Black & Decker CTO6301 Digital Advantage Stainless-Steel 6-Slice Convection Toaster Oven
by Black & Decker
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Category: Kitchen
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Product Summary
Manufacturer: Black & DeckerBrand: Black & Decker
Model: CTO6301
Color: Stainless Steel
Product features:
- Stainless-steel 6-slice convection toaster oven for toasting, baking, and broiling
- Adjustable temperature control; 120-minute auto shut-off timer; preset functions
- Extra-deep nonstick interior fits a 12-inch pizza; dual oven-rack positions
- Glass door and baking pan included; removable crumb tray
- Measures approximately 17-3/4 by 14 by 11-1/2 inches
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Kitchen and Housewares Reviews of Black & Decker CTO6301 Digital Advantage Stainless-Steel 6-Slice Convection Toaster Oven
Customer Review: Just what we needed. A reliable workhorse toaster oven.
Summary: 4 Stars
We've had this toaster oven for two years. I was just looking back on old reviews and saw when a previous toaster (different brand) failed miserably, I promised to comment after trying this one. Well, let's just say this is one of those appliances that's so perfect you just forget about it. It does what it's supposed to, and does it well, so what's to say? That's what you always want, but so few appliances deliver.
This is a straightforward toaster oven, slightly complicated by buttons and a poor display. I'd prefer a knob for timer and temperature, I think. It would be faster---just a few seconds, maybe, but those add up to minutes. But I'm mostly nitpicking. If you need a reliable, consistent cooking appliance, this will do the job. We use it for toasting bread, bagels (not on the bagel setting; though it's good, we like our undersides crispier), croissants, biscuits, etc.; broiling steaks or fish, and reheating foods of all kinds (love the convection for everything, especially nachos). You can find settings that work for exactly what you want and they remain uniformly trustworthy. And I love the hot top---I set plates or sauces on it to warm, or already-cooked dishes to stay hot. You should never have non-heatsafe items around an oven anyway, and use care with hot items. But I've even put a plastic syrup container on a plate on the top surface, and it warms but doesn't anywhere near melt the plastic. To me, that's not a crazy hot oven top.
It could absolutely do with some slight adjustments, ranked in order of importance:
1) The display should really be backlit. I shouldn't have to have to put on a bright light to use the toaster after dusk.
2) The door should have a back catch, spring hinge, or something to keep it from just dropping like a dead weight when open. The glass hasn't broken, but it drops so much I always expect it will. Also, an all-glass door is nice for looking, but something heatproof, at the very least under/around the handle, would be nice.
3) You should be able to adjust timer and temperature at the same time while cooking. As it is, if you want to add 10 minutes but reduce the heat, you have to adjust the minutes, then stand there until it allows you to make a second adjustment to lower the cooking temperature, or vice versa. Adjusting one "locks you out" from adjusting another for a short period. I have no clue why they'd design it this way. Convection is an exception; you can turn this on or off as much as you want.
4) The system supposedly remembers the last personal setting, but it never seems to be consistent in this. Usually it picks a random recent setting and starts from there no matter how many other settings you put on it. For example, you bake at 350 for 45 minutes. The next time you press bake, it should start from those previous settings, but instead it's got 385 and 4 minutes, which was a setting you used earlier in the week. There's no telling which setting it will choose or when it will decide a new one is the ";most recent." It's always one you've used, but not necessarily the most recent. No problem, you just punch in your new settings. But here's where buttons are kind of a pain, since you have to go up and down in time and temperature using only the up and down buttons. It jumps in increments after you hold it a bit, but it's still a little time wasted and a lot of button pressing. It also turns off too quickly if you are slow in your setting (set at 325 for how many minutes? check your recipe, and whoops, the display's gone off already), and won't let you cancel---you have to let it time out, or turn it on and off and start fresh.
5) The crumb tray doesn't have enough clearance to allow out bigger crumbs. It should allow at least as much clearance as the lower heating element, but it doesn't. The elements are wrapped/shielded, which is a nice safety feature and keeps food off them, but they still allow decent clearance for crumbs on the bottom, unlike the tray slot. So when you're cleaning, you have to stick your hand in and/or shake out crumbs that passed under the heating elements but got scraped off by the crumb tray slot edge. It's easiest to pick them out from between the two heating elements before you pull out the crumb tray, when you're getting the pieces that won't go under the front bottom element. Also, someone else mentioned a completely flat crumb tray. Ours is not. It has a rounded rectangular impression that seems to allow space for the heating element leeway. I don't see how that would complicate cleaning, though. I think in this case a flat tray would cause crumb problems unless they made it all as low as the recessed impression on ours, which I'm guessing they couldn't do because of the rest of the toaster design.
6) It would be great (and I'd pay extra) for another rack, preferably a flat one. Then you could use both levels at once, and/or cook at a different spot in the oven.
Like I said, these complaints aren't of utmost importance in my estimation. The toaster performs steadily and stands up to a fair amount of abuse. It has a lot of great features and no significant drawbacks. If I were in the market, I'd buy it again. But I hope they come out with a different, equally good model with a few of the tweaks I mentioned.
More Black & Decker CTO6301 Digital Advantage Stainless-Steel 6-Slice Convection Toaster Oven reviews:
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Description of Black & Decker CTO6301 Digital Advantage Stainless-Steel 6-Slice Convection Toaster Oven
Enjoy cooking entire meals for your family in this 6-slice counter top convection oven that can hold a 12-inch pizza. The stainless steel oven features a digital display with soft touch buttons, electronic toast controls for consistent toasting, power indicator, 120 minute auto-off bake timer, non-stick interior and slide-out crumb tray for easy cleaning. The maximum bake temperature of 450 degrees accommodates a wide variety of foods and the oven rack can be mounted in two positions.Toaster Ovens
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