The Breville the Smart Oven BOV800XL is a medium-sized toaster oven. While it's not meant for air frying, it offers a variety of functions, including optional convection to help speed up baking or roasting, as well as standard modes like 'Broil' and 'Toast.' This model also includes quality-of-life features, like a preheat reminder, a cooking chamber light, and a screen that displays information about your chosen setting. It comes with several accessories, including an enamel-coated baking tray, broil pan, wire rack, and a 12" pizza pan.
Our Verdict
The Breville the Smart Oven is good for mixed usage. It can accommodate a variety of dishes: it's not huge and won't quite fit a standard 12-cup muffin tin, but it will fit a 9" X 13" baking sheet and the average frozen pizza. It has incredible temperature stability that helps you get good results when baking cookies, roasting a small chicken, or reheating leftovers. It's a decent but somewhat slow toaster. It also doesn't preheat as fast as some similarly-sized ovens, which makes it less useful for reheating a quick snack. It's also not meant for air frying and isn't well-suited for making crispy foods like French fries.
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Big capacity.
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Fantastic temperature stability and accuracy.
The Breville the Smart Oven is very good for reheating leftovers. This medium-sized toaster oven doesn't overshoot your selected temperature setting, reducing the risk of your food burning or drying out before it's heated through. Its elements heat evenly, which also helps ensure your food gets completely reheated without some parts burning. It'll easily fit bowls, plates, and the average casserole dish. That said, it doesn't preheat as fast as some toaster ovens of a similar size.
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Big capacity.
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Fantastic temperature stability and accuracy.
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Preheats somewhat slowly.
The Breville the Smart Oven is fantastic for baking. The oven stays very close to your selected temperature setting during cooking. The temperature is also uniform throughout the cooking chamber, without major hot or cold spots. All of this helps get good results when baking bread or cookies since it makes the oven's performance more predictable and reduces the chance of your food burning or drying out before it's properly cooked.
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Fantastic temperature stability and accuracy.
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Temperature inside cooking chamber is uniform.
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No air fry function.
The Breville the Smart Oven is a sub-par air fryer. It has a fan you can use for convection with most functions, like 'Bake' and 'Roast,' it isn't intended for air frying. It doesn't do a good job of air frying foods like French fries, chicken wings, and vegetables, as only about half of the food is crispy and golden brown when fully cooked. Still, using the convection feature does help speed up cooking compared with ovens without fans.
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No air fry function.
The Breville the Smart Oven is decent for toasting. It can fit six slices of bread and doesn't take too long to make golden-brown toast at full capacity. It does a good job of browning the bread evenly, so it's an okay alternative to a four-slice slot toaster if you need more capacity. There are separate settings for bagels and toast. However, it's somewhat slow. It toasts the upper face of the bread more than the bottom.
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Makes good toast at full capacity.
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Toasts four slices slowly.
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Toasts one side more.
The Breville the Smart Oven has a big capacity. The cooking chamber is more spacious than other similarly-sized toaster ovens and can accommodate a casserole dish, loaf pan, 9" X 13" baking sheet, or a 12" frozen pizza. However, it may not fit a 12-cup muffin tin, and it doesn't have much vertical space, so baking bread with a high rise or cooking something like a whole chicken could be an issue.
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Big capacity.
- 7.7 Mixed Usage
- 7.8 Leftovers
Performance Usages
- 9.3 Baking
- 5.8 Air Frying
- 7.3 Toasting
- 8.3 Cooking Capacity
Differences Between Sizes And Variants
The Breville the Smart Oven BOV800XL only comes in 'Stainless Steel.' Here's a picture of our unit's label.
If you encounter another variant, let us know in the comments, and we'll update our review.
Compared To Other Toaster Ovens
The Breville the Smart Oven BOV800XL is a high-end toaster oven that's smaller than the Breville the Smart Oven Air Fryer Pro BOV900BSS and bigger than the Breville the Mini Smart Oven BOV450XL. While it's not meant for air frying, it has a versatile performance otherwise. Its good toasting performance makes it a reasonable alternative to a slot toaster, especially if you want to toast more than four slices at once, although it's a bit slow. It also has fantastic temperature stability, which is good for baking or reheating. If you want a toaster oven that can quickly crisp and brown foods like French fries and Brussels sprouts, models like the COSORI Smart Air Fryer CS130-AO and the Ninja Flip SP151 both offer a much better air frying performance.
