Breville Smart Oven Pro BOV845BSS Review (2026)

Why you should trust this review

I bought this oven at retail and used it as the primary oven in a small apartment kitchen for two months, replacing a full-size range for baking duty from mid-March through late May. Breville did not provide a sample and had no involvement in this review. During that stretch I ran it through sourdough boules, sheet-pan chicken thighs, frozen pizzas, roasted vegetables, banana bread, and daily toast, which is the kind of varied, repeated load that exposes a countertop oven’s weaknesses fast.

I have spent years testing countertop ovens and tend to judge them on three things that matter more than feature counts: does the temperature it shows match the temperature inside, does it toast evenly, and does it bake something delicate without ruining it. I used a calibrated digital oven thermometer rather than trusting the dial, because a dial that reads 425 and delivers 398 is the single most common failure in this category.

How we evaluated

I ran a six-slice toast shade test at Light, Medium, and Dark, judging each slice for color evenness front to back and side to side. For temperature accuracy I placed a digital thermometer at the center rack and logged readings at 325, 350, and 425 degrees over twenty minutes after the preheat alert. I baked a nine-inch vanilla cake at 350 and checked for a sunken center and edge-to-edge color, roasted a sheet pan of diced sweet potatoes at 425 to gauge browning versus sogginess, and stopwatch-timed preheats from a cold start. I took IR readings on the sides, top, door glass, and handle after twenty minutes at high heat, and I evaluated the crumb tray after every toast, pizza, and roast session.

Toast and bake performance: the best I have tested at this size

The Element IQ system shifts power between five quartz elements depending on the function, and the result on toast is immediately visible. On the medium setting all six slices of white sandwich bread landed within one shade of each other, with even browning across the top and none of the pale center strips that plague single-element ovens. On the dark setting the two outer slices ran about one shade darker than the center pair, which is acceptable for a full six-slice load and far better than what cheaper ovens manage.

Bake temperature accuracy was the real standout. Set to 350, the center rack measured 348 after a seven-minute preheat and drifted only between 345 and 353 across twenty minutes. Set to 425, it averaged 421. A budget oven I ran alongside it averaged 398 when set to 425, a 27-degree shortfall that leaves the center of a dense batter underbaked. The vanilla cake came out level with an even gold crust, and the sweet potatoes caramelized rather than steamed, which tells you the convection airflow is doing real work and not just adding a label.

Preheat speed and the 13 functions

At 1800 watts the oven reached 350 in six minutes and 45 seconds and 425 in nine minutes and twenty seconds. A standard full-size electric range typically takes ten to twelve minutes to the same target, so for weeknight dinners and morning toast this oven is genuinely faster to get going. The preheat alert is a single beep plus a display confirmation, audible from the next room without being grating.

The 13 functions sound like marketing until you use them. The Bagel setting drops the top element and boosts the bottom to crisp the cut face without scorching the rounded back, and it works as described. The Slow Cook function held a steady 200 degrees through a four-hour short rib braise. The Cookies function uses gentle convection and is what I now reach for on anything delicate. Not every function changed my life, but none felt like padding, and that consistency is unusual at this count.

Exterior heat and cleanup: the real trade-offs

This is the most important safety note in the review. The sides measured 160 degrees after twenty minutes at 425, hot enough to burn on contact and hot enough to scorch wood cabinetry, a plastic container, or a silicone mat left too close. Breville calls for four inches of clearance on each side and six inches above, and you should treat that as a hard rule. In my kitchen the left side ran slightly hotter than the right. The door handle, by contrast, stayed around 92 degrees, so pulling a rack does not cook your hand, though you still need a mitt for the rack itself.

The crumb tray slides out from the front and catches most of the debris from toast and bread baking. After a frozen pizza at 425 it held a meaningful pile of cornmeal and cheese drips. Because it is bare steel rather than coated, washing is straightforward, but it requires full removal and a hand wash rather than a quick wipe, which is a small daily friction point worth knowing about going in.

Who should buy the Breville Smart Oven Pro BOV845BSS?

Buy it if you bake at least once a week and care about temperature precision. If you make bread, cakes, or roasts where a 25-degree swing wrecks the result, this is the oven that holds its set point. It is also a strong pick for anyone with limited counter space who wants to replace or supplement a full-size range for small batches, since it preheats faster and toasts more evenly than the big oven it sits beside.

Skip it if you mainly want to air fry, because this model has no air fry function and you should look at a unit that does. Skip it too if your budget is tight and you only reheat and make basic toast; a far cheaper oven will cover that without the premium. And give it a hard pass if your counter cannot give it the clearance it needs, because those 160-degree sides are not negotiable.

The verdict

Two months in, the BOV845BSS has done the thing most countertop ovens promise and few deliver: it bakes like a real oven. The temperature accuracy is the headline, the toast evenness is the daily pleasure, and the function set is unusually free of filler. The exterior runs hot enough to demand a careful counter layout, the crumb tray wants regular attention, and there is no air fry here. But for anyone who actually bakes and can give it room, this is the countertop oven I would recommend first and buy again.