Hamilton Beach Easy Reach Toaster Oven review

A cheap but very basic toasting oven

Top Ten Reviews Verdict

While it doesn't stand out amongst its competitors, this toaster oven works well enough and features a wide roll-top door to make removing and placing food inside easy.

Pros

  • +

    It's affordable and has a roll-top door.

Cons

  • -

    It doesn't come with a broiling rack and has uneven heating.

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We weren't blown away by this toaster oven's performance but weren't dismayed, either. It performed decently well in our cooking tests, giving you a fair amount of space to cook. The roll-top door makes it easier to remove your food without burning yourself. This is an affordable family toaster oven as it can cook lots of food at once and is easy to operate. However, it doesn't do much more than many of the best toaster ovens.

You can purchase this toaster oven from Hamilton Beach for about $50, which isn't the cheapest price but isn't the most expensive either. We also looked it up on Amazon and discovered it was selling for the same price at the time of publishing.

Hamilton Beach Easy Reach: Design

The temperature dial allows you to set the temperature anywhere between 150 and 450 degrees, which is 50 degrees higher than most other toasters. You can only set the timer to 30 minutes, which is shorter than we would have expected for a toaster this size. Fortunately, by pressing the buttons on either side of the dial, you can turn it counterclockwise onto the stay-on position and have it cook even longer, but you’ll have to set an external timer.

The cord is an impressive 35.5 inches long, which gives you more room than most to situate your toaster oven where you want. You can adjust the rack and accompanying bake pan between two positions to get your food closer or further from the heating element. The included cook functions include baking, broiling, toasting, and convection.

Hamilton Beach Easy Reach: Performance

While it wasn't stellar, the Hamilton Beach performed well enough in our testing. We could fit six bread slices across the rack, and we found that this device toasted bread and bagel slices unevenly, leaving massive white spots in sections of one slice and not evenly toasting slices across the board. The front slices were much lighter than the rear ones, with the middle slices toasting the most evenly.

The frozen burrito came out well because we centered it inside the toaster. The tortilla was golden brown around the edges while the inner contents were cooked through. Cooking more than one at a time would give varied results because of the centralized heating.

When we did the cookie test, we followed the baking instructions outlined in the manual, setting the temperature to 350 degrees and the timer to 10 minutes. When the time was up, the cookies looked good. The exterior was a little too brown, but the inside was only slightly gooey. It took another minute for the cookies to be fully cooked.

When reheating our day-old pizza slices, this toaster performed on average. The crust was on the verge of being stiff and burned on the bottom, and the pepperoni definitely got a little burned around the edges. However, the overall taste and texture were pretty good.

When we measured the interior temperature, we found that this toaster oven ran about 17 degrees hotter than the temperature we had set, which isn't the hottest but could have been better accuracy we've seen. This heat difference leads to drying out and overcooking food. Since this unit featured a roll-top door, it was easy to reach and grab food without touching the hot sides. You can also easily remove the crumb tray since you have this wide opening. Unfortunately, this oven has no non-stick interior, so you might have to work harder to remove food.

Hamilton Beach only covers this toaster with a one-year warranty, which is all right, but it isn't anything special. To evaluate this toaster's safety, we set the temperature to 350 degrees and let it run for a while. We then measured the temperature of the exterior. The backside only measured at 108 degrees, which is on the low side. The sides and top reached 145 degrees, which is definitely hot but not nearly as hot as some of the other ovens we tested. The handle got a little warmer than room temperature, but you shouldn't worry about getting burned when opening the door.

The large roll-top door, similar to the one found on the Hamilton Beach 31334, creates such a large opening that it cools the device down much faster than most other toaster ovens when left open.

Should you buy the Hamilton Beach Easy Reach?

The Hamilton Beach 31126 is an impressive toaster oven that produces powerful results. It could have been better in our cooking tests, but it performed as well as expected. The exterior temperatures don't get as hot as some toaster ovens, so you don't have to worry as much about burning yourself.

Rebecca Spear

Rebecca is a writer who has covered everything from photo books to graphic design and small kitchen appliances for Top Ten Reviews. Now a gaming writer for Future Labs, she's also contributed to big publications like TechRadar, Windows Central, Android Central, Reuters Legal Solutions Blog, iMore, and more. She no longer works for TTR.