The Tovala Smart Oven is a medium-sized toaster oven/air fryer that has a 'Scan-to-Cook' feature meant for use with the company's meal kits. You can scan the barcodes of these meals and some grocery items from other brands with the Tovala app to send cooking information directly to the toaster oven. The app also has some other uses, like monitoring cooking and remote controlling the oven. You can also cook manually with its 'Air Fry,' 'Toast,' 'Bake,' 'Broil,' and 'Reheat' functions. It comes with a baking tray, wire rack, mesh basket, and oven mitt.
Our Verdict
The Tovala Smart Oven is mediocre for mixed use. While it doesn't have a huge capacity, it has a good amount of room and can accommodate a 9" x 9" cake pan or most six-cup muffin tins. It preheats fast, which helps make it a convenient choice for reheating quick snacks. It toasts bread evenly. However, it doesn't maintain a stable temperature and runs very hot, which makes it less suitable for baking. Despite having an air fry function, it doesn't perform well for that purpose.
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Good capacity.
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Preheats quickly.
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Toasts evenly.
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Doesn't maintain a stable temperature.
The Tovala Smart Oven is decent for reheating leftovers. Even though it has a good amount of capacity and preheats fast, it's let down by poor temperature stability. The toaster oven runs much hotter than the selected setting, which can lead to your food burning or drying out before it's warm all the way through. The 'Reheat' function's default setting is 400 °F, which is already on the hot side for reheating, so you may want to use a lower setting.
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Preheats quickly.
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Runs hot.
The Tovala Smart Oven has a poor performance for baking. It runs hot, so the toaster oven's actual temperature is significantly higher than your selected setting most of the time. The temperature also varies quite a bit during cooking. This makes it difficult to follow recipes and can lead to your food burning, although you can offset it a bit by using a lower setting. On the plus side, there aren't any major hot or cold spots in the chamber.
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Uniform temperature in cooking chamber.
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Doesn't maintain a stable temperature.
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Runs hot.
The Tovala Smart Oven has a disappointing air-frying performance. It has a good amount of capacity, has an air-fry mode, and comes with a basket for air frying. However, its fan isn't that powerful. While it air fries foods like chicken wings and French fries faster than toaster ovens without fans, it makes unevenly cooked food, with only about half of it coming out crispy.
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Mesh air fry basket included.
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Air fries unevenly.
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Fan isn't very powerful.
The Tovala Smart Oven is great for toasting. It toasts very evenly, whether you're working with its maximum capacity of six slices or a smaller batch of four. It's not as fast as some other ovens, but it's still a solid option if you plan to use your toaster oven as a toaster.
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Toasts evenly.
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Toasts somewhat slowly.
The Tovala Smart Oven has a good amount of capacity. It can fit six slices of bread or a 9" x 9" cake pan. However, unlike some similarly sized toaster ovens, it can't fit a 12" frozen pizza, and the average casserole dish will be a tight squeeze.
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Good capacity.
- 6.0 Mixed Usage
- 7.0 Leftovers
Performance Usages
- 4.2 Baking
- 5.6 Air Frying
- 8.1 Toasting
- 7.6 Cooking Capacity
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Differences Between Sizes And Variants
The Tovala Smart Oven only comes in 'Stone Grey.' Here's a picture of our unit's label. There's also the Tovala Smart Oven Pro variant, which comes in 'Charcoal Black' and has a steam function. Steam cooking can be useful for reviving leftovers without drying them out or for baking bread with a crispy crust. The Pro variant has the same power and dimensions but may perform differently.
If you encounter another variant, let us know in the comments, and we'll update our review.
