Breville is one of the best oven brands on the market, and in this article, we will compare the Breville mini smart oven and the Breville compact oven.
We will list the characteristics of each oven and give our verdict at the end of the article.
Breville Mini Smart Oven
The Breville mini smart oven is a good quality toaster oven that does much more than just toasting bread. While this oven has a small footprint and can easily sit atop the kitchen counter, its characteristics make it more like an oven than a toaster. With the Breville mini smart oven, you can bake and roast food.
However, the Breville mini smart open has many versions, and each version comes with cooking functions. When you first observe the Breville mini smart oven models, they all look the same because they are all ovens and can cook food at the end of the day.
However, if you do some research on these models, you will find out that there are some differences between these models. Breville has done a very good job of offering different size options and features.
Pros
- Good temperature accuracy
- Good cooking process
- Compact oven
- Easy to use
Cons
- Small capacity
Performance
The Breville mini smart oven has been through baking tests, and among those ovens that performed well in the test. The Breville mini smart oven is capable of making crunchy, fluffy, and crispy cookies. The oven can also produce crispy chicken drumsticks with tender meat.
The Breville mini smart oven was just behind the full-sized Breville smart oven as far as the baking performance is concerned. However, the Breville mini smart oven struggled to retain moisture, something the full-size oven does easily.
While the food cooked in the oven typically comes out dry, the quality was not as good as the full-sized Breville smart oven.
Easy to Use
The Breville smart oven also scored well on the ease of use test and was among the most user-friendly smart ovens in the market. Even though this smart oven has a small footprint, you can still place the rack in the oven at three heights, which enables the user to optimize the oven’s position for baking, toasting, and broiling.
This oven has one knob that enables the user to go through 8 cooking modes: roast, broil, pizza, reheat, cookies, and bake. Once you pick a cooking function, you can adjust the duration and temperature by pressing the time and temperature buttons. You can also use the arrow buttons to adjust the time or temperature.
The information is shown on a digital display in front of the Breville smart oven. This mini smart oven is truly smart as it will remember your previous cooking setting, so you won’t need to change the settings for cooking a pizza or baking a bagel. The oven also comes with a defrosting function and has a sturdy and removable crumb tray.
Accurate Temperature
Similar to the full-sized Breville smart oven, the mini smart oven earned a good score in the temperature accuracy test. The mini smart oven stays within 10 Degrees of the set temperature in the test and reaches the full temperature at a rapid speed, much faster than other ovens.
While most ovens take around 10 to 15 minutes to reach 450 Degrees Fahrenheit, this smart oven can reach that temperature in less than 10 minutes.
Toasting
The mini smart oven has excellent toasting ability and scored high in the toasting metric. The mini smart oven from Breville evenly toasts slices of bread, and though the oven doesn’t have a bagel cooking function, this oven makes delicious and consistent bagels. The bagels had chewy back sides and evenly toasted faces.
Frozen Food
The Breville mini smart oven also performed well in the frozen food test. The tater tots came out with a crispy exterior but were slightly less fluffy than usual. The oven also did a good job with frozen pizzas, which looked great. However, the pizza crust lacked a bit of crispiness. This oven can easily make an 11-inch pizza.
Breville Compact Oven
The Breville compact oven is the medium option from the Breville oven lineup. Like the Breville smart oven, this oven has a small footprint and can easily sit atop the kitchen counter. The Breville compact oven is perfect for small kitchens and confined spaces. This oven is equipped with smart element IQ technology and preheats quickly.
The element IQ technology spreads heat evenly while the oven cooks the food. If you want to make a pizza, a large chicken, or bake cookies, you should not hesitate to purchase the Breville compact oven.
Pros
- It is equipped with the element IQ system
- It can make a large size 12-inch pizza or a small chicken
- Quick preheating speed
Cons
- The exterior of the oven can get hot
- It is not good at evenly cooking slices of toast
- The interior of the oven has no light
Ease of Use
This is a toaster oven and comes with various smart features. This Breville oven has a small touchscreen LCD screen, and you can use the screen to access pre-programmed recipes. This toaster oven comes with toaster settings and offers programs such as cookies, pizza, bagel, reheat, bake and broil.
The settings of this oven are customizable and easy to use. Once you set up the settings of this oven, the oven will keep them in its memory. The Breville compact oven will always remember how you like your food or toast your bread.
This compact oven offers easy cleaning and comes with a non-stick interior. To clean this oven, you only need a damp cloth and you can wipe down the walls.
Design
Like other Breville toaster ovens, this compact oven has a professional and industrial appearance. However, this oven’s appearance makes people perceive that it is difficult to use. The knobs and dials on the oven also have a professional look, and the oven is integrated with a light.
The interior light automatically turns on when the food is cooked. You can also use the light to keep an eye on your food while the Breville compact oven cooks it.
