GE - Calrod 6-Slice Toaster Oven with Convection bake - Stainless Steel

I love my oven I will recommend it to all my friends and family.

Quieter than my last one. Lots of settings with even heating.

Some days, the most exhilarating thing you’ll do is read online reviews of toaster ovens. Here’s one more for you. The GE Calrod 6-Slice Toaster Oven with Convection bake is among General Electric’s latest offerings, updating their range of small kitchen appliances to match modern black and stainless steel ensembles throughout the kitchen. The prominence of this toaster oven on the countertop in their marketing shots makes it seem like it should be a permanent fixture in your kitchen, and on that front they’ve mostly delivered. The Calrod is a versatile, efficient toaster oven that excels in most regards, but a few shortcomings keep it from perfection. - Unboxing and Setup The GE Calrod is a sizeable toaster oven with an inner cavity large enough for three rack positions. Despite its size it’s relatively light and easy to position on the countertop. GE recommends positioning the toaster oven with a 4-inch clearance on all sides so heat can dissipate. The power cord appears to be about 5 feet long which should make most positions suitable with countertop AC outlets, but power outlets under or inside cabinets may be a bit tricky. With the power the machine draws I would not recommend using an extension cord unless it’s designed to handle such a high load. The toaster oven ships with its crumb tray uninstalled, and the manual does not indicate how or where to insert properly. I placed it under the heating elements after removing all the tape and packaging materials, before plugging the oven in. The oven will need to be run through one full baking cycle (20 minutes at 400 F) to dissipate residual packing materials; I strongly encourage this as there was definitely a strong plastic odor coming from the unit after a few minutes that dissipated after about 10 minutes. I’d rather not have any of that in my food. I did notice my unit seems to have unlevel feet. With no way to adjust them this is a bit of a bummer, but it doesn’t impact cooking performance. - Cooking Performance Having convection bake in a countertop oven opens up a few new options that were previously limited to full-size ovens. The convection fan generates consistent airflow within the toaster oven, circulating the air evenly and keeping temperatures more uniform within the heating chamber. This can often reduce cooking time while also making for a better, more even crisp on the entire surface of the food. Pressing any button on the Calrod’s control panel will turn the display on and allow you to dial in settings. This is fairly straightforward with one dial controlling the cooking mode or preset, and the other controlling temperature setting and cooking time. Pressing Start begins the oven’s preheating cycle, which takes about 5 to 10 minutes depending on temperature setting, and once complete will beep and pause with the “start” button flashing to begin the cooking timer. It’s worth keeping the manual handy for the first few runs but intuition takes over fairly quickly. Coming from a smaller, analog toaster oven, I was impressed by how much better food came out of the Calrod. Convection bake made a significant difference when cooking chicken, which ended up being much crispier without burning, and quick appetizers also ended up cooking more evenly without the need to turn them halfway through. I was even able to fit a 12-inch frozen pizza in the Calrod - something I thought I would always need the full oven for - and that too came out just as well-sorted as it does from my full size oven. It needs to cook directly on the rack to fit which would usually make handling and removal difficult, but GE includes a handle tool that clips onto the hot rack to make this process much easier. The toaster oven seems to insulate its heat very well. The outer surfaces get hot but never anything that’s terribly concerning, and little heat is felt beyond the door when it’s closed. The control panel does get warm to the touch but it’s also nothing that makes me worry for the longevity of the unit. The heating elements are not terribly noisy, but the convection fan is a little louder than I expected it to be. It’s nothing that will interrupt a conversation but the fan is still heard throughout the kitchen and sounds fairly industrial. My full-size oven’s convection fan, by comparison, is nearly inaudible even when I open the oven door. - Presets & Handling One of the more annoying things I’ve encountered so far with the Calrod is the limited range of presets for certain food types. The most glaring example is the Pizza setting, which can be set to either a 6-inch, 9-inch, or 12-inch pizza, but doesn’t seem to change much when the oven starts up. Worse yet, the 12-inch setting only goes up to a 20 minute cooking cycle, which is much shorter than most of the frozen pizzas I’ve seen (25-35 minutes). I had to cancel the cycle and manage cook settings manually, which is a minor inconvenience but still frustrating for what is aiming to be a one-touch setting. Another inconvenience I found is that while there are 3 heights for the cooking rack, the lack of a slider or other mechanism to bring the tray forward without removing it makes it difficult to turn or flip foods without entirely removing the tray, as sliding it partway forward results in some precarious balancing risking spilling the tray. My previous toaster oven had the tray slide forward when the door opened which made this process much more accessible. - Bottom Line Despite a few quirks and design choices detracting from ease-of-use, the GE Calrod is a great choice for a countertop toaster oven to be used regularly. It looks good, cooks well, and its size & convection features open up more options for countertop cooking rather than using the oven. This a great size for cooking meals for one or two servings at a time, and with a few sacrifices may very well be able to serve as a replacement for a full-size oven in small or space-constrained situations. It’s certainly more economical than an electric range from an electricity usage perspective. With few things to complain about, the GE Calrod comes recommended.

Pros: -Aesthetically pleasing -Easy to use -Preheats quickly -It fits about 4-6 pieces of toast at a time. -It does not heat up the entire house like the use of the oven -Successfully made grilled cheese, pizza, grilled sandwiches, muffins, baked veggies like brussel sprouts and broccoli (wish it would have been able to get them crispier), potatoes, chicken wings Things to be aware of: -Takes up quite a bit of counter space -It gets really hot on the outside. You have to be careful when you open the handle because both my daughter and I burned our fingers (outside frame of the door is really close and doesn’t have a guard of any sort- it’s just hot metal! -Basic functions like toasting- you have to do the setting twice to what a basic toaster will do, and that is it cooking on the highest setting. -Instructions could have been a little more thorough, but once you mess around with the settings you get the hang of the digital board pretty quickly Overall, we feel it is decent enough for what it is but there are cooking implements out there that can do a lot more nowadays such as have an air fryer function etc.

Great GE toaster! Rather large though - very sleek and durable