything else on this shelf.

No machine here claims dishwasher-safe parts, so the 10 × 10 inch enamel baking pan is a hand-wash item. Enamel is the right choice for it: it takes 450 °F indefinitely and does not warp, and it is the only baking pan on this shelf with a published dimension.

Eight functions, and the one that is missing

Toast, Bagel, Bake, Broil, Pizza, Roast, Cookies, Reheat.

The highest count on this shelf: this 8 · NutriChef 7 · BLACK+DECKER air fry 5 · Elite ETO2530M 5 · BLACK+DECKER toaster 4 · Elite ETO449X 4 · Hamilton Beach 4 · Dash 1.

And every one of the eight is radiant or conventional baking, which is what the five-element system is for. A function on this machine is a heat distribution, not merely a temperature — which is why eight is a meaningful number here and would be padding on a two-element oven.

What is not among them is air fry.

Air frying is a different mechanism. It needs moving air to strip away the insulating layer of cooled, moistened air sitting against the food, and it needs that air to reach underneath — which means a mesh tray or a basket rather than a solid pan.

Two machines on this shelf do it, both under sixty dollars. The BLACK+DECKER TO1787SS at $55.99, with “high intensity hot air” and an air fry mesh tray. The Hamilton Beach at $59.95, whose “convection function circulates air around food as it cooks” with a metal air-fry basket.

Neither is a better oven than this one. They simply do a thing this one does not.

And the pan in this box is the tell: a “10 x 10 inch Enamel Baking Pan” is solid, which is the right tray for baking and the wrong one for crisping.

So the division on this shelf is clean. Chips and wings: spend sixty dollars on a machine with a basket. Toast, cookies and pizza done properly: this is the machine designed for them.

An LCD rather than dials is the other interface decision, and it follows from having eight distributions to choose between — a dial cannot label them. The cost is the usual one: a screen is a thing to learn and a thing to fail, where the Elite ETO449X makes the opposite case explicitly — “no digital learning curve”.

One year, which is the only warranty on a full-price machine here

“1 Year Limited Product Warranty.”

Two machines on this shelf publish a term, and the other one is the cheapest: the Dash at $24.99 offers “a 1-year warranty, or double it by registering with our Feel Good Rewards Program.”

So a $24.99 oven matches or beats this on paper. The remaining six — both BLACK+DECKER ovens, both Elite Gourmet ovens, the Hamilton Beach and the NutriChef — publish nothing, including a $149.99 appliance with a rotisserie motor and two hot plates.

What a warranty covers on a toaster oven is worth stating: the parts that fail are the elements, the thermostat and — here — the control board. All fail either early or after years, so a one-year term covers the manufacturing-fault case, which is what it is for.

On a machine with five independently driven elements and an LCD there is more to go wrong than on a two-element oven with a knob — which makes a published term more necessary here, not less. One year is modest for the price and more than six of eight competitors offer.

Auto shut off is the safety feature, as on the Dash, the Elite ETO449X (with a bell) and the NutriChef (after 60 minutes).

4853 grams makes this the second heaviest machine here: Dash 1451 g · Elite ETO449X 2409 g · BLACK+DECKER toaster 3016 g · Hamilton Beach 3765 g · this 4853 g · NutriChef 10297 g. Which is a lot of mass for 7.2 liters — and consistent with five elements, a lined cavity and 1800 watts of wiring rather than with a large box.

What is not published

No temperature range. Not a ceiling, not a floor. Five machines on this shelf publish 450 °F — the BLACK+DECKER toaster, both Elite Gourmet ovens, the Hamilton Beach and the NutriChef — and three of those publish 200 °F as the bottom, which is the figure that decides whether a machine can hold food warm or prove dough. The Dash publishes 400 °F. This publishes neither, which on a machine whose eight functions are its selling point is an odd place to stop: a Pizza setting with no stated temperature cannot be compared with anything.

No timer duration. Six machines publish one: Dash 15 minutes, BLACK+DECKER ×2 and Elite ETO449X 30, Elite ETO2530M and NutriChef 60. This publishes auto shut off and no interval — presumably because the LCD sets it per function, but the page does not say.

No preheat time, where the BLACK+DECKER toaster and the Elite ETO449X both publish ten minutes. “Fast 1800 Watt preheat” is a claim without a figure — and at 250 watts per liter it is probably the fastest machine here, which makes the omission a missed opportunity rather than a concealment.

No air fry, as above.

No convection fan. With five steered elements the machine may not need one, and the page does not raise it.

No clearance or ventilation warning, which the BLACK+DECKER toaster gives twice — “outer surfaces become hot… allow space for proper ventilation” — and which applies to an 1800 W machine as much as to any here.

Availability

Read on the day this page was built: $160 at the American Amazon shop.

Read from Keepa on the day this page was last revised; stock and price both move without notice.