Breville Smart Oven Air Fryer Pro BOV900BSS Review
Overall Verdict
The Breville Smart Oven Air Fryer Pro is an excellent upgrade for home cooks looking for more efficiency and versatility in their kitchen endeavor. It has multiple excellently designed cooking functions with large timer and temperature ranges to serve the purposes of a bunch of machines. This also comes with the proper and high-quality accessories. Evidently, the oven’s results in our 4 tests are all first-class and the best thing is that they stay consistent, whether it’s carbohydrates or protein.
Moreover, the oven’s electrical safety features and automatic features like the Phase Cook and Rotate Remind offers you peace of mind. Just leave it to do what you set it out to do, only come back exactly when you want and need to.
Finally, there’s no question about the quality of Breville and their products but what set this model apart was the improvements on its features. From the exterior to the interior and the controls, everything was better than the previous models.
Things We Like
- Consistent multiple batches
- Intuitive controls
- Premium features
- Sturdy design and durable material
- Plenty of useful accessories
- Easy to clean
- Electrical safety features
Things We Don’t Like
- Not the most budget-friendly
The Breville Smart Oven Air Fryer Pro gets brought up all the time when it comes to the discussion of “what toaster oven should I get” across online forums like Reddit. And we finally got our hands on it after much consideration since it’s not the most affordable ($400 at the time of writing).
We have also tested 2 Breville ovens. First was the Breville Mini Smart and it actually became our choice of the best small toaster oven. However, the Breville Smart Oven Pro without air fryer left a lot to be desired from us. Hopefully, it will improve on the weaknesses and enhance the strengths we evaluated.
9.1 Performance
The Breville BOV900BSS is one of our best performers, specifically at toasting bread and baking pizza. Its results in roasting a whole chicken and air-frying French fries are top-tier as well.
These tests don’t just highlight the oven’s Element iQ which provides smart heat and time adjustments but also its added accessories.
9.0 Toast
We started our Toast test with the default shade level 4 (5 min 24 sec) and the color was pretty good but not very even golden. We thought we could deploy the convection fan during toasting like the Cuisinart TOA-60 but that wasn’t the case. On a side note, the oven can comfortably fit six large slices per rack, but we kept the number at four to keep the testing procedure the same as with other ovens.
With confidence in level 5, we proceeded and it proved to be correct with our highest overall score to date — 9/10. For reference of a darker setting, level 6 (6 min 52 sec) will give you a slightly more brown and crispier result.
Starting at room temperature, level 5 for our first batch of toast was 6 min 45 sec. The top of the four slices all have an evenly beautiful golden brown color thanks to the oven’s four top heating elements, worthy of an impressive 9/10. The oven only has two bottom ones so the color was a bit lighter overall but still golden brown at the rack’s bars.
This also helped create a variety of interesting texture on top of a crispy outside and moist inside for the slices of toast, scoring another 9/10 for taste. Everything made them excellent for dishes of all consistency, from sandwiches, omelet, eggs benedict, to even soup according to our head chef Tuyet Pham.
The second batch immediately followed after and the oven automatically reduced the timer to 4 min 10 sec. This surprisingly resulted in the same color on the outside of the toast while the shorter time helped maintain more moisture inside. With such an equal exchange in properties, the toast earned the oven a final 9/10 for consecutive usability. If you prefer your second batch more crispy, try increasing the shade level to 6.
9.8 Pizza
The Breville provides a Pizza function as well as a pizza pan, so we were excited to try both for our test of baking a 9-inch thick-crust meat pizza. A high convection setting and extra 450°F preheated surface allowed for another one of our best pizza scores at 9.8/10.
The oven was powerful enough to finish baking the pizza in just 5 minutes, faster than the majority of its size category and scoring a whopping 10/10. With the crust being evenly golden brown and crunchy from the top to the bottom, it earned a very impressive 9.8/10.
