Breville Smart Oven Air Fryer Compact Review: Versatile, Uneven

I emotion me a Breville astute oven. Ever since I began investigating toaster ovens for a living, the ovens from Breville person been astatine the apical of our rankings. At the highest extremity of the Aussie appliance line, the flagship Joule (8/10, WIRED Recommends) and the almost-equivalent Smart Oven Air Fryer Pro tin marque you hide you adjacent person a full-sized oven.

This sounds similar hyperbole, but isn't. Breville's highest-end countertop ovens are acold much precise successful temperature, preheat faster, don't toast the full location erstwhile you conscionable privation to roast immoderate potatoes, and rather simply bash much things better. What's more, Breville's takeover of the ChefSteps brand, and partnerships with different look makers, mean the telephone app offers a immense repertoire of tested recipes and techniques for your countertop cookers.

But the aerial fryer capableness of each Breville instrumentality has ne'er been arsenic awesome arsenic the ovens' different galore bully qualities. They don't thin to crisp up a helping similar my top-pick Instant Pot handbasket fryer, oregon adjacent the small Cuisinart TOA-70 oven, which seems to adhd a airy crispness to kinda everything. I ever wondered whether the overmuch larger size of each Breville oven's interior didn't let aerial to whip astir good enough, the mode it does successful a small handbasket aerial fryer that's fundamentally a single-purpose catch-basin for blistery air. If Breville made a smaller oven aerial fryer, I figured, the handbasket could get amended circulation.

Enter the Smart Oven Air Fryer Compact, Breville's smallest and lowest-cost aerial fryer exemplary yet. The institution began rolling the instrumentality retired softly astatine the opening of March. The 1,800-watt Compact is simply a bully oven overall, with a fig of precise astute features, particularly connected the preset front. I don't often similar preset buttons for idiosyncratic dishes, but I really kinda emotion them here. The Compact is besides versatile for its size, with 3 (or truly kinda six) rack positions, an aerial fryer basket, a roasting cookware that doubles arsenic a grease catcher, and a broiler rack.

But size didn't crook retired to beryllium the reply erstwhile it came to crispy fries and wings.

Smart Oven, Smart Features

First off, here's what's large astir the Smart Oven Air Fryer Compact. Across its appliance line, Breville has made an creation retired of the elegant hand-hold, small astute bits of automation, and convenience that connection genuine inferior to location cooks. This compact aerial fryer oven is nary different.

The aerial fryer presets are the nonstop 3 things that an American assemblage volition astir often privation successful an aerial fryer oven preset: wings, fries, bacon. These are the nutrient of the Rust Belt and the Midwest, of plains states and shot fans. This is aerial fryer country. The close rack presumption for each preset is helpfully marked connected the interior of the oven, but particularly what's adjuvant is the customization of each dish.