Customer Reviews

Black & Decker CTO4300W Perfect Broil Countertop Oven, White

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

This is my first countertop oven. I've owned it for about 3 months and love it. So far I've used it to bake or broil muffins, potatoes, chicken legs, garlic bread, Totino's frozen pizza, enchilada casserole, pasta casserole.... not to mention toasted bread, bagels, and English muffins . This oven delivers.

The included drip pan/broil trays are only slightly thicker than disposable aluminum pans but are still useful for broiling. Good news is the size of this oven easily accommodates some of my smaller conventional bake ware such as an 8 X 8 inch Pyrex dish and a 6 cup muffin tin. I like the fact it has 4 heating elements, 2 top, 2 bottom which seems to promote more even heat distribution than the 2 element toaster I've used at the office. I like the 3 mechanical controls. One for temp, one to control the heating coils, and a countdown timer that actually turns the oven off when it dings. The control knobs have a solid feel. There is also a "stay warm" feature that works great for warming dinner plates. Yes, this oven will hold a stack of at least 4 dinner plates and will keep them warm while your regular oven cooks. I also like that the wire grill is offset to provide 4 different elevation levels by simply flipping it over and using either of the 2 side slides. The all glass door is easy to clean. So is the slide out crumb tray. The case gets hot so be sure to check the outside dimensions and give it at least an inch of side clearance. This unit is a little larger than most toaster ovens.

Does this countertop oven replace a conventional oven? Not exactly but it comes close. In a pinch, like a kitchen remodel, a small dorm room or other cramped quarters this oven is a great choice. You could bake, roast, broil, and toast for months using no other appliance. It most certainly replaces a regular oven for small oven jobs like baking two pot pies or 2 baked potatoes or a quick batch of 6 muffins from a mix. I have only used my regular oven twice since this oven arrived. I like having a second oven capacity in my small apartment kitchen. I am very pleased with this purchase.

I am pretty happy with the toaster oven. It bakes perfectly. I haven't cooked a pizza in it, but I have reheated one and it heated through as if it just cam from the pizzeria. Toasting is a little less than perfect, it takes a VERY long time. There are a couple of things that could have been done better.
*The knobs are hard to turn, unless you have a strong grip with your fingertips, you have to use your whole hand to turn the knobs. They could have made that a little easier.
*When it's time to toast or bake, you have to set all three knobs, kinda tedious.
*To toast, you have to turn the knob to 20, then turn it back to 10 for toasting, it seems like they could have figured out something better.

Overall, decent toaster for the price. If this toaster was any more expensive, I would have rated it much worse.

I just bought this toaster oven. My waffles and bread are toasted pretty evenly. A small drawback is that the timer knob is supposed to be turned to twenty and then to the desired time. It's attractive and I do love that four slices of bread or waffles fit easily. It makes feeding kids quicker in the morning. So far, I would recommend this product.

I have owned B & D toaster ovens for over 10 year I brought this one as a replacement and it works fine for what I mainly use it for, toasting bread. First time I used this appliance, I had a difficult time using the "round" control knobs especially the timer function knob. The round knobs are hard to grip and slippery if your fingers have a some oil on them. To toast, you have to turn the timer knob clockwise past the "toaster" icon on the face and then turn counterclockwise to a point how dark you want your toast. Sounds easy, but this round timer knob mechanism was very stiff/resistant in turning clockwise and then counterclockwise. So the round knob made it hard to do this clockwise/counterclockwise action. The knob was slipping as I did this even with dry fingers. I like the knobs with a raised center grip. I am hoping this stiffness will loosen up as I use it more. Otherwise, the toaster oven is working fine.

Received this item in September. From day one this toaster oven would toast ONLY on one side of the bread. Calling black and decker resulted in them telling me to turn the bread over when the top side was done!! I exchanged this appliance three times, with the same result. Regardless of rack positioning, the bread still toasted only on one side.

Recently, after using this on an oven setting, I've discovered that the toaster part doesn't work at all. The elements go off once the oven reaches some pre-determined temperature, as if it's on oven setting. This has resulted in completely dried out toast (still having to turn the bread over) which crumbles when buttered or used in a sandwich.

