Cuisinart TOA-60 Review
Pros: Multiple cooking functions
Cons: Lackluster cooking performance, poor temperature accuracy, hard to use and clean
Manufacturer: Cuisinart
Our Verdict
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 This Product
Cuisinart TOA-60 | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Awards |  | |  | ||
| Price | $200 List $189.95 at Amazon | $120 List $119.95 at Amazon | $120 List $99.99 at Amazon | $149 List $64.06 at Amazon | $150 List $65.56 at Amazon |
Overall Score  |
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| Star Rating | |||||
| Pros | Multiple cooking functions | Fantastic cooking performance, easy to clean, easy to use, great temperature accuracy, multiple cooking functions | Great cooking performance, user friendly, excellent temperature accuracy | Great cooking performance, relatively easy to clean, inexpensive | Good cooking performance, easy to clean |
| Cons | Lackluster cooking performance, poor temperature accuracy, hard to use and clean | On the expensive side | Not the easiest to clean | Mediocre temperature accuracy | No digital readout, lower temperature setting somewhat inaccurate |
| Bottom Line | A promising design that doesn't really deliver on the hopes of great, air fried food | Exceptional frying performance and an easy to clean design make this one of the best options on the market | This high-performing model offers the most consistent quality of the bunch | This model offers good performance at a relatively low price | An incredibly capable cooker that offers up commendable performance and an excellent price tag |
| Rating Categories | Cuisinart TOA-60 | Instant Vortex Plus | Ninja 1550 Watt | 3.7 Quart... | BLACK+DECKER Purifry |
| Cooking Performance (35%) | |||||
| User Friendliness (25%) | |||||
| Ease Of Cleaning (20%) | |||||
| Temperature Accuracy (20%) | |||||
| Specs | Cuisinart TOA-60 | Instant Vortex Plus | Ninja 1550 Watt | 3.7 Quart... | BLACK+DECKER Purifry |
| Outside Dimensions | 14" x 15.8" x 14" | 11.5" x 13.25" x 12.75" | 13.6" x 11" x 13.3" | 12" x 8" x 8" | 11.1" x 9.8" x 11.5" |
| Capacity | 1.8 qt | 6 qt | 4 qt | 3.7 qt | 2.1 qt |
| Accessories | air fry basket, baking tray, oven rack | none | multi-layer rack for dehydrating | none | basket divider |
| Manufacturer Warranty | 3 Year Limited | 1 Year Limited | 1 Year Limited | 1 Year Limited | 2 Year Limited |
| Power Consumption | 1800W | 1700W | 1550W | 1400W | 1200W |
Our Analysis and Test Results
The multi-function Cuisinart TOA-60 works well as a toaster oven, but we found its air frying function to be lacking.
Performance Comparison
The Cuisinart TOA-60 consistently fell to the back of the pack in all of our tests, earning it the lowest overall score.
Cooking Performance
In general, we would say the Cuisinart TOA-60's air-fried foods taste ok, but kind of fail to highlight the actual air frying process. By this we mean the food doesn't really differentiate itself in any way from the food prepared in a conventional oven on a normal setting.
Onion rings ended up being the TOA-60's strong suit, as they came out with a nice crisp. However, they still tasted a bit burnt and dry on the inside when compared to the offerings of other models. Like all the models we tested, it struggled in getting sweet potato fries truly crispy. They came out tasting more like sweet potato strips than sweet potato fries.
Doughnuts, chicken breast, and tater tots all proved to be a bit challenging for the TOA-60's air fry function. The doughnuts came out quite burned, the chicken breast was overly chewy, and the tater tots were very unevenly cooked.
User Friendliness
The TOA-60 offers our least favorite user experience of all the air fryers we tested.
Our complaints start with the interface. Four dials and no digital readout means you have to just trust that the dials are accurate, and given the play in said dials we were never inspired to such confidence. Then there is the frying basket itself. It has to be set inside of a baking tray but has no way to attach to the tray. This makes shaking around foods mid-cook (a requirement for many recipes) quite difficult. You also need to put the rack quite high in the oven when using the air fry function, which when combined with the basket/tray combo leaves very little room for maneuvering.
Ease of Cleaning
The TOA-60's less-than-ideal air frying design also made it our least favorite of the bunch to clean.
First off, the fact that you need to nestle a frying basket into a baking tray means the TOA-60 leaves you with 2 things to clean. That problem is exacerbated by the fact that the baking tray stubbornly hangs onto grease, and that the texture of the fry basket tends to act like a cheese grater when you scrub it with a sponge.
Temperature Accuracy
The TOA-60 was also the worst of the bunch in our temperature accuracy tests. In general, it ran about 25 ̊ hotter than the set temperature, but when we set it to 400˚ the oven temperature reached a whopping 485˚.
Value
Given the TOA-60's relatively poor performance in all of our air frying tests, we think it is quite a poor value for anyone looking to do some air frying. Even its additional abilities as a toaster oven can't really make up for its lack of air frying performance.
Conclusion
Though the Cuisinart TOA-60's suite of cooking features is enticing, its air frying function is a clear step below that of all the dedicated air fryers we tested, and even lags far behind other multi-function air fryers like the Breville Smart Oven Air and the Ninja Foodi.
— Max Mutter and Michelle Powell