Capacity and Size
The Breville compact oven is usually referred to as a small-size toaster oven. This oven also has a larger version, which is the midrange option. This Breville compact oven has a large interior, which has a length of 12 inches. The stainless steel exterior of this oven is also large as it has a length of 10.25 inches.
The dimensions of this oven make it a reasonable investment, and if you are short on space, you can keep this oven on your kitchen counter, and it will work just fine. The interior of this oven has great depth, which enables it to cook a large quantity of food at a time.
In the Breville compact smart oven, you can bake a 12-inch pizza and toast 4 bread slices simultaneously. You can also put a 10-inch baking pan in this oven and your favorite baked goods. Check out 5 Best Toaster Ovens Under $ 50.
Heating Methods and Functionality
The Breville compact oven has patented element IQ. The element IQ is great at cooking food, and with this feature, the compact oven can adjust the 4 quartz elements automatically. The element IQ is good at evenly distributing heat and cooking food thoroughly.
However, even though this oven is equipped with IQ heating elements, it is not a convection oven, which is a big drawback.
Convection ovens have built-in fans that cook quickly and properly spread the heat. The element IQ function of this oven can manage the heat, so if you want to perform more cooking functions such as baking, you might need a convection oven. Check out 5 Best Toaster Ovens for RV.
Like most toaster ovens, the Breville compact oven doesn’t have a cool-touch exterior, which means the oven’s exterior gets extremely hot when cooking food. This is a big drawback of this oven, and this makes the oven unsafe if you have kids roaming around in the kitchen.
Automatic Shutdown
Once this oven is done cooking the food, it will automatically shut down. You can only set this oven up to cook food for about 2 hours. The oven has no function, allowing the user to keep it on for more than 2 hours. The Breville compact oven is not good for slow roasting because it is not designed to stay on for more than 2 hours.
Why Buy a Breville Smart Oven?
We have discussed both the ovens in this article are smart and have various amazing features. However, why should a person invest in the Breville smart oven? What makes the Breville smart ovens better than other smart ovens? A Breville smart oven’s advantage is that it is small, smaller than most smart toaster ovens, and you can easily place it on a countertop.
The compact size of this oven also allows easy access, and you can use this oven several times a day. Secondly, the Breville smart ovens offer a rapid preheating function, which other smart ovens typically don’t offer. For a regular oven, it makes take several minutes to preheat. Check out 5 Best Toaster Ovens for College.
This oven can bake breakfast items or bagels quickly if you are heating breakfast items or bagels. You can easily keep an eye on what’s happening inside the oven, and your back will not be strained since this oven will probably be placed on a counter.
You can also use Breville smart ovens to reheat leftover lunch; you don’t need to heat the whole house. This makes the Breville smart ovens good for the summer season. Normal ovens generate a lot of heat, which can heat the entire house.
Making dinner or pizza for the kids is easier in a Breville smart oven than in other ovens. The reviews for the Breville smart ovens have also been positive, and customers have lauded the cooking ability of the ovens.
Lastly, Breville smart ovens are great for the entire family; even teenagers can use the oven to prepare their food. However, we must warn you that the oven’s exterior gets hot, so please keep kids away from the oven.
The Verdict
When talking about the verdict, it isn’t easy to give an outright answer, so we have discussed some aspects of each oven below.
Control Panels
The oven’s cooking quality doesn’t matter when you can’t operate the oven properly. The good news is that both the Breville mini smart oven and the Breville compact come with user-friendly controls that make the oven easy to use. While both ovens have slightly different controls, both get the job done for the user.
Convection
For most people, convection is the deal breaker. Cooking food in a convection oven shortens the cooking time and lowers the overall cooking temperature. Convection cooking can also help you save electricity. Check out 10 Best Small Toaster Ovens and 5 Best Energy Efficient Toaster Ovens.
Unfortunately, neither the Breville compact oven nor the Breville smart oven is a convection oven, which is a major drawback.
Size
The Breville smart ovens come in different sizes, and the ones we discussed in this article are compact ovens. The size gives the Breville compact oven and the Breville mini smart oven the edge over the competition. Both these ovens have an extremely small footprint, which makes them perfect for a small kitchen or other confined spaces.
Element IQ and Preset Cooking Functions
The preset cooking setting is a default setting for common cooking methods or foods made in toaster ovens. Most toaster ovens have preset cooking functions, but they usually don’t work properly. However, the Breville smart oven comes with preset cooking functions that work well, and the reason behind this is that this oven uses element IQ technology.
Summing it up
The Breville compact oven and the Breville mini smart oven are evenly matched, so it is tough to pick a winner. However, both ovens also share a few drawbacks because they are not convection ovens and lack a cool-touch exterior.
So which oven should you purchase? That depends on your requirements, the size of your kitchen, how large your family is, and the type of food you cook daily.
Sources
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- Kitchen Appliance Buying Guides
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