Convection Oven vs Toaster Oven – Which Is Better?

If you have ever used a regular oven, you’ll know how energy inefficient they can be. Long preheating times, needy when it comes to electricity (and possibly gas), and they take up a lot of room in a kitchen. That’s why I don’t suggest people buy regular ovens anymore.

I know, I know – they’re so useful! When you need to cook a massive dish, you need something massive to cook it in. I get that. But that doesn’t mean that you should settle for an appliance that is wasting your time, money, and space. There are better options on the market.

My two big suggestions for worried buyers are the convection oven and the toaster oven. Convection ovens are still big and take up a lot of room in a kitchen, but they save on the amount of energy you use. Toaster ovens are also excellent pieces of equipment that are versatile, but they won’t be able to cook the largest dishes.

Which one you need depends on your needs. That’s why I decided to put this guide together for potential buyers. You don’t want to get the wrong product, so read on!

Table of contents

• Can These Appliances Replace A Regular Oven?
• Is A Toaster Oven More Energy Efficient Than A Convection Oven?
• Is A Toaster Oven Faster Than A Convection Oven?
• Is A Toaster Oven Safer Than A Convection Oven?
• Conclusion

I’m not just going to say yes. For various reasons, people might need to keep a regular oven. Some of that might come down to personal preference, but I believe that if you look at the various factors, you wouldn’t want to keep one in the house.

Let’s look at the various factors briefly and then I’ll compare toaster ovens with convection ovens. You should have a full picture of why you should buy one product over another.

In my eyes, I can’t see why you wouldn’t. Thanks to better technology, convection ovens are often better at cooking dishes completely. For me, actually cooking my food is quite important to me (and I imagine to you as well!).

When looking at how convection ovens cook, you need to understand how a regular oven cooks. By heating up a flame or using a large heating element, the regular oven heats up the cooking cavity. When there is a cold spot, the oven needs to heat up again and create more heat.

Convection ovens, on the other hand, use fans. You might have heard them called fans ovens or fan cookers because they use fan technology to circulate the heat. This means that convection ovens don’t need to heat up the cooking cavity when there is a cold spot – they simply use a fan to move the existing heat around.

When we take that point, we can see that convection ovens do not use as much energy as regular ovens. Generally, there are a few other differences. This means that you will still need to have a specialist energy feed and the appropriate amount of space for a regular oven.

Toaster ovens work like ovens compacted into a kitchen top-friendly format. You can fit a toaster oven onto your kitchen top and still get all the functionality of an oven.

This means that you can use a variety of settings to bake, roast, or grill anything that you would in a regular oven. Because they are smaller, they also use less energy to heat up the cooking cavity. Thanks to that, you can rely on your toaster oven that will not spend more energy than it needs – this saves you money in the long term and also helps the planet out a little bit more.

Toaster ovens aren’t perfect, however. Even though you get the bonus of energy efficient, space efficient makeup, you don’t get the same amount of space you would with a regular oven. For many people, this might not be an issue. How often do you cook an entire turkey or a side of ribs? If the answer is never, then you don’t actually lose anything. If you do, you may need another appliance to handle those jobs.

Toaster ovens use, on average, 1700W per hour of cooking. This is much better than a regular oven which would generally use 2200W in the same time period. Because they are smaller, you do not need to constantly heat them up or even use as much energy to heat it up.

This means that you can cut down on the overall output of your cooking appliance by simply cutting down on the amount of electricity it uses. You may find that you need a bit longer to cook your dishes, but the amount of energy you need to cook a dish will even this out.

Compared to a convection oven, toaster ovens are still a lot more friendly to your wallet and to the planet.

Convection ovens are better than regular ovens, but they still require a lot of energy. If you need to use a convection oven, expect to be using around 2000W per hour of cooking. This is less than a regular oven, true, but it is more than a toaster oven. This means that you can expect to spend more over the course of a year simply by using your appliance.

Because you are moving heat around on the inside of a convection oven, you can actually get more bang for your buck by leaving the convection oven for longer periods. This means that you can use the oven for a variety of dishes over the course of a few hours without performing the most energy consuming process – the startup.

If you plan to be cooking for hours on end, you may prefer the convection oven. But it is a niche need, especially for home cooks. I would recommend the toaster oven if you just need something that will use less energy.

Toaster ovens are smaller and less powerful than convection ovens. Because of this, you will always have to spend more time on cooking than you would with a convection oven.

Toaster ovens generally need an extra 5 to 15 minutes to cook the same dishes you would expect to cook in a regular oven. For example, I find that a frozen pizza takes around 15 minutes to cook in a regular oven. My toaster oven takes around 20 minutes to cook a pizza from frozen. I don’t think this is a terrible trade off.

But for meat dishes (like roast chickens or small racks of ribs), you will find that the toaster oven may need extra time again. I find that making sure meat is completely cooked can take up to 15 minutes in addition to the expected time, which can be a real pain for dinner times.

Convection ovens generally need no longer than a regular oven. Because they are, in essence, just ovens with fans on the inside, you only need to set the same temperature for the same amount of time.

Thanks to the fans, you can also expect the heat to be wafted around. This means that all areas of a dish will become equally cooked. For larger dishes, you will need to account for a small amount of difference in the cooking times. This is because the use of the fan stops the blasts of heat, meaning that there is generally less power in the convection oven.

If you want my judgment on which would win, the convection oven is better. It can cook faster by virtue of being more powerful. It will also guarantee that all areas of the dish are equally cooked. This makes life easier when cooking meat dishes or anything else that would be risky to eat if it wasn’t cooked fully.

Safety is a bit of a sticking point for some kitchenware appliances. If you have small children in your household, you will want to make sure that the devices are as safe as possible. This is why a safety comparison is so important.

Toaster ovens are generally safe. Obviously, they are superheated appliances, so you will need to be careful when using them. The heat comes from elements that can be heated to in excess of 1000 degrees Fahrenheit. This makes them quite dangerous if they are turned out.

If you make a mess in your toaster oven (because it does happen), you will need to be careful of how you clean it. Cleaning out a toaster oven after you have cooked is dangerous because of the superheated elements, so you will need to wait for it to cool down.

If you have a glass fronted toaster oven, you will also need to beware. Toaster ovens generally only have single panes of glass on their covers, which means that they are susceptible to cracking. There have been reports of toaster oven doors cracking and shattering, which means there is a risk of glass related injuries.

Convection ovens are larger and still superheated. This means that you need to be careful with the cooking cavity both during and after cooking. If a person were to touch the inside of the oven or the oven door, there is a serious risk of burns.

Convection ovens are also more likely to burn food. Even though this is not necessarily a safety issue but a health one, you do expose yourself to long term health issues if you are often eating burnt food. For example, throat and stomach cancer are associated with eating burnt food.

Toaster ovens and convection ovens serve different purposes for the most part. But that doesn’t mean anything to people who only have enough money for one.

If you feel that you need to make the difficult choice, I would suggest the toaster oven. Although toaster ovens cook slower than a convection oven, they save on space and can still provide excellent cooking without spending as much energy.