Krups FBC2 1600 Watts Toaster Oven with Convection Cooking

This is quality equipment, it has a timer, convection, toaster, etc.. It is so precise for baking. A little expensive but well worth it, if you use everyday, you'll come out way ahead, not to mention the daily pleasure every time you use it. Hope this help...

My old Black & Decker toaster oven gave up the ghost recently after about 25 years of dedicated service. Now that I'm 25 years older, I figured I'd splurge a bit and get a fancier replacement; if I don't cook too much artery-clogging food in it, I might enjoy the new one another 25 years. These days, typical upgrades to the basic toaster oven include broiling/grilling, convection heating (which simply means a fan blows the hot air around inside the oven, to heat food faster and more evenly), easy-clean interior with easily removed crumb tray, a warming tray on top, electronic controls instead of mechanical ones, a defrost setting, and preprogrammed cooking for specific foods (e.g., a setting for pizza).

Several online reviews rated the Krups FBC2 highly, particularly its general build quality and how well it makes toast. The FBC2 has *all* of the features above, except for the warming tray and preprogrammed cooking settings. So I bought one.

Initial impressions: This thing is huge and built like a brick, uh, toaster oven. In fact, it's a lot bigger than a basic toaster oven, so check your space before you buy one. It has a solid, quality look and feel. The electronic controls are easy to use, the LCD display easy to read. It heats up fast, and the outside gets plenty hot too (true of most toaster ovens). It is as quiet as most of its toaster oven bretheren in normal use, although the fan is fairly noisy in defrosting and convection heating modes. All cooking is timed, so you can't leave it on all day by mistake. Opening the door does not turn off the heat, as it does with some other models. The "done" signal bell is loud but not obnoxious. The FBC2 comes with a baking tray, a grilling/broiling insert, and 2 oven racks.

Although I bought the Krups FBC2 mainly for toasting and for reheating food (like pizza) that doesn't fare well in the microwave, this unit could really take the place of a full size oven for one or two people. It can easily accommodate a baked or grilled main course, has loads of room to warm up bread or rolls, and is the perfect thing to top-brown a cheese dish or a dessert. The only drawbacks I see are its heft, cost, and maybe the fan noise: This is more than a toaster oven, and you may not need this much appliance on your countertop. If you do, it's an excellent choice.

I was hesitant at first to invest in a toaster oven at this price point, but I can honestly say it's worth every penny. It does everything well. My biggest complaint with other toasters is that they don't adjust to being cold or hot at the start of a toast cycle. Not this one. You can toast item after item and they come out consistently every time without having to adjust the setting. It works great as an oven too, so much so that I've been using it whenever I can instead of my regular oven. While operating the top of the appliance gets war--as with any toaster--but the sides don't, so you can have things next to it on the counter without worry. Go ahead, buy this toaster oven. You won't regret it.

This toaster does everything well. I have been using it for over a month with none of the problems that I have seen some complaints about. The broiler works great for pizza or bagels. The toast function works great and toasts both sides of the bread. This is rated as a '6' slice toaster oven, but 6 slices would be quite a squeeze unless it is a small loaf of bread. 4 slices do fit very well though.

We've had this toaster before and everything about the size and performance fit very well with our family. It's rather large and takes up a lot of counter space but it can hold a tremendous amount of food. One large bag of frozen frenchfries, a full size pizza and of course 6 slices of toast are no problem. It heats up quickly with very cool looking infrared bulbs and cooks fairly evenly (only unit I can find that has three bulbs (not two) top and bottom. My wife never liked how it cooked toast but with 5 kids, I think quantity trumps quality in that department!

Now the bad thing that only gives it an average rating. We only had the first unit about a year and half before one of the bulbs died (bright flash) causing the whole unit to stop working. You can not simply replace the bulb as I found out, you need to throw the whole thing away. We bought this second toaster as a replacement and hoped we would get a bit better life out of it. After a week the digital display went out and the toaster would not turn off (very dangerous!) When we tried to get a replacement from BigCity they said they no longer carry it and wanted to substitute a cheaper toaster instead. They did refund the purchase price but not the $20 in shipping.

It's really a great toaster oven for large families when it works. Only problem is that our experience is that quality and design do not go hand in hand at Krups. Shame that for $150 they can't build a toaster that not only looks good but also functions well.