The toaster oven. It’s an old standby that many people find indispensable these days. Consumer Reports has tested eight toaster ovens. Interestingly, one thing they generally don’t excel at well is ... toast!

Toast ends up with tiger stripes on one side, and toaster ovens take twice as long as toasters to get the job done. But companies such as Cuisinart, Black & Decker, and Toastmaster want you to think beyond bread when cooking on your countertop. Toaster ovens now promise to bake and deliver a 12-inch pizza. But with some, the results were not pretty.

As for the promise of “quicker cooking” by the $135 Black & Decker Infrawave, testers found it does do toast faster. But when it came to cooking muffins, its promise turned out to be half-baked. Although the muffins came out brown on top, they were still underdone inside, and a little bit raw.

A better choice is the top-rated $180 Cuisinart toaster oven, model TOB-175. It not only excels at baking, but it also makes very good toast. And after all, shouldn’t that be the final word?

Consumer Reports says if you’re looking for a less expensive toaster oven, a $55 oven from Rival is a pretty good alternative. It’s model TO600. Although it doesn’t do a great job toasting, it excels at baking.

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