Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I wanted to get a toaster oven for years after our previous one gave up the spirit a few years ago. But I just could not justify spending $30-40 for the usual low budget half-made-of-plastic affairs that are designed to fall apart in a year. This one seemed to be better made, and the convection feature appeared to make sense, so I took a chance. I never owned any kitchen appliances made by Sanyo before. I was afraid the stainless steel finish would not be very convincing, but this device actually looks quite stylish, much better than the run of the mill white appliances in my kitchen. It is compact, both inside and out. You will not be roasting a whole chicken in this one. Two cornish hens would be about the max you could stuff in it. It does make good toasts, and since all it takes is to push a button, the process is very simple. It is great for baking smaller amounts of food, like fish sticks, chicken breast fillets, french fries etc. without having to resort to our full size oven. Coupled with the fact that it heats up a lot faster also, you can save about 30-35 percent off the cooking time, which is nice. I was somewhat confused by the controls at first, because they advertise this as a digitally controlled oven, and yet there is a prominent "timer wheel" on the control panel. This almost made me not order it, because I have had plenty of negative experiences with clock mechanism based timers that were difficult to set, would make a constant annoying ticking sound, and would be almost impossible to reset or stop before the time was up. They also tended to break fairly easily. This oven does have a digital control, only it does not consist of the usual timer display. You set the timer wheel to the length of time desired, and then push the start button. The timer will begin counting down, and small led lights will start to count down the time remaining around the timing wheel, but the wheel itself does not move. It is a very ingenious system. I love it. If you need to stop it you can just hit cancel and it is off immediately. Cooking temperatures can be changed on the fly, and you get 5 choices: 180F, 250F, 320F, 400F, 470F. These seem like a restriction, but in fact are perfectly appropriate for my purposes. This oven is also quite quiet. I expected that the convection fan will make it somewhat noisy, as I read about that problem in several other brand's toaster reviews. This one is only making a very discreet humming sound, just barely alerting you that it is on and working. Quality of design and fit and finish is very satisfactory. Read the reviews on Delonghi to find out about doors that won't close, warping heating elements etc. This puppy is a swiss watch compared to most of what's out there. It was easily worth the $50 spent. Update 8-17-06: After over a year and a half of intense use, the Sanyo is working almost as good as ever. The right hand side of the heaters seems to heat better than the left, but the difference is really minor.This is one excellent kitchen appliance.