Your membership has expired

The payment for your account couldn't be processed or you've canceled your account with us.

Re-activate
    outside the labs

    We Used the Tovala Smart Oven for a Month and Can’t Go Back to Sad Desk Lunches

    Our old toaster ovens are dead to us

    When you shop through retailer links on our site, we may earn affiliate commissions. 100% of the fees we collect are used to support our nonprofit mission. Learn more.

    black toaster oven on kitchen counter Photo: Tovala

    As lifelong epicureans, my colleague Paul Hope and I have used the gamut of appliances. Between the two of us, we’ve probably tried them all, attempting to incorporate them into our cooking repertoire. But for every appliance we’ve kept—sous vide circulator, Instant Pot, Vitamix blender, to name a few—there are dozens that we scrapped for various reasons: It takes up too much space, it’s a pain to clean or use, it doesn’t do what it’s supposed to, or it doesn’t do it better or any more conveniently than the standard way. (A pot or pan on a stove or in the oven still trumps almost everything.) 

    So any time a hot new appliance enters the market, claiming to change our lives, we are skeptical at best. Tovala, which was launched in 2017, was a pleasant surprise.

    More on Cooking

    Tovala is a 1,525-watt smart countertop oven and meal delivery kit service (another area where I’ve tried them all). The kits feature a weekly menu of single-serving meals that arrive raw with simple instructions and a QR code that can be scanned by Tovala’s smart oven. The oven downloads the recipe’s cooking settings and cooks most meals in under 20 minutes. 

    It looks like a toaster oven and has a similar footprint (18.5x12.32x11.75 inches), but in addition to toasting, baking, and broiling, the Tovala can air-fry, reheat, and steam. Many of the meal settings and recipes will use a combination of cooking methods. You can customize your own cycle for non-Tovala foods, too. Keep reading to see how it fared in our at-home evaluations.

    trays of food roasting in an oven
    Scanning to cook Tovala's coconut-crusted salmon meal kit.

    Photo: Perry Santanachote/Consumer Reports Photo: Perry Santanachote/Consumer Reports

    How We Evaluated the Tovala Smart Oven

    Paul and I each ordered an oven and signed up for the weekly meal kit delivery. The price for four single-serving meals a week came out to about $13 to $18 per meal. (Some premium meals have an upcharge.) The cost of each meal goes down the more meals you order per week.

    We ordered a mix of proteins, including salmon, chicken thighs, chicken breasts, steak, pork chops, shrimp, and sausage. We prepared each meal per the instructions and scanned the bar codes to cook. 

    We also cooked some foods using our own ingredients with Tovala’s recipes, cooked some foods using just our intuition, and cooked some foods using Tovala’s scan-to-cook grocery feature, a database with over 850 popular grocery items—like frozen meals and breakfast items—that uses a product’s bar code to determine the optimal cook setting and time.

    We also considered how easy the oven was to set up out of the box. 

    Become a member to read the full article and get access to digital ratings.

    We investigate, research, and test so you can choose with confidence.