The Frigidaire Gallery GCRE306CBF is a mid-range 30" electric oven and range with five burners. While it's a full-size oven and not a toaster oven, it has some of the same features found on toaster ovens, including an air fry function and steam cooking. We tested this oven in conjunction with our R&D investigation into the differences in performance between toaster ovens and full-size ovens when it comes to common uses like baking, toasting, and air frying.
If you want to know how toaster ovens perform for air frying compared to basket-style air fryers, you can check out our article explaining why basket air fryers perform better and our list of the best (basket-style) air fryers.
Our Verdict
The Frigidaire Gallery GCRE306CBF isn't as suitable for mixed usage as some toaster ovens. This full-size oven offers greater versatility because of its bigger capacity, so it can handle multiple pans of cookies or a turkey. It's an excellent choice for baking and roasting thanks to its stable temperature during cooking. However, despite having an air fry mode, it doesn't perform well for that purpose, partly because its fan isn't very powerful even compared with much smaller toaster ovens. Toaster ovens are also much easier to use for toasting, and many produce better results. This oven preheats slowly compared with toaster ovens, making it less suitable for quickly reheating snacks and leftovers compared with appliances like toaster ovens and air fryers.
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Big capacity.
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Excellent temperature stability.
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Not good for air frying.
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Toasts slowly.
The Frigidaire Gallery GCRE306CBF isn't a great choice for reheating leftovers compared with a toaster oven. That's mainly because it takes longer to preheat, making it less convenient to use for reheating a quick snack or a plate of leftovers. However, it can accommodate more food and has excellent temperature stability.
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Big capacity.
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Preheats very slowly compared with toaster ovens.
The Frigidaire Gallery GCRE306CBF is excellent for baking. It maintains a stable and accurate temperature during cooking without overshooting your selected temperature setting. The temperature is uniform throughout the cooking chamber. All of this makes it easier to follow recipes and cook delicate foods without them burning or drying out.
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Excellent temperature stability.
The Frigidaire Gallery GCRE306CBF is a full-size oven with an air fry function. It doesn't include an air frying basket, although you can purchase one separately from the manufacturer. However, even if you use an air frying basket, it's slower to cook crispy foods like French fries than most basket-style air fryers and produces uneven results.
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Air fry function.
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Not good for air frying.
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No air frying basket included.
The Frigidaire Gallery GCRE306CBF isn't ideal for toasting. It's not really meant for that, although you can toast bread in an oven using the 'Broil' function if you flip it partway through. However, even then, it doesn't produce very evenly toasted bread and takes a long time, even compared with most toaster ovens. While slot toasters are your best bet for fast, even toast, most toaster ovens we've tested perform better than this oven.
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Big capacity.
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Must flip bread.
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Toasts slowly.
The Frigidaire Gallery GCRE306CBF is a full-size oven, so it has a definite advantage over a toaster oven in terms of capacity. It can accommodate multiple baking sheets, roasts, whole chickens, or 20 slices of sandwich bread on one rack.
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Big capacity.
- 6.8 Mixed Usage
- 4.9 Leftovers
Performance Usages
- 8.8 Baking
- 3.5 Air Frying
- 5.7 Toasting
- 10 Cooking Capacity
Differences Between Sizes And Variants
This oven 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 Frigidaire Gallery GCRE306CBF is a full-size convection oven that we tested to compare its performance to a toaster oven, many of which offer similar features, like an air fry function. Its air frying performance doesn't stand out compared with some toaster ovens we've tested, such as the Cuisinart Air Fryer TOA-70 or the Ninja Flip SP151. It's not as convenient to use as a toaster since you have to flip the bread, and many toaster ovens we've tested are better for that purpose, like the Ninja Foodi DT201.
However, it offers excellent temperature stability, which is important for good baking and roasting results. Of course, its much larger capacity makes it more suitable for big batches of baked goods and full meals compared with even the biggest toaster ovens. However, several toaster ovens we've tested offer equally good or better temperature stability, showing that toaster ovens can perform similarly to regular ovens when baking bread or roasting a chicken, assuming your food fits.
If you're looking for the best appliance for your specific needs, you can also check out the best toaster ovens, the best (slot) toasters, and the best air fryers.
Test Results
As you would expect, it's bigger than the biggest toaster oven we've tested. Because it's being compared with toaster ovens, it scores a '0' on this test.
A conventional oven gives you much more room for cookie sheets, roast chickens, casseroles, and multi-level baking. The Wolf Gourmet Elite WGCO150S, one of the biggest toaster ovens we've tested, can fit a 12" pizza and has three rack positions; this oven has six rack positions and would fit an 18" pizza. Here's a photo comparison between this oven, a large toaster oven (the Wolf Gourmet), and a very small toaster oven (the Dash Mini DMTO100).
