Best Smart Ovens of 2024 - CNET

Article updated on October 15, 2024 at 3:55 PM PDT

Cooking and baking no longer have to be complicated, thanks to these smart ovens.

CNET’s expert staff reviews and rates dozens of new products and services each month, building on more than a quarter century of expertise.

Many kitchen appliances have become smart in recent years, with smart ovens being one of the more recent additions. A smart oven is an unexpectedly useful appliance that makes your cooking adventures easier. It’s one of the few smart appliances that truly aids your cooking, rather than just being a kitchen gadget with internet connectivity. A smart oven can act as your personal sous chef, with features like smart displays, recipe walkthroughs and even Bluetooth thermometers to monitor cooking temperatures. They also have integrations with other smart appliances like Samsung's Family Hub smart refrigerator.

Just when we thought smart kitchen devices had plateaued, smart countertop ovens came onto the scene. Smart ovens are far more exciting than conventional ones, packed with features that let them cook, bake, roast, dehydrate and even proof dough -- all in a compact, microwave-sized design.

Some work with voice assistants, while others use AI cameras to recognize food or scan packages of frozen meals and pizzas from your local grocery store. They also make perfect holiday gifts for the person who has everything. Here are the best smart ovens we've tested.

The Tovala Smart Oven is built around Tovala's chef-curated meal kits. Those meal kits are pricey at $12 per serving, but you can purchase the oven without the meals and still get plenty of use out of it.

That's because the Tovala Smart Oven can scan 750 different grocery items from your local store and use steam, bake, broil and toast functions to cook your dish during the cooking process. There's no voice assistant compatibility, but there is a Tovala app where you can control the oven, see recipes and more.

Amazon's Smart Oven also scans foods, but only a handful and most coming from the Whole Foods inventory. If you're interested in the Tovala countertop toaster oven, I'd recommend giving the meal kits a try, because they are easy to make, delicious and interesting. The oven is often on sale or other promotion for less than the $299 MSRP, so if price is a hindrance, check the Tovala website for deals.

The June Oven in its second generation is the best oven we've tested when it comes to recognizing food. There are plenty of cooking mode options including settings for convection bake, slow cooking, toaster, broiling and more. The oven also offers onscreen recommendations for how to cook different foods and several handy accessories. Use it for air frying and dehydrating, or use it as a convection oven for baking and convection cooking, or as a toaster oven for toasting.

The June Oven works with Alexa for voice commands, and the June app lets you control the oven from anywhere and view live video of your food as it cooks. A smart cooking function tracks the core temperature for the perfect cooking time.

You can buy the oven in a Standard package that includes a food thermometer, roasting rack, baking pan, wire shelf and crumb tray for $499 or in a Gourmet package for $699 that adds baking pans, air-fry baskets, a recipe subscription and extended warranty. (Note: This item is currently out of stock, but availability on Amazon tends to fluctuate.)

This category is only a few years old, and we've seen plenty of growth. We tested a limited-release smart oven from Whirlpool's WLabs. The Suvie kitchen robot launched on Kickstarter and uses water to refrigerate and cook your entire meal. Then, there's Anova, which released a smart oven in 2021.

These ovens might be the best out there right now, but they certainly won't be the last. More and more companies are expressing interest in this category, so we'll continue to test out new models as they appear.

Originally published earlier and updated periodically as we review new products.