The topped meat, veggies, and cheese were all nicely charred, worthy of a 9.5/10. Slightly reducing the cooking time by around a minute might have been able to keep the cheese more melty, and you can actually do this because the Breville allows for temperature up to 480°F. With all that said, our chef gave the pizza a seal of approval with a 9.8/10 rating for taste.
8.9 Whole Roasted Chicken
Our 3-lb Whole Roasted Chicken test once again proved that having an air-fry function is better than roast when it comes to cooking protein in an oven with a final score of 9/10. At the same 350°F, the roasted result had a significantly lighter color and more soggy skin.
After 20 minutes in a belly-up position, the chicken was flipped and continued air-frying for 30 minutes. This is when we felt good with the result although we had to settle with a 9/10 for cooking time.
With high convection and an air-fryer basket, the skin got a light golden hue with crispy wing tips, evident from all the rendered fat, which scored a 8.5/10. Doneness was a highlight, at near perfect 182-198°F in the thickest parts of the thighs with no pink spots even near the bone, scoring a 9/10. This made the meat extremely tender and juicy.
In fact, it’s to the point of moistening the skin if you don’t finish the dish fast enough. Still, a 9/10 for taste from our chef. In reality however, we felt you could bump the temperature up to 400-425°F to get more caramelization on the skin in around 40 minutes for a more ideal result.
8.6 Baked French Fries
After 10 minutes at 400°F, we tossed the fries to ensure evenness. We stopped it at 18 minutes total when we felt satisfied with the result, clocking an 8/10.
By this point, the color on the fries were ranging from golden on the thicker ones and golden brown with some insignificant brown tips on the thinner ones, scoring an 8.8/10. Texture-wise, the golden brown fries were nicely crispy but the golden ones were a bit lacking in that department, 8.5/10.
We didn’t want to prolong the cooking process due to fear of losing too much moisture inside. And the decision was justified with a 8.8/10 for taste from our chef. If we were to do it again, we’d increase the temperature to 450°F, or maybe even higher, and keep the time at around 15 minutes.
9.7 Design
The Breville BOV900BSS Smart Oven Air Fryer Pro and its design not only reconfirm the brand’s reputation in high quality ovens but also their willingness to improve existing features.
The foundational exterior, interior, and control panel are excellently built. To top it off, additional cooking functions and toggle switches are made to work exactly as intended. All of this accumulated to our highest total design score to date.
In the Box
- Model: BOV900BSS
- Warranty: 2-year limited
- User Manual
- Baking Rack x 2
- Baking Pan + Broiler Rack
- Air Fryer Basket
- Pizza Pan
If you find yourself confused about certain cooking functions or buttons, the provided user manual should be able to help. Also, it’s advisable to follow their care and cleaning instructions, troubleshooting,and in case you need to change the light bulb.
9.8 Exterior
The brushed stainless steel exterior of the Breville BOV900BSS gives it a sleek look on a unit with such a large footprint. Our measurements of the oven’s footprint are 21.5" x 16.7" x 12.3", which matched well with the manufacturer’s provided measurements.
And such size houses a bunch of features, including a cool-touch handle spanning across the door, level indicators on the glass, door magnet for the second guide rail, two back buffers to keep the oven from being too close to the wall, and a slide-out crumb tray (+6.4). Something we always appreciate are air vents on all sides, and this oven takes it a step further with ventilated carrying side-handles that are part of the rubber-padded base (+3.4).
Control Panel
The Breville’s control panel features an LCD display, 3 dials, and 6 buttons. The dials include one for selecting cooking functions, one for temperature as well as toast and bagel darkness level, and one for time as well as number of slices.
From the top down, one start/stop button, one light toggle, one convection toggle, one phase cook toggle, one Frozen Foods toggle, and a temperature conversion button which doubles as an audio volume toggle.
You can also press the select dial to turn on the rotation reminder which will light up on the screen. When you dial to slow cook, a reminder to cover food will light up as well.
What you should really be cautious about is when the screen displays anything from E01 to E06. They mean the oven is running into a non-resettable error and needs to be unplugged before you try to find a solution in the user manual.
