Review: The Breville Smart Oven Air Fryer Pro Has Become My New Kitchen MVP

There’s one word that I found best to describe the Breville Smart Oven Air Fryer Pro: Ambitious. I mean, there are 13 different cooking functions that allow you to toast, broil, bake, roast, warm, air fry, reheat, slow cook and dehydrate. That’s not all: Features get even more specific with settings like “bagel” and “pizza” and “cookies.” There’s even a proofing feature. According to the brand, the capacity is large enough to toast up to nine slices of bread at a time (a dream for BLT night) and it can fit most 9”x13” pans and 12-cup muffin trays. (It can even accommodate—and cook—a 14-pound turkey.)

After testing it for a little over a month, I’ve found myself using it daily for essential items (toast for breakfast, mac and cheese balls for dinner), but also for slightly more elevated food options (reheating leftover pizza, for example, and air frying an entire bag of French fries for burger night). I even tried it for a batch of slice-and-bake cookies. The verdict? Read on to find out.

Overall, the Breville Smart Oven Air Fryer Pro felt pretty plug and play. This is largely due to the ease of the interface: The digital screen is clear to and easy to toggle through (the dial allows you to quickly spin to select your cooking function of choice, which are all clearly spelled out). The dials—there are three total—are the main way to control the settings and make adjustments as you cook. For example, when cooking toast, one dial selects the toasting function while another controls the number of slices of bread you have; the final dial allows you to adjust the timing based on how you prefer your toast (on a scale of light to dark—another setting that’s clearly and visually explained). As someone who is, ahem, less skilled in the kitchen, I found this approach fairly foolproof.

Another detail worth noting about the setup is the range of accessories that come included: The Breville offers a 13-inch pizza pan, two oven racks, a 9”x13” broil rack and enamel roasting pan and a mesh basket rack for dehydrating and air frying. Not bad.

Finally, to really drive the user-friendliness, the Breville Smart Oven Air Fryer Pro comes with oven door markings that show you the ideal rack height based on your cooking method. This is a device designed to take the guess work out of it—and I appreciate that.

Like I said, I tested a range of items in the Breville—from French Fries to personal-size pizzas from Trader Joe’s to…cookies! The air fryer and toaster were the features I used the most and I found that the results quickly surpassed that of my stand-alone devices, but also my oven.

Let’s start with the toast. My son is a creature of habit and wakes up demanding asking for a slice of peanut butter toast. The bread we buy (shout out to Dave’s!) tends to be a bit oversized, so it was an immediate gift to shift from a toaster to a toaster oven setup (i.e. I could lay each slice flat versus having to flip it half-way through the toasting process to crisp all sides). I toggled the dial to toast, set the cook time (my son prefers his toast to be lightly browned, so in the middle of the settings offered by the Breville) and the suggested time was 5 minutes. I went about my morning. Upon completion, the toast was delicately crisp and near cracker-like. I was impressed (as was my son).

The French Fries and Trader Joe’s pizza offered a chance to experiment with the air fryer feature to do two things: Cook from frozen, but also reheat. I used the mesh basket for the fries versus the oven rack and it cooked my lightly salted fries to perfection. My only complaint is that the air fryer setting automatically sets a recommended 18 minutes for optimal cooking, which is longer than it took in my stand-alone air fryer. This is all adjustable—as is the temp at which you air fry it—but I paid a bit more attention here vs. the toast to get the result I wanted. (I also made sure to press the “frozen” button to be sure the oven knew what it was working with.) Reheating pizza was a dream: This automatically jumps to a “convection” setting and in just a few minutes my leftover slice was warm and crisp and felt exactly like what my local pizzeria can achieve. (I also experimented with cooking an entire pie straight out of the freezer. In approximately 20 minutes, it was ready to eat, not to mention delivered oven-worthy results.) I also tried the “roast” setting to make home fries for breakfast to great results. Once again, it was a matter of toggling the dials to achieve the proper setting, but that initial function is so helpful in how it simplifies.

My husband is a talented baker, but I decided to give the cookie test my own “beginner” spin: I popped to the grocery store for Tollhouse’s slice-and-bake chocolate chip cookies and, upon slicing them up, preheated the Breville on the cookie setting (it recommends 325 degrees) and let it rip. When I tell you that 11 minutes later, I was staring at a tray of evenly cooked—and lightly browned—cookies with my apartment filled with that decadent aroma, too, I was blown away. Don’t laugh when I tell you that the line from Clueless rang ‘round my head: “Honey, you baked!” (But also, my 7-year-old will be thrilled to have such a quick, sugar-filled after-school snack to come home to.)

If there’s one main point of criticism I had with the Breville, it was related to the clean-up. There isn’t a protective tray over the heat source at the bottom to catch any drippings, so if anything spills—pizza sauce, oil and grease from those French Fries—you’re going to have to rely on some elbow grease versus simply popping out the liner and wiping it down.

Additionally, the mesh tray is tricky to clean. Hand washing is recommended, but a sponge is easily shredded thanks to the fine grain. I had the best luck using a cast iron brush, but it was more time consuming than I thought it would be.

Overall, what is continually impressive about the Breville is the fact that it’s an appliance that really does feel like an actual oven replacement—on hot spring and summer days, it also doesn’t overheat your whole kitchen. (A definite perk.) I love the range of cooking functions it provides and the fact that the results are not just good, they’re great. The all-in-one design gave me so much countertop space back. But mostly, it makes me—a beginner cook, best-case scenario—feel rather empowered in the kitchen. Will I start serving up cookies daily to my kid and his friends after school? I just might.