Sunbeam Convection Bake & Grill COM3500SS
VerifiedMPNs: 809467 and COM3500SS8 reviews
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I bought this because it seemed a waste heating up my full size electric oven just to roast a few potatoes etc. It turned out to be one of the best kitchen purchases I've ever made. At only $119 the temp control is the basic 'ON/OFF' type so you'll need to preheat it first with anything prone to burning easily like toasting bread etc. It has two… Read more · 1
elements at the top and two on the bottom and three shelf positions. You can choose between having only the two top elements, only two bottoms ones or all on at once which means it's easy to optimise for things like grilling open sandwiches or baking or just warming things up.
One warning I'd give is that the top gets hot so don't leave anything heat sensitive on top while in use. On the other hand, I use this 'feature' to warm plates or preheat the next dish to save time and energy. My power bills have gone down since using this instead of my normal oven for most things - but of course, they'll just jack up the power costs to compensate!
A great kitchen gadget – We use this every day instead of using large oven. Not had a disaster yet. Show details
- +3
Best for the price! – I purchased this nearly 2 years ago but I wasn't using it much until recently. this thing is very good for the price. it heats up nice and quickly in no time. I can make the perfect pizza with it. Here is some of useful settings: Warm: it just turns on the 2 bottom elements to keep things warm or you can higher the temperature to make a crispy… Read more · 1
bottom pizza without the top been burnt (recommend to do this 4-5 minutes before your pizza is cooked, better to take the tray out and put the pizza directly on the rack). Toast: it turns ON all top and bottom elements, adjust the temperature you want, recommend for toast and pizzas. Grill: only turns ON the 2 top elements, perfect for grilling and making crispy top pizza, if you want a crispy top pizza just do this after your pizza is cooked. The convection fan is not the best but can't complain for the price, you don't really need the fan! But is there anyways. Overall this is great, large capacity, powerful, highly recommend, they are even cheaper now I can see some places selling them for $81 which is very good, I paid full price $109 but it was 2 years ago and not bad at all. *It also comes with a pizza tray but I bought a aftermarket tray online, I bought a 10 inch tray it seems like you can fit a 11 inch in it too. *It literally takes about 10 minutes to cook a pizza or maximum 15 minutes if you want crispy top and bottom.
Very disappointed – My old Sunbeam oven was great so purchased this as a replacement. After 2.5 hours at full temperature I still had a nearly raw chicken. Smaller than my old oven - this one is going back Show details
Very handy but not the best quality – I love the versatility of these products but this is the fourth Sunbeam toaster oven purchased after the first three suffered what now seems to be a common issue of a warped top element which results in shorting out the entire house. I’ll reserve judgement on the new one in this respect a little bit longer (only had it for 12 months). Issues… Read more
with this new model: 1. No indicator for when temperature has been reached. 2. Turbo (I presume this is fan-forced but nothing in the manual explains) doesn’t seem to be any different from normal bake. 3. Inside lining is impossible to clean. This was also a problem with all other models. Sorry to say this is quickly becoming a mediocre product and my next one will not be a Sunbeam. I’d rather pay a bit more for reliability and quality.
