The BLACK+DECKER Crisp N Bake Air Fry Oven is our pick for most small kitchens — it air fries, bakes, and toasts without hogging your whole counter. If your budget is tight, the basic BLACK+DECKER TO1313SBD does the job for less. Need premium multi-functionality? The Our Place Wonder Oven is genuinely impressive but costs significantly more.
Counter space is a genuine resource in a small kitchen. A toaster oven that pulls double or triple duty — toasting, baking, air frying — earns its footprint. One that just toasts bread does not. Here's what's actually worth buying right now.
This is the no-frills option that does exactly what it says. It toasts, bakes small dishes, and broils — nothing fancy, nothing complicated. At under $35 most of the time, it's hard to argue with for someone who just needs basic oven functionality without eating up counter space.
The footprint is genuinely small, which is the whole point here. You're not getting air frying or convection, but if your cooking needs are modest, you don't need them either. Dial controls mean fewer things to break over time.
This is where value and functionality meet. The Crisp N Bake adds air frying to the standard toaster oven package without inflating the footprint much — and that air fry function is legitimately useful for frozen foods, reheating leftovers, and getting crispy results fast. For a small kitchen that needs to stretch every appliance further, this hits the sweet spot.
It fits a 12-inch pizza, handles toast evenly, and the air fry basket is included out of the box. Controls are still straightforward enough that you're not fighting with it on a Tuesday morning. It costs more than the basic model but significantly less than the Our Place — and for most people, it's all they'll need.
The Wonder Oven is genuinely well designed — it looks good, the build quality is a step above budget models, and it packs six cooking functions (air fry, bake, roast, broil, toast, and reheat) into a relatively compact 13-quart frame. If you care about aesthetics and want a cohesive kitchen that doesn't look like a discount appliance showroom, this is the one.
The catch is the price. You're paying a premium for the Our Place brand identity and the design. The cooking results are excellent, but if you're purely utilitarian about it, the BLACK+DECKER Crisp N Bake gets you 80% of the way there for half the money. That said — if you're going to look at this thing every day, paying for something you like looking at is a legitimate reason.
Here's the short version for people who don't want to scroll back up:
For most people with small kitchens, the BLACK+DECKER Crisp N Bake is the right call. The air fry function genuinely earns its keep, the price is fair, and it won't dominate your counter. The basic TO1313SBD is the right call if money is tight or you barely cook. The Our Place Wonder Oven is the right call if you want to actually enjoy looking at your kitchen.
View Our Top Pick on Amazon →For most small kitchens, a 4-to-6 slice capacity unit (roughly 13–16 inches wide) hits the sweet spot. You get enough interior space to actually cook real food — a 12-inch pizza, a small casserole dish, four pieces of toast — without the oven taking up half your counter. Anything labeled "compact" or "mini" often sacrifices too much usable cooking space to be worth it. Aim for capacity you'll actually use, not the smallest box possible.
Yes, if counter space is your constraint. A toaster oven with air fry consolidates two appliances into one footprint. The trade-off is that a combo unit's air fry performance is slightly less powerful than a dedicated air fryer — but unless you're cooking for a crowd, the difference is minor for everyday use. Frozen fries, chicken tenders, reheated pizza — all come out noticeably better with air fry than conventional heat. For a small kitchen trying to do more with less, it's a genuinely smart buy.
For a lot of everyday cooking — yes, mostly. Toasting, roasting vegetables, baking small batches of cookies, reheating leftovers, cooking chicken breasts — a good toaster oven handles all of that without problem. It also preheats in a fraction of the time and won't heat up your entire apartment. Where it falls short is capacity: you're not fitting a Thanksgiving turkey or a full sheet pan in there. But if you're cooking for one or two people and don't bake large batches regularly, a toaster oven can absolutely be your primary oven.