Cooking Functions
- Toast (7 shades - up to 9 slices)
- Bagel (7 shades - up to 9 slices)
- Broil (Low-Medium-High / 1-20 min)
- Bake (120-205°F: 1 min - 72 hours; 210-300°F: up to 12 hours; 300-390°F: up to 8 hours; 395-480°F: up to 4 hours)
- Roast (120-205°F: 1 min - 72 hours; 210-300°F: up to 12 hours; 300-390°F: up to 8 hours; 395-480°F: up to 4 hours)
- Warm (110-205°F: 1 min - hours; 210-300°F: up to 12 hours; 300-390°F: up to 8 hours; 395-480°F: up to 4 hours)
- Pizza (120-480°F / 1-60 min)
- Proof (80-100°F / 1-120 min)
- Air Fry (120-480°F / 1-60 min)
- Reheat (120-480°F / 1-120 min)
- Cookies (120-480°F / 1-60 min)
- Slow Cook (Low: 4-72 hours - High: 2-12 hours)
- Dehydrate (120-480°F / 1 min - 72 h
The Breville offers 13 cooking functions, which is an impressive number. All the more when you consider that their time and temperature ranges are ideal for their purposes when you cross-check with their dedicated equipment, e.g. dough proofer, slow cooker, and dehydrator.
As a side note, the bake, roast, and warm functions have specific time limits for different temperatures to minimize the risk of the oven overheating.
9.5 Interior
The immediate stand-out inside the Breville is its enamel non-stick coating, the same kind on its baking pan and pizza pan. It’s currently the most common non-PTFE and PFOAs option, and it provides a nice contrast to the oven light (+3).
The oven generously provides four guide rails and you can make use of the reversible racks to acquire a total of eight tray levels (+1.5). Each rail has a safety hook to prevent the rack from accidently sliding all the way out with the bottom one positioned further in, showing attention to safety.
With four quartz heating elements on top and two underneath, it delivers very even heat distribution (+3). Unlike nichrome elements, these heat the food more directly rather than warming the surrounding air, which helps cook food faster without pushing their internal temperature as high. Usually, this can make surface coloring not as even, but convection can help with that (+2).
That said, they’re not quite as durable and can be tricky to clean if grease splatters on them. This is why protective guards are important—and thankfully, the oven includes them and does a solid job implementing them.
Capacity
We measured the cooking chamber at 16.5 x 12.2 x 7.5 which only differs slightly from the manufacturer’s provided 16 x 13.5 x 7, possibly due to different parameters. Nonetheless, the volume should be around 0.8 cubic feet or roughly 22.7 liters, more than enough for a 14 lbs turkey or a 5 qt Dutch oven as advertised.
Power Cord
The 3-prong flat power cord is roughly 57.5", which is double the length of the majority of toaster ovens we’ve covered. Unfortunately, there’s no storage for it.
Accessories: Oven Rack x 2
The racks fit perfectly with the guide along with the safety hooks, which helps prevent accidents when placing your food in the oven. Each can fit 6 large slices of toast or 9 small ones or one 12-cup muffin tray as claimed on the package.
Accessories: Baking Pan
With a usable 9 x 13, the baking pan is great for roasting and catching meat juices and drippings from the air fryer basket. This helps keep things tidy and prevents any fire hazards from dirty heating elements. While the enamel coating is dishwasher-safe, keep in mind that doing so can worsen existing damage.
Accessories: Air Fryer Basket
The air fryer basket is designed to leave plenty of space for air and heat circulation around the food.
Accessories: Pizza Pan
The enamel-coated pizza pan can fit up to 13 inches, making full use of the oven’s capacity. As an included accessory, it provides a much appreciated preheated surface for your pizzas, even though not as good as a proper pizza stone.
9.8 Build Quality
The entire build of the Breville is of excellent quality. All aspects of the casing, cooking chamber, controls, and accessories, all are made to last and show a lot of attention to detail. All of this does make the oven quite heavy and large, but it’s a worthy trade-off.
