Europro are the same folks who brought us the Shark vacuum cleaners, some of the worst review products in history. They likely do not place quality control at the top of their product management list, and it shows. This toaster oven looks like a great value in the stores, with its six slice capacity, convection oven, crumb tray and other nice features. When you take it home it's another story. The EuroPro TO289 takes longer to make a piece of toast than it takes me to drive my kid to school every day - ten minutes! I have never noticed how much time a toaster took before I got this poor excuse for a toaster.

At first, we thought it was our fault. Maybe we didn't turn the temperature up high enough (it goes to 450 degrees). So we turned it up to the max. Then, we made sure that we had the toast on the right setting. Actually, that's pretty easy to do. Just put the toast in the toaster oven, make sure the oven is set to toast (we also tried broil, to no avail) and turn the knob to your desired darkness for your toast (we turn ours past jet black to get toast that's done). Then, wait and wait and wait and wait. Got a phone call to make? Make it? Take a shower yet? Go ahead. I've never had to plan around getting toast done before.

The product manual says light toast can be done in as little as four minutes. They are being nice. By light, they mean bread that's a little warm. They say dark toast is done in nine minutes. That's not true, either. Somewhat dark in nine minutes, done in about 11 minutes.

Obviously, this toaster oven is not long for our kitchen. We are replacing it as soon as possible. So, enough about the toaster features. Let's examine some of the other features of this gem:

Convection Oven

Convection cooking is faster and more consistent than conventional baking. The temperature tends to stay the same for longer periods, so your food cooks as much as 30% faster. Also, a fan circulates heat around the food, so you don't have to turn it over. The convection oven in the EuroPro seems to work fine, in both convection baking and broiling modes. We've cooked pizzas, fish, and a variety of items in the time advertised on the food package. The manual for the TO 289 suggests that you warm up the oven for 20 minutes before cooking. This is an amazing amount of time, since our MUCH LARGER conventional oven does a great job of preheating in just ten minutes. Just chalk that up to the fine quality of this device.

The manual comes with a broiling guide that shows nearly any meat will cook in 25 minutes or so at 400 degrees (plus the 20 minute preheating time). Fish should be cooked at 350 degrees, while lamb chops will take longer to finish, about 40 minutes. The TO 289 can also be used for convection baking of such items as cookies, pies and cakes.

Grill

Grilling is the same as broiling, but without the convection fan running. As a result, if you use the grill, you'll have to turn the meat over halfway through. They also recommend that you use it in this mode with the door slightly ajar. We never used this feature.

Conclusion

We had a great toaster oven made by Delonghi that stopped working after several years of use. We made the mistake of replacing the Delonghi with this one. We are now looking for another toaster oven. Don't waste your time or money on the TO289.


Recommended: No

Amount Paid (US$): 69

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