Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

So far very good for the money. Toaster ovens used to be, well, able to make toast plus function as a small oven. The were rapidly joined by microwave ovens. Now I am willing to bet you have three ovens, a big, "normal" oven, a "toaster oven" and a microwave. Why? Well, because Americans are stark raving loons, but that is another story. Large size regular ovens cook large means and double as space heaters (whether you want them to or not). Microwave ovens defrost things, heat leftovers or preprepared items, and can reduce things to glowing nuclear ash, but, strangely, cannot get anything golden brown. Enter the toaster oven. Toaster ovens can do what a large oven does, but does it smaller and does it without heating up your entire house. With that nitch filled, obviously they had to start getting bigger (as all things American do). Now the limit is your kitchen cabinets, because it has to fit under them, and (as an extra bonus) not set them on fire. Unfortunately, as an side effect of the age we live in, they also (apparently) have to become more complex to operate than the Space Shuttle. I first used this oven to make, well, toast! (how novel). That worked well. Unfortunately that led to increased (and unwarranted) expectations that I might be able to use this as an... well... oven! I was led to this conclusion by the name. There, it says "oven" in the title. And we had a pie. Pies don't generally work out in microwaves, since they need to, you know, "cook" and everthing, not just defrost, reheat, or manufacture nuclear waste, etc. And this oven is big enough for a PIE! Things were looking up. Try #1. I put the pie in the oven, turned it on, selected "bake", selected the temperature, and the time! It said "pre", which I figured meant "preheat". Cool. The big oven works the same way. Thus assured, we went about our business and waited for the pie to cook. Came back later. The oven was off and the (very unbaked) pie was cold. Undaunted, we repeated the same procedure. Again it started up, and again we came back later and the oven was OFF. The pie was singed, but cold. Which pretty much described our condition as well. At this point we gave up, started the big oven and cooked it there. Ok, today I figured it was time to square off with the oven. One of us was going to win. My wife was betting on the oven, but hah! I am not so easily defeated. I went through the bake sequence with the oven empty, and finally discovered, by trial and error, that once the oven is started and preheating is complete, it gets angry at your clear lack of interest in it and shuts off. You didn't get back to it in time, you obviously don't know what you are doing, and it quits. Ok. I found out, again trial and error, that it says "pre" (preheat) then "rdy" (which I cleverly decoded as "ready". If you THEN hit start it will bake and count down! Yeahhhh! Ok, to be fair it does say this in the manual if you dig far enough. You have to realize that "preheat" is automatically part of the "bake" program, then look under "preheat" (even though you didn't press that button). then there it is, 5 paragraphs in or so, that it will shut off automatically if you don't press start AGAIN. Its right there by the instructions for launching it into low earth orbit. In short, it seems to be a good oven, but frankly, I didn't realize the need to take a college course to operate the thing. It has lots of features that I am positive I will never use, but I am happy with the fact that eventually I could program it to run a stock market simulation. In short, really everything I really had to say here was in the headline, but you are so nice to read this. Have a cookie. As soon as I can figure out how to $%&^ bake the things with this oven!