Compared To Other Toaster Ovens
The Tovala Smart Oven stands out for its 'Scan-to-Cook' feature and compatibility with the Tovala app, which lets you remote control the toaster oven. However, this medium-sized toaster oven is also a great option if you plan to use it as a toaster since it can toast six slices very evenly. Unfortunately, though, for more oven-type uses, like baking, reheating, and even air frying, it's not the best since it struggles to maintain a stable temperature. For air frying, the Cuisinart Air Fryer TOA-60 offers a much better performance, and if you want to use your toaster oven for baking bread and roasting chicken, something with better temperature stability like the Breville the Smart Oven BOV800XL is more suitable.
Test Results
The Tovala Smart Oven is a medium-sized toaster oven. It's fairly short but wide, so it takes up a decent amount of countertop space.
It has a medium-sized cooking chamber. There are three possible tray positions, so you can adjust the positions depending on what you're cooking or what function you're using. It can fit six slices of bread. However, its chamber doesn't have a lot of depth and can only fit a 10" pizza. In comparison, similarly sized toaster ovens like the Cuisinart Air Fryer TOA-60 or the Breville the Smart Oven BOV800XL can accommodate the average 12" frozen pizza.
- 10.1" x 12.3" wire rack (25.5 cm x 31.3 cm)
- 8.1" x 10.7" baking pan (20.4 cm x 27.3 cm)
- 9.2" x 11.5" mesh air fryer basket (23.3 cm x 29.2 cm)
- Oven mitt
- External bottom tray (fits under the door outside the toaster oven and catches crumbs and drips)
- User guides
This toaster oven has few functions, and its minimum temperature is unusually high, at 225 °F, making it less suitable for proofing or dehydrating.
However, it's meant to work with the Tovala app, which gives you remote control of the toaster oven and the use of 'Scan-to-Cook' technology. Tovala sells subscriptions for meal kits that come with a QR code you can scan to send cooking instructions directly to the toaster oven. The brand says you can also scan the barcodes of selected grocery items from other brands (like DiGiorno, Eggo, and Pillsbury) to have the toaster oven automatically cook or heat that item. The app also has a collection of recipes. You can use it to customize cooking programs, and it will send you notifications as your food cooks.
It has five manual cooking modes, most of which use the fan. A light inside the chamber comes on during cooking, but you can't switch it on or off manually.
| Function | Temperature | Timer | Fan |
| Air Fry | 225 °F - 450 °F | 1 min - 9 hours | Yes |
| Toast | Shade setting 1 - 5 | Based on setting | Yes |
| Bake | 225 °F - 450 °F | 1 min - 9 hours | Yes |
| Broil | Low or high | 1 - 15 min | No |
| Reheat | 400 °F | 1 - 45 min | Yes |
It's easy to clean overall. The baking tray has an enamel coating, making it less work to clean than non-coated trays. The interior of the cooking chamber is spacious enough to maneuver your hand around inside. It's easy to clean under the bottom elements, which are uncovered and spaced apart. However, it's harder to get behind the upper elements since there are three that are closer together and one that has a cover. The interior doesn't have a non-stick coating, which is a bit unusual and will make it more difficult to remove stuck-on grease.
It's an excellent toaster oven at maximum capacity. It can fit six bread slices and does an impressive job of evenly toasting the surface of the bread. There's more difference between the top and bottom of the bread than you'd get with a good slot toaster, but it performs very well for a toaster oven.
It's fantastic for toasting four bread slices at once. With fewer slices in the toaster oven, it does an even better job of toasting both sides equally.
Its air-frying performance is disappointing. It can make crispy foods like French fries or cauliflower faster than toaster ovens without fans, but it doesn't air fry very evenly, so only about half of your food comes out crispy.
It has sub-par temperature stability. The toaster oven's actual temperature is well above the selected setting for nearly the entire cooking time. It's also not particularly stable. This can lead to your food burning before it's properly cooked, and you may need to use a lower setting to compensate. That said, the temperature is uniform throughout the chamber.
It toasts quite slowly. Some toaster ovens can make six slices of toast faster, like the Ninja Flip SP151. It takes longer than most good slot toasters if you're only making four slices of bread.
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