Black and Decker used to make quality products. Has some schlock outfit bought the name and trademarks?

It's certainly too late for me to get my money back. I'll have to eat the loss and find a better toaster oven.

Many "just purchased and love it" reviews tend to show up on Amazon (I've posted several myself), but it's always helpful to see a review where the reviewer has used the product for awhile and can truly speak to the pros and cons from experience. I've used this B&D toaster oven for several years and here's my review:

1. 3 stars solely because, for the cheap price, this toaster oven continued working for several years. That's really not bad for such a cheap oven.
2. I never use this B&D oven for toast - you have to fiddle with several knobs just to toast, and the toasting takes too long and is uneven.
3. My unit has a hot spot in the left rear corner and had it from Day One. When baking any kind of bread product (such as biscuits), I have to remember to turn the tray around partway thru baking to get everything to bake evenly.
4. After several years the white housing now looks pretty bad, especially in the center front where the top has a distinct "burned" look from high heat.
5. The hooks on the door (designed to grab the rack and pull it out for you as you open the door) seemed nifty at first glance, but buyer beware. The hooks do pull out the rack, but they then push the rack back unevenly when you attempt to close the door and the rack often dislodges from the track inside. You then have to manually jimmy the rack back into its track. All the while the heat from the oven is escaping into the room and you're trying your darnedest to not get burned. SO FRUSTRATING.

Today I've reached my last nerve with this unit. For the money I was willing to spend several years ago, this little toaster oven was not a bad purchase. You have to endure a few frustrations. This time around I'm spending a bit more with the hope of getting better performance. You can be sure I'll be looking for a door design that does not have those infuriating hooks!

Bought this after tossing out a terrible Toastmaster toaster oven. This one worked pretty well for 18 months and then the top element stopped working. I cannot understand why they cannot mske a good toaster oven at a reasonable price.

4 stars because it isn't that great of a toaster.

We recently needed to replace our last toaster oven. It had lasted about 12 years, so no complaints. One of the elements had stopped working properly, so a new one was needed. I poured over reviews and feature lists and decided to go with this Black & Decker model. I was hoping that it would do as well as a toaster as our last one, but sadly, it isn't that great for toast. Acceptable, but not great. It tends to toast unevenly and if you're not careful you'll end up with croutons rather than toast.

As an oven, however, this little machine does a fine job. It will bake a 12" pizza, no problem and does quite well with the other things I've baked as well, when I haven't wanted to use my full sized oven.

So, if you primarily want a toaster, you might wish to keep looking. If you're looking for a counter top or multi-purpose oven, then this one will do just fine.

Where do I begin? I've had this toaster for 2 years now. Here are some of the issues:

1. The timer knob is useless. You cannot get the time accurate enough, so you spend the entire toasting time monitoring what you've put in. In addition if your hands are even slightly slippery, it's difficult to grip.

2. The timer knob after a few mos, stopped timing and started "stay warm" mode. You'd have to reset it by making the bell ding, then rewind several times before it starting ticking. minor annoyance, but if it wakes kids up in the morning, it's a big deal.

3. Heats objects totally uneven. One 1/2 of your toast will be black, the other 1/2 won't have any color at all.

4. After a little over a year, the top heating elements stopped working. This toaster already took inordinate amounts of time to do normal toasting, and now it takes forever.

This covers the basics of any toaster: heating and timing. It fails in both respects. I've had cheaper toasters work much better with longer life!

I am displeased w/the toast function of this oven. There were more reviews OKing the toast function than not. However, I've just begun using this oven & find that it toasts too dark on 1 side & not enough on the other. Also, don't move past the "light" setting unless you like charcoal. I also have a problem w/the timer knob. It is not a big deal to turn the timer past 20, but putting it in reverse almost requires pliers. I have to use one of those rubber jar-opener sheets to move back from 20 min, So far I've used it to bake only once & I find the temp setting is a bit high - you might need to make it lower than the recipe instructions. So the jury is still out. My old one still works (just turned brown on the rims) & I'm afraid to get rid of it!