This oven offers many of the same features as the more versatile toaster ovens we've tested, including convection, an air fry mode, steam cooking, and a temperature probe. Its lowest temperature of 100°F and highest of 550°F means it has a wider temperature range than many toaster ovens. However, despite its much larger cooking chamber, its fan is equally or less powerful than many toaster ovens we've tested with an air fry function.
| Function | Temperature | Fan |
| Preheat | 170°F - 550°F | Off |
| Bake | 170°F - 550°F | Off |
| Broil | 400°F - 500°F | Off |
| Air Fry | 170°F - 550°F | On |
| Sous Vide | 100°F - 205°F | Off |
| Steam Bake | 215°F - 550°F | Off |
| Steam Roast | 215°F - 550°F | Off |
| Convection Bake | 170°F - 550°F | On |
| Convection Roast | 170°F - 550°F | On |
| Food Probe | 140°F - 210°F | Off |
| Keep Warm | 140°F - 200°F | Off |
It's very easy to clean. In general, bigger toaster ovens are easier to clean because it's easier to maneuver your hand around inside, so it stands to reason that a full-size oven's even more spacious cooking chamber is extra easy to reach into. This oven's cooking chamber has an enamel coating, which isn't as common with toaster ovens, which more often have nonstick-coated interiors.
The element on top of the cooking chamber can be a bit tricky to clean behind, but there are no other hard-to-reach crevices inside the oven. Unlike most toaster ovens, you can easily unscrew the convection fan's cover to clean behind it.
There are some sharp corners around the element, so you have to be careful not to cut yourself, which is common in toaster ovens. While it's easy to clean overall, cleaning the larger cooking chamber will take longer.
It doesn't have a toast function, which is expected for an oven. However, you can use 'Broil' mode to toast bread, flipping the slices partway through so that both sides get toasted. The rack comfortably fits 20 pieces of sandwich bread. However, we performed the test with nine slices as that is the maximum our toaster oven test equipment can accommodate. Placing the rack in the second position from the top produced the best results.
Compared with toaster ovens that can fit nine slices, like the Breville the Smart Oven Air Fryer Pro BOV900BSS, it doesn't toast very evenly. Both sides get toasted equally since you must flip them, but the center slice toasts much faster than the others.
It makes more even toast with just four slices at once. However, you still have to flip the bread so that both sides get toasted, and the surface of the bread isn't toasted as evenly as a good toaster oven or slot toaster would do.
This oven has an air fry function, similar to some toaster ovens we tested. However, it doesn't perform very well. Despite having a much larger cooking chamber, its fan is equally or less powerful than some toaster oven/air fryers we've tested, like the Breville the Smart Oven Air Fryer Pro BOV900BSS and Cuisinart Air Fryer TOA-70.
While it cooks food like French fries faster than an oven or toaster oven with no fan for air frying, it's much slower than most basket-style air fryers and produces less even results. If you use it for crispy foods like veggies or chicken wings, most come out either under or overcooked.
Many toaster oven/air fryers come with a mesh basket for air frying, but this oven does not. To see how it would affect the oven's air frying performance, we also performed our air fry test with a mesh air frying basket intended for a toaster oven. The manufacturer does sell an 'Air Fry Tray' with a similar design, and we're confident that our toaster oven tray is an appropriate stand-in for the one sold by Frigidaire. Using a basket did improve the results, but not by a huge amount.
Here are the results using an air fry basket:
Crispy Fries: 40.7%
Overcooked Fries: 12.5%
Undercooked Fries: 46.8%
Time to Reach 45% Moisture Loss: 32:00
Air Fry Score: 4.8
You can see a video of the fries being sorted or a photo of the sorted fries.
The oven has a preheat reminder for its air fry function that's meant to let you know when it's preheated to 400°F. However, the oven indicated that it was preheated when the actual temperature inside was only 185°F.
When testing toaster ovens' air frying performance, we place the toaster oven on a scale to measure moisture loss as the food cooks to determine when it's ready. Since we couldn't put this oven on a scale, we had to pre-determine the cooking time by removing the food from the oven periodically until we measured 45% moisture loss. We then performed the test using that cook time. However, this method is a bit less exact.
It preheats slower than a toaster oven, which is expected because, generally, bigger ovens take longer to preheat. The preheat reminder is also inaccurate when you're using the regular 'Bake' mode. The oven indicates the temperature inside is only 325°F when it's actually 350°F.
This oven has excellent temperature stability. It stays close to your selected temperature setting throughout most of your cooking. The temperature throughout the oven is uniform as well, so overall, it's well-suited for baking and roasting. Many toaster ovens have similar or slightly better temperature stability, such as the Breville the Smart Oven Air Fryer Pro BOV900BSS, Cuisinart Digital Air Fryer CTOA-130PC3, and Wolf Gourmet Elite WGCO150S.