Customer Reviews

DeLonghi AS690 Airstream Convection Toaster Oven

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

I was lured into loving this wonderful little oven. In fact, I have owned two. It bakes everything and quickly. The interior surface is easy to clean. I love the visibility through the wide oven door with the great little interior light. And, not least of all, it just looks very "gourmet". However, my first oven lasted about two months past the one year warranty when the "toast/on/off" switch began to mysteriously switch the oven "on" without warning. I worked around this malfunction by turning the temperature to zero after each use. Eventually I became convinced this was dangerous as it switched from "toast" to "on" without warning. Still a sucker for this "wonderful" oven, I bought another presuming the prior defect was just bad luck. In just over a year, guess what? Same exact problem. For over $150, I really expected more than one year of service. Unless the toast/on/off switch is redesigned, I cannot recommend this superficially appealing product because of its complete lack of durability.

After going through a new toaster oven every couple of months - none of them lasted longer than a year - we decided to end this ridiculous "buying and throwing away cheap toaster oven ritual" by getting a topof the line DeLonghi. It worked just fabulously, and we could not rave enough about it - until this morning after about two months - when DeLonghi suddenly lost some vital parts during breakfast preparation. That was not a good way to start the day. I called the DeLonghi service line to find out what to do with the diseased member of their family, while staring at my uncooked bacon. I punched my way through a maze of useless automated telephone response options - finally after half an hour on the line, I got a rather unfriendly and unresponsive customer service agent who advised me to contact the nearest service center, which is 27 miles from home (one way). This meant driving 54 miles to bring the thing there and 54 miles to pick it up - or two half day excursions to the Los Angeles area, braving L.A. traffic. After learning that it would take between four and six weeks to fix my DeLonghi (there must be a lot of DeLonghis giving up the ghost prematurely), I called Amazon to the rescue. My concerns were handled professionally and responsively by a friendly AMAZON customer agent (the DeLonghis could learn from them). AMAZON is sending a prepaid UPS return label and the DeLonghi goes back where it came from - full refund minus restocking charges - much better than wasting two half days in traffic. Impressed and reassured by this AMAZON performance,I ordered a new one as our family cannot live without a toaster oven. However DeLonghi is passe, so we're going with a Cuisinart with a standard 3 year warranty. Thank you AMAZON, you are a great dot-com !

I bought this unit to replace a 11 year old DeLonghi toaster which was heavily used and abused. Despite its use and age my Delonghi never gave up and quit working. The new DeLonghi AS690 Airstream Convection Toaster Oven is built just as tough and packed with almost every possible feature you can imagine!

The oven has several cooking modes; defrosting, baking, baking with convection fan, broiling, toasting, and dehydrating. Modes that require a temperature setting can be accurately set from 200 to 450 degrees, in 25 degree increments.

This package includes two wire racks, two cookie sheets, a broiling pan, a broiling sheet, crumb tray, and a special tool to remove these accessories when hot. Unlike most other toasters that include cheap pans and accessories, these are manufactured to be used often and stand the test of time. The toaster also has a built in light inside the oven so you can see the food's progress through the clear glass window. The addition of this bright light is a great feature that you will wish you had before!

With the convection fan you can prepare or reheat foods much faster than with a conventional oven or standard toaster oven. The defrosting mode speeds the defrosting of frozen goods so that they can be safely defrosted fast without allowing a chance for bacteria to get established. The toaster has an adjustable timer and can be set to toast breads to your preference of darkness or lightness. Thanks to its smart design you can safely use all plastic or cardboard trays that are included with frozen diners making these quick meals easy to prepare without a fuss.

The additional features that this Convection Oven features makes it a worthwhile investment. You will not be sorry. Get one today!

First, let me say that when the toaster oven is working, it's great! Loads of different functions, defrosting, dehydrating, etc. However, when the toaster oven breaks after TWO WEEKS, you're bound to be a tad bummed. Especially when this is probably the best model on the market. And the most expensive. And, because, in my house, this is the only kind of oven we have. However, I figured that this was a fluke, and didn't start panicking. Yet. I called up DeLonghi, and after being encouraged to fax them my question (one gets the sense they *really* don't like to deal with their customers), I finally got a person. I explained that my brand new toaster oven had parts falling off of it, and all she said was I could either a) Contact Amazon, or b) take it to the toaster oven hospital which is a 90 minute drive from where I live. Apparently, Delonghi doesn't have many places in the US where their appliances can be repaired. In Indiana, the only service area is in Indianapolis. So, I'd recommend you check where those places are if you want to buy a Delonghi. Fortunately, Amazon agreed without hesitation to replace the toaster oven (Yay!), except it's currently back-ordered (Boo!). So I'll be without an oven of any kind for about 6 weeks, at least. As a side note, I also e-mailed Delonghi with my plight, telling them that thair service center was pretty far away from my house, and asking if there was any way they could ship me another model or remedy the situation in another matter. It took them a week to respond, and the e-mail read "Give us your zip code so we can tell you where a service center is at." If I could e-mail them a dope slap, I would. So, I wrote back explaining how disappointed I was that their toaster oven fell apart after 2 weeks, but that I was even more disappointed in their customer service. No response to that e-mail, of course. To sum it up, great toaster over (If it doesn't disintegrate on you!), crappy customer service. I mean, there was never even an apology like "Sorry our toaster oven has parts falling off of it." I'd never buy another Delonghi product again. It's quite the bummer. :(