9.7 Usability
When it comes to convenience, the Breville BOV900BSS Air Fryer Toaster Oven offers all you need and some more. The basic functions are intuitive to use and even premium features only require reading the user manual once.
Its safety features are properly implemented to ensure peace of mind. And the cleaning part at the end of the day is also made as easy as possible.
9.5 User Control
It’s very rare for an oven to provide temperatures below 150°F and above 450°F like the Breville (+2). Combined with its clear LCD, this allows the oven to be as efficient as possible when maneuvering its 13 cooking functions (+1) .
You can also press the Phase Cook button to program 2 functions after one another, e.g. automatically switches to broil after baking, or to warm after roasting (+1). Meanwhile, the temperature conversion feature is useful for international users and the ability to adjust buzzer volume is always a nice touch (+1.5).
When you’re cooking two trays of food at the same time, you can press the function dial to turn on a reminder to swap their positions to ensure the same results (+1). This isn’t as useful as the 2-level even cooking feature of the Ninja Foodi XL Pro but it’s still a decent addition.
The Frozen button will automatically adjust the time and temperature for toast, bagel, pizza, air-fry, and cookies so you won’t need to look it up every time you want to cook something out of the freezer (+1). This was an improvement from the previous Breville model where it was just the same amount of time for everything.
The timer is specified by the minute, which allows for more flexibility compared to simple digital models that only allow increments of ten minutes like the Oster 6-Slice (+1). Temperature can be adjusted in 5°F/5°C increments by turning the knob slowly and in 10°F/10°C increments by turning the knob fast.
Convection applicable to all except toast, bagel, and broil — very useful for roasting, air-frying, and dehydrating (+1). When turning on convection, the oven will automatically adjust time and temperature but you can still freely change them how you want.
9.8 Ease of Use
All cooking functions have preset timer and temperature but you’re free to experiment to find the best settings for your food, which will be saved even after you unplug the oven (+1). To reset them,hold both the Frozen and Temperature Conversion buttons for 5 seconds.
The preheat phase of the Breville only applies to bake, roast, pizza, air-fry, cookies, slow cook functions and is the same: 5 minutes to around 250°F, unlike the exact time like the Cosori CO130-AO (+1).
You can change both time and temperature during cooking even for toast, bagel, and broil functions (+1). However, to change cooking function and specifically slow-cook levels, you’ll need to press Stop. Keep in mind that this may repeat the automatic preheat phase if the temperature is lower than the manufacturer’s set point.
The door can be kept partially open at an 80° angle to let food cool inside the oven, all the more easy with the magnet on the door (+1). Doing this will pause the timer and also turn it off completely after 10 minutes, so you won’t have to worry about accidentally leaving the oven on and overheating it (+2). Moreover, with so many ventilation slats and such a thick casing, the risk of burning yourself is minimized (+2).
When the automatic preheat phase or the cooking cycle ends, the interior light will turn on and then turn off after 30 seconds, similar to when you press the light switch (+1). Unfortunately, there’s no way to keep the light on indefinitely.
If not used for 10 minutes, the oven goes into standby mode until you press Start again (+0.8). Nonetheless, it’s still advised to unplug the oven after use for safety.
9.8 Cleanability
We started cleaning the interior then the exterior and everything was a breeze (+2). If you’re unsure about anything, just follow our toaster oven cleaning guide.
Thanks to the excellent non-stick interior, all the fat splashed inside when we were roasting the chicken could be simply wiped away, even the bit that made it to the heating elements’ guards (+2). It also has no nooks and crannies which make everything easier.
If you ever get too caught up and could only clean the oven once in a while, a simple washing liquid and sponge would do, and don’t forget the inside of the glass door. For a more cautious choice, use a baking soda and water paste like us.
As for the stainless steel casing and the outer glass, a simple wipe with your cleaning spray of choice is good enough (+2). Cleaning up the crumbs was extremely easy thanks to the slide-out crumb tray which is also stainless steel (+1.8).
The fishnet design of the air fryer basket didn’t hold onto any caramelized bits of food, even more so for the rest of the accessories that have an enamel coating (+2).