Test Results
It's a medium-sized oven. Its design isn't very tall, but it's pretty wide and needs a good chunk of counter space.
This oven has a lot of cooking capacity for its overall size. Unlike the Cuisinart Air Fryer TOA-70 and Tovala Smart Oven, which are around the same size, you can fit a 9" X 13" baking sheet inside. Three possible tray positions allow you to put your food very close to the upper elements when broiling or use the bottom position for taller items like a loaf of bread.
- 11" x 11" enamel-coated baking pan (28cm x 28cm)
- 11.6" X 13.7" wire rack (29.5cm x 35cm)
- 11.2" x 11.2" enamel broil rack (28.5cm x 28.5 cm)
- 12.2" pizza pan (31cm)
- User guides
It has good versatility. There are nine functions for different purposes, and for most, you can choose whether or not you want the fan on with the convection button. There's also a 'Frozen Foods' option that you can use with its 'Toast,' 'Bagel,' 'Cookies,' and 'Pizza' functions. This setting adds additional time for defrosting before cooking or toasting your food. It's on by default for the 'Pizza' function. Each function has a preset temperature and time that you can adjust to your specific needs. There's also a preheat reminder for some functions.
| Function | Temperature | Time | Convection |
| Toast | Shade setting 1 - 7 | Depends on number of slices (1 - 6) | No |
| Bagel | Shade setting 1 - 7 | Depends on number of slices (1 - 6) | No |
| Bake | 120°F - 450°F | 1 minute - 2 hours | Optional |
| Roast | 120°F - 450°F | 1 minute - 2 hours | Optional |
| Broil | 300°F, 400°F, or 500°F | 1 - 20 minutes | No |
| Pizza | 120°F - 450°F | Depends on selected pizza diameter in inches | Optional |
| Cookies | 120°F - 450°F | 1 minute - 1 hour | Optional |
| Reheat | 120°F - 450°F | 1 minute - 1 hour | Optional |
| Warm | 120°F - 450°F | 1 minute - 2 hours | No |
It's very easy to clean. The cooking chamber interior has a non-stick coating and is spacious enough to maneuver your hand inside. The lower elements are spread apart and quite easy to clean around. However, the upper elements have guards or covers and are quite closely spaced, so it can be difficult to reach between them. The metal guards that help hold the trays in place are quite sharp, and you can cut yourself if you're not careful. Finally, the baking tray has an enamel coating, which isn't quite as easy to clean as non-stick surfaces, so you may need to give it some extra attention with a sponge or let it soak for a while.
It's good at toasting at full capacity. It toasts the surface of each slice quite evenly. However, the top face of the bread gets toasted much more than the bottom. Breville's slot toasters, like the Breville Die-Cast 4-Slice Smart Toaster, do a better job of equally cooking both sides of the bread.
It makes good toast if you use four slices at once. With fewer slices, it produces slightly more evenly toasted bread. However, the bottom face of the bread is still undercooked compared with the top.
It's not good for air frying. This model has a fan, but it's much weaker than some oven fans, including the higher-end Breville the Smart Oven Air Fryer Pro BOV900BSS'. It does a better job of making crispy, golden-brown food than toaster ovens without fans, but by the time your food is cooked, nearly half is still undercooked and pale. The fan does help speed up cooking, though.
It preheats decently quickly. There's also a preheat reminder for some modes.
It has fantastic temperature stability. The oven maintains a stable, accurate temperature during cooking and never overshoots your selected temperature setting. The temperature is also uniform throughout the chamber, so you won't notice one spot in the oven is much hotter than another. Temperature stability helps you bake and reheat food without burning or drying it out. It also makes the oven's performance more predictable, so you can more easily follow a recipe.
It toasts bread pretty slowly. Other toaster ovens, like the Hamilton Beach Quantum Air Fryer 31350G, can toast six slices faster. It's not much faster if you only use four slices.