The is my second type of convection oven. My first one was a jet air and it broke and wasn't replaceable. Then I purchased the Delonghi and if this one breaks I would buy another, & another just like it. No cooking kitchen should be without a convection oven. I never use my regular oven anymore. The Delonghi oven roast the very best chicken. A whole chicken butterflied in 30 minutes. It cooks fish steaks to perfection in 5 to 7 minutes. I do lambs chops and beef tenderloins just like in a restaurant. Total perfection in cooking. With convenience and speed. It cooks in half the time and it doesn't heat up the kitchen because of the speed. The speed of the circulatiing hot air cooks the food and retains the juices. It also grills vegetables. I would hate to be without it.....And as cooking without fat, this is it. You season your meat, spray the pan with pam, put it in, close the door and time it. But don't forget it because it's fast....

I was just searching the web for a new convection oven when I stumbled into this site with comments about Delongi. I have personally owned 3 of these products and had a bad experience with each of them. First attempt failed when I got my product and plugged it in. The fan that runs when the convection oven operates rattled, squeaked and made terrible noises. So I exchanged the first day owned figuring it was just bad luck. Second, got it home and after a week a button got stuck. Very frustrated, we returned it and were talked into taking another for exchange because we were still within our return period. Third attempt ended a little under a month after our 2nd exchange. We made dinner in it, shut the unit off and went into the other room to watch a movie, came back in the kitchen 2+ hours later and the unit was still on and would not shut off unless unplugged. And every time you replugged it in it would fire back up again. We were lucky we were still home or our house would have burnt down. Clearly a serious situation. I called Delongi that night and as it was after service hours had to leave as message that was to be returned. Guess what -no call was returned. So I called a few days later and got a Rep. and they could have cared less. -Rep was rude & I was told send it to get repaired or return it. So luckily I was still in my return period so I returned it. Would never recommend buying an item from Delongi. Products are clearly defective (3 for 3 in my case) and their service is the worst I have experienced ever. You would think DeLongi would be receptive to something as serious, and which I now realize happens often based on the feedback in this section. -Probably many class action suits agains them!

I received this product as a gift and so far I love it. Once you figure out the controls and time it works great. You can cook a medium pizza or an entire can of biscuits without crowing it. Caution though, do not put anything on top of the oven while cooking it will peel the paint off. Easy to use and clean.

I have no complaint with the oven when it works, but there are technical problems: in 11 months of use, the knobs have broken off twice. That means shipping the item to the repair center (for me, a cost of $15) and waiting for it to be fixed. As of this writing, I've been waiting for one month and two days for the oven to be fixed--and the repair center told me it does not yet have the necessary parts to fix it. Other problems: the door does not close properly, the door handle is loose, and the heating coils bend, so that I cannot remove the bottom tray without bending them back into position. I think this unit is defective, but so far, DeLonghi has refused to replace it. I am contacting my state consumer complaint division to pursue this further. I've never purchased a more expensive toaster oven, and have never had as many problems as with this one.

Okay, I bit the bullet and bought what I thought would be a nice addition to my kitchen. I needed a new toaster and splurged for this one. I have used it to bake corn bread, muffins, 8x8 cakes, etc., (it does a nice job and doesn't heat up the entire kitchen) and to roast a small chicken. It must be a VERY small chicken to fit into this oven. It does a nice job on the chicken if it fits but YOU try to clean the top of this oven after having roasted a chicken in it. And guess what, the warrantee ran out yesterday and one of the knobs broke off it today. How could they have planned such obsolensence so carefully?!

We've had the full panoply of problems reported by others, and some that may be unique. A brief rundown:

-makes lousy toast (and takes forever to do it)
-door stopped closing after a few months and now remains permanently open about 3/4 inch
-No way to turn off toaster. A houseguest forced it and that does seem to work, except now, at the end of the toast cycle, it won't automatically shut off. Pay attention or it'll burn.
-Baking rack tends to fall right out of its grooves when full of hot food. I don't know if the rack is too small or the oven walls expand when hot, but this "sudden rack drop syndrome" is a horrible problem. Funny how often cooking with the DeLonghi inspires profanity in our house.
--door handle is coming off (silver lining: if you don't press it all the way back down, it will sometimes keep the door closed).

This machine does have a large capacity, convection, etc. and despite the many problems we use it a lot--that was why we bought a large convection/toaster oven, after all. But I wouldn't dream of buying one again, especially for [X]. Do yourself a favor and get a more reliable brand. Or better yet, a toaster.