Breville Smart Oven Pro (BOV845)

Why leaving the air fryer out is the point

The Smart Oven Pro is the model in Breville's countertop range that does not pretend to be an air fryer, and for a certain buyer that is a feature rather than a gap. It carries the same 1,800-watt rating Breville publishes on the product page, the same 18.9 by 15.9 by 10.9-inch footprint as the BOV860, and ten functions instead of eleven. What it adds where it matters is a real slow-cook and proof capability — the ability to hold a genuinely low temperature rather than a “low” setting that overshoots — which is the specification that decides whether an oven can proof dough and slow-roast, and the one thing you cannot retrofit.

What Breville publishes

The wattage is on the product page rather than buried in the manual, which is rarer in this category than it should be: 1,800 watts, stated plainly. The exterior dimensions are published too. What is missing, as with the rest of the range, is an interior volume for this specific model, so you cannot compare its usable space to the Pro's one cubic foot on paper. On a site that scores documentation, publishing the wattage on the page earns points the air-fry BOV860 loses by hiding the same number in the instruction book.

What it costs to run

Identical to every other 1,800-watt oven here — a few cents an hour at the US average rate, costed out in full in our convection-oven electricity page. The Pro draws exactly what a $60 radiant toaster oven draws at full tilt; the difference is entirely in how precisely it controls the heat, not in how much it uses. If a salesperson tells you a premium oven will save you money on electricity, they are wrong, and this oven is the proof.

Who should skip it

Anyone who wants to air fry. This is deliberately the model in the range without a basket, and buying it and then wishing it crisped is the most predictable regret Breville sells — the BOV860 is the same chassis with the air-fry function added for not much more. Skip it, too, if you want the biggest interior for the money; a French-door oven like the Oster or Elite Gourmet holds far more air for far less, at the cost of the element control that makes bread rise evenly. But if you bake bread and pastry and want a small oven that holds its set temperature, this is the most defensible Breville on the site.