Good but has weakness – Bake n grill COM3500 in some respect better than previous model but flaws are significant. Crumb tray is internal and you risk damaging bottom elements to remove, old external tray much better. Is only 18 ltr not the 19 of previous models would not think 1 ltr could make so much difference. Says has turbo convention but nowhere in manual does it… Read more
explain how this differs from other settings. Tried to contact Sunbeam via web page link but even after allowing cookies still wouldnt send message. Only had short time too early to comment on other performance
Good for small bits of food but too small and fiddly compared to the previous model. Thermostat is accurate – Previously owned two Sunbeam mini ovens which were great for heating up/ cooking small meals. The first one broke after the top element warped and shorted after a few years .I bought a second one and this also lasted a few years before the top elements stopped working. I was going to give up buying Sunbeam ovens but they kindly sent me a… Read more
replacement model. This one looks a lot more modern , but is even smaller compared with the older model . It seems to have an easy clean coating on the inside making it much easier to keep clean. However, it really should be branded a " micro oven " as , unfortunately, it is simply too small for an " all rounder " mini oven . It's OK for toasting, cooking oven chips, and heating up ready made meals but that's about it. I can't fit any larger items of crockery in it as I could do in the older model . The oven door doesn't lie flat like the old model, because the handle is too deep, so if you need to bring your food out for any reason, it's really hard to balance the baking tray on the tilted door and my food has slid off the tray into the oven on many occasions . Secondly, the supplied baking tray is too small and fiddly to grasp properly especially as you are wearing either baking gloves or holding a towel. The tray lip isn't deep or big enough to hold properly and often I've burnt my hands and or/ dropped the food on the floor as it's really hard to grasp, especially when hot . I wonder if the people who design these products ever actually use them. I think not. They have also omitted the light which goes off when it reaches the required temperature. I also question the maximum temperature this oven reaches , the new one is capped at 200oC , and seems only barely adequate for roasting. I'm sure the older one went to 230c and seemed to have more guts in it . I think they've reduced the maximum temperature to stop the elements from warping like they did on the older model. I don't think i will buy any more Sunbeam mini ovens. The older ones were ok if you could get them at $70 and if they only lasted a few years, well it was ok . Their newer, larger models are over priced now and with their questionable build quality and failures of past models. I am not prepared to risk spending $200 upwards to have it fail after a few years .
UPDATE 2023 The model is still working and I thought I would update the review. One good thing about this oven is that the thermostat is accurate. The oven has never burnt anything, which is something that cannot be said of the Anko (Kmart) mini oven that I purchased in the hope of replacing this oven with something bigger. That thing burns everything. I just hope they could make a slightly bigger oven then this one would be almost perfect.
Best compact toaster oven under $100 – Bought this on 12 September 2021 from Bing Lee Chatswood to replace a slightly larger Sunbeam Bake & Grill that had to be thrown out after 3.5 years due to a bent element in the top touching the inside surface, thus causing a short. Our main goal was to get something compact that doesn't take up too much space on our kitchen bench-top that does… Read more
a good job of toasting bread for breakfast. We've tried various vertical toasters over the years but they all tend to dry out the bread and leave it with a crappy electrical taste. Only a toaster oven perfectly cooks toast so that it is crisp on the outside and moist on the inside without that electrical taste. This is because it cooks with the bread lying flat absorbing the heat of the ceramic heat elements, thus preventing too much drying out and loss of flavour and moistness inside. Japanese consumers have a huge variety of good quality and affordable toaster ovens to choose from. Australian consumers have about 3 or 4 at this price point, at most. The Japanese toaster ovens (100V) easily last ten years. Ours (230V) last only a few years (see below about in-built obsolescence).
Happy to report that after a bit of experimenting, it does the job. Rather than the recommended middle rack we use the one just below that, and rather than using the recommended temperature of 230 degrees / Toast, we found that 175 degrees was enough to brown the toast without burning it. Also found the toast benefits from being flipped halfway through the process, as the bottom ceramic bars can produce burn marks if toast is not flipped during cooking. We won't be cooking anything else in this appliance, even though it comes with two racks and a pizza tray - we have a full size built-in AEG electric oven for that.
One curious instruction written against the bottom dial (timer) is to turn it first to 20 minutes, then back to the desired amount of time. We tried this once, but after that found that this isn't actually needed for the toaster oven to function. So we just turn it to around 5 minutes, and it works absolutely fine.
We should get three good years from this appliance before it too suffers the inevitable flaw of a bent/twisted ceramic heating element in the top that causes a short. At $90 odd dollars, it's a fair economic bargain, but the in-built obsolescence deal that consumers and manufacturers of these types of appliances have silently struck is not at all good for the planet. Happy toasting comrades.
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Hi David, Thank you for sharing your experience while… Read more