The Cuisinart Air Fryer TOA-70 is a medium-sized combo toaster oven and air fryer, so some modes use a fan. More unusually, it also has a 'Grill' function that causes only the bottom elements to be turned on. It comes with a wire rack, baking tray, mesh basket for air frying, and a grill pan.
Our Verdict
The Cuisinart Air Fryer TOA-70 is decent for mixed use. While it's not a huge oven and won't fit 9" X 13" sheet pans, it can fit the average frozen pizza or a loaf pan. It has a good air-frying performance, so it's a good choice if you want to use it for crispy foods like veggies and chicken wings. However, it preheats quickly, so it's a convenient option for reheating leftovers. It's a reasonable choice for toasting bread, even if it is a bit slow. However, it doesn't maintain a stable temperature during cooking and often overshoots your selected setting, so it's not good for baking.
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Good air frying performance.
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Preheats quickly.
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Decent capacity.
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Toasts unevenly at max capacity.
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Temperature stability is mediocre.
The Cuisinart TOA-70 is good for leftovers. It preheats quickly, which is nice for reheating a quick snack. It can fit dishes like plates and bowls. However, its mediocre temperature stability is a major downside. There's a fairly significant temperature variation during cooking, and it will often overshoot the selected temperature. This can lead to your food drying out or burning before it's properly reheated.
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Preheats quickly.
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Runs hot.
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Temperature stability is mediocre.
The Cuisinart TOA-70 isn't good for baking. The temperature varies quite a bit during cooking, making it harder to get good results when baking and roasting. It also runs hot for a significant chunk of the cooking time, which can lead to your food being burned or browned on the outside while still raw on the inside. On the plus side, there aren't any major hot or cold spots inside the cooking chamber.
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Temperature inside chamber is uniform.
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Runs hot.
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Temperature stability is mediocre.
The Cuisinart TOA-70 is good for air frying. It has an air fry mode with a powerful fan and comes with a mesh basket for more even cooking. It quickly cooks foods like fries, chicken wings, and vegetables, especially for an oven-style air fryer. It produces mostly evenly cooked, browned, and crispy results. However, a fairly significant proportion is still undercooked, and it would likely perform better if it maintained a more stable temperature during cooking. The best drawer-style air fryers will produce more evenly cooked food.
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Good air frying performance.
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Mesh air fry basket included.
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Temperature stability is mediocre.
The Cuisinart TOA-70 is decent for toasting. If you use its full six-slice capacity, it doesn't perform well, leaving some parts of your bread nearly raw while burning others. It produces much better, more evenly browned toast if you only use four slices at once, although it's somewhat slow compared with many 4-slice slot toasters.
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Toasts four slices evenly.
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Toasts unevenly at max capacity.
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Toasts somewhat slowly.
The Cuisinart TOA-70 has a decent capacity. It won't quite fit a 9" X 13" baking sheet, but its cooking chamber will accommodate the average frozen pizza or six slices of bread.
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Decent capacity.
- 7.0 Mixed Usage
- 7.8 Leftovers
Performance Usages
- 5.9 Baking
- 7.7 Air Frying
- 7.1 Toasting
- 7.1 Cooking Capacity
Differences Between Sizes And Variants
The Cuisinart TOA-70 comes in 'Stainless Steel,' 'Black Stainless Steel,' 'White,' and 'Navy Blue.' We tested it 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 Cuisinart Air Fryer TOA-70 is a good option if you plan to make frequent use of its air fry feature since it has a more powerful fan and a better air frying performance compared with some similar models like the Gourmia Digital Air Fryer GTF7900 and the Hamilton Beach Sure-Crisp 31196FG. However, if you want to use your toaster oven as a toaster, the Hamilton Beach offers a better performance, as does the Cuisinart Digital Air Fryer CTOA-130PC3, although it doesn't have the TOA-70's grill feature. This model's mediocre temperature stability makes it less suitable for more delicate cooking tasks like baking and roasting.
Test Results
This medium-sized toaster oven has a tall design, so you'll have to be sure it fits under any cabinets or shelves above your counter. However, it's not very wide.
The Cuisinart TOA-70 has a medium-sized cooking chamber. While it's not as spacious as the Breville the Smart Oven Air Fryer Pro BOV900BSS, it can fit six slices of bread or a 12-inch pizza. However, it has only two tray positions.
- User guides
- 28 x 31.5cm wire rack (11.0 x 12.4 in)
- 26.5 x 30.1cm baking pan (10.4 x 11.8 in)
- 24.8 x 28.6cm mesh air fry basket (9.8 x 11.3 in)
- 22.7 x 26.4cm non-stick grill pan (8.9 x 10.4 in)
- French interface stickers (likely region-specific)
It's decently versatile. It has various modes for different cooking methods, some of which use the fan for convection, which speeds up cooking. The 'Grill' function is unusual and heats food only from the bottom. You're meant to use it for foods like steaks, burgers, and vegetables, flipping partway through cooking as you would on a regular grill. However, the fan is on for most modes. For example, while you would expect its fan to be on with its Bake (convection) mode, it's also on for the regular 'Bake' mode, just at a lower speed. The option of switching off its fan entirely would make it more versatile.
There are also only a couple of possible tray positions, which limits your ability to adjust its performance for your specific recipe. It also lacks a preheat mode, so it's a little light on quality-of-life features. Unlike the Cuisinart Digital Air Fryer CTOA-130PC3, its controls are entirely analog, with no screens, which you might prefer. It also has a light inside its cooking chamber, so you can see inside while your food cooks.
- Warm: No fan
- Broil: Fan is on low
- Broil (convection): Fan is on high
- Toast: Light, medium, or dark. Fan is on low speed
- Bake: Fan is on low speed
- Bake (convection): Fan is on high
- Air Fry: Fan is on high
- Grill: Fan is on high
It's easy to clean by hand. The inside of the cooking chamber has a non-stick coating, making it easier to wipe clean. It's also pretty spacious, so it's not that hard to maneuver your hand around, although the chamber's height can make it hard to reach the very top. The four upper elements are nearly impossible to clean between or above. Their covers also have sharp corners, so you must be careful not to cut yourself.
The Cuisinart TOA-70 has a mediocre toasting performance at full capacity. While it browns the top of your bread quite evenly, a hot spot in the back center of the oven burns the bottom of that slice of bread. The bottom face of slices closer to the door are almost completely untoasted by the time other slices are charred.
It performs much better with four slices at once. Since it produces different results depending on whether your bread is placed in the middle or on the edges of the cooking chamber, it helps to put your bread more in the center.
It has good air-frying performance. Using its 'Air Fry' mode and maximum fan speed, it can quickly crisp foods like French fries, chicken wings, and Brussels sprouts, especially for an oven-style air fryer. However, a fairly significant proportion is still undercooked. Good basket-style air fryers like the COSORI TurboBlaze produce more evenly air-fried food.
There's no preheat reminder, but it preheats quickly.
It has sub-par temperature stability. The oven is significantly hotter than the selected temperature for much of the cooking time, which makes it more difficult to follow recipes and can lead to your food burning or drying out. On the plus side, the temperature throughout the cooking chamber is quite uniform, which reduces the need to rotate your pans when baking or reheating.