Wednesday, January 14, 2015

MaxiMatic ETO-730SS Elite Platinum 20-Liter 1500-Watt Convection Review

MaxiMatic ETO-730SS Elite Platinum 20-Liter 1500-Watt Convection Toaster Oven, Stainless
Customer Ratings: 2.5 stars
List Price: $79.99
Sale Price: $69.99
Today's Bonus: 13% Off
Buy Now

I've had this toaster oven for about 6 months and I use it everyday. I make toast or heat muffins, reheat something that I want crispy like french fries or something breaded, cook frozen pizza....in fact almost everything that I used to do in my big oven I do quickly and conveniently in this toaster oven. I used to check the temperature all the time with an oven thermometer but it has always been accurate so now I just set it and trust it and everything comes out fine. It's attractive, nice and big inside, easy to see into and easy to clean. I'm happy.

12 months later.....I'm not so happy now.

The heating element at the top of the oven has stopped working making this thing pretty much useless. Since I use my toaster oven several times a day I didn't even try to have it fixed. I bit the bullet and splurged for a Breville Smart Oven BOV800XL. It is amazing!! It's well thought out, extremely versatile, wonderfully adjustable, sturdy, easy to clean and very handsome in a professional kitchen way. Get the feeling I like it....wrong. I love it!!

Click Here For Most Helpful Customer Reviews >>

This "convection" toaster oven has a fan with all the power and focus of a 1 year old blowing out his birthday candle. Said fan is quite effective at rattling the flimsy (like the rest of the toaster) crumb tray, resulting in a quite annoying and loud rattle anytime the unit is set to convection. The fan also happens to blow directly along where there are no heating elements, thus what little air it manages to blow in from outside serves quite effectively to not heat whatever you're trying to heat. I guess they didn't bother to hire an engineer in designing this thing as to be effective at convecting, the fan really needed to blow across a heated element to then blow hot air over the food. C'mon guys, I hear there are unemployed engineers looking for jobs, you couldn't find one?

What is good about it is that the inside is aluminum, which is better than if it were a teflon coated material from a health standpoint. Why didn't they make the inside stainless? Probably the same reason they had it built in China from the thinnest gauge sheet they could get away with, it's cheaper.

This is the first item I've ever returned to Amazon, it was that bad.

Why did I give it two stars? Because it heats things so I guess it fulfills its basic functionality. It is also not ugly so I guess if you want an appliance that you don't need to use or are just dressing a set for a commercial or something, this would be a good prop.

To be fair, the part below applies to most toasters of this type:

It, like many others in its class also only has two heating rods beneath the food thus if you are trying to toast bread you will end up with bread toasted on the edges and only marginally so in the middle. Continuing with the bread, because of the wide separation between the upper heating elements and the bread, your bread will likely burn on the bottom and be slightly golden on the top. Thus if you want to toast bread evenly, you will need to babysit it and turn it over by hand a number of times during the toasting process, good luck doing this without burning your hand.

Best Deals on MaxiMatic ETO-730SS Elite Platinum 20-Liter 1500-Watt Convection

Let me start by saying I really like the look and size of this oven.

It's sleek, sturdy, and not too wide, deep, or tall to sit on my counter.

The functionality on the other hand, I just don't like.

Aside from the convection setting which runs the fan, I don't understand what the settings actually do. Toast runs both the top and bottom heating elements, but you have to turn the temperature up all the way for it to toast. Bake does just the bottom heating element, broil does just the top. Then there's defrost... but you have to turn the temperature all the way down.

In other words, the settings don't really do much. You still have adjust the temperature accordingly.

Maybe that's not a big deal to some, but I've also had a tough time figuring out how to cook / defrost things evenly. The heating elements stay red for a long time which causes overcooking on the outer surfaces. The manual says preheating isn't necessary, but it clearly is to avoid this.

My last toaster oven just worked better than this. After over a month, I'm still playing with settings to figure out the best way to cook the items I'm used to preparing in the toaster.

Overall, great look... decent, but frustrating controls. I've read that moderately priced toasters with decent controls are hard to come. Based on reviews I thought this might be the exception, but I'm not loving it.

Buy Fom Amazon Now

No comments:

Post a Comment