GE Profile Smart Oven Review

About the GE Profile Smart Oven

This 11-in-1 smart oven has a sleek, slightly futuristic design that left us with a poignant first impression. The garage-style sliding door opens with a one-touch button that's both aesthetically pleasing and practically designed, leaving less risk for reach-over burns. Its touchscreen interface and app capabilities only amplify its modern feel.

This oven is large; at 11 inches tall, 17 inches wide, and almost 20 inches deep, it will become a main fixture on your kitchen counter. The spacious capacity of 0.83 cubic feet is big enough to fit a 12-inch pizza or seven-pound chicken.

Its 11 functions are all one-touch and extremely intuitive. The panel includes buttons for Toast, Broil, Warm, Roast, Air Fry, Cake, Reheat, Pizza, Cookies, Bake, and Add 2 minutes. There's also a button for the interior light, which makes it easy to check on food as it's cooking.

A unique feature of this oven is its promise that no preheating is required, so you can start cooking meals right away without waiting. The max temperature goes up to 500°F, making it comparable to full-sized ovens and great for foods like pizza and roasts.

The oven comes with four accessories: a wire rack, air fry basket, baking pan, and sheet rack. The racks and basket are all constructed of chrome-plated steel, while the baking pan is made of enamel-coated steel—which makes it dishwasher-safe.

What we like about the GE Profile Smart Oven

It has a spacious, sleek design

This machine is an eye-catcher. It has a unique, modern design that would aesthetically match almost any kitchen, and its touchscreen interface gives it a clean look that you won't mind keeping out on your countertop.

We love the large viewing window that stretches across almost the entire machine, which—along with the bright interior light—allows you to easily monitor food as it cooks.

And, of course, the one-of-a-kind garage door design is a conversation starter, adding a fun element to the appliance that made us excited to keep coming back.

Given its spacious interior, this smart oven is great for extending the space of your full-sized ovens when entertaining, or replacing it altogether in small living spaces.

It's app-compatible

This smart oven connects to GE's standard SmartHQ app, which means you can easily pair your phone to the device and benefit from added features.

We especially appreciated the helpful notifications, which pinged us when there was one minute left in our recipe, and again when the food was ready. You can also use the app to modify the temperature, timer, setting, and even the oven light, remotely.

Plus, the app offers helpful recipes and step-by-step video tutorials so that you can feel confident that you're getting the most out of your appliance.

It bakes and air fries well

The results we achieved with this smart oven were impressive—and delicious.

Once we got over the learning curve with timer details (more on that later), the foods that emerged from this machine were evenly and adequately cooked through.

Fries achieved peak crispness, frozen waffles were evenly toasted, Brussels sprouts were well browned, and fried chicken tasted like it just emerged from hot oil.

If you need a countertop oven that can go from air frying frozen nuggets on a lazy weeknight to roasting squash or baking pie in a busy Thanksgiving kitchen, this model can carry the weight.

What we don't like

The no-preheat feature falls short

The idea of a no-preheat feature is definitely appealing (who wants to wait five to ten minutes before they start cooking dinner?). But unfortunately, it didn't perform the way we expected during our tests.

The recipes that we prepared in this oven are standard to what we test in all of our air fryer toaster ovens, so we have set expectations when it comes to times and temperatures for each respective recipe.

Although food started cooking immediately once we put it in the oven, most of the time, it emerged undercooked—which meant we had to add extra time to the tail end of the recipe anyways.

After our recipe-dictated timers went off, frozen fries emerged soft, fried chicken thighs were under 150°F, and Brussels sprouts were still tough. More times than not, we had to add time to each recipe–which had us wondering whether a built-in preheat time would have actually benefited us in the long run.

It's tough to clean

After making a batch of bacon in this machine, grease immediately built up across the interior—despite using the baking pan underneath the wire rack. As a result, a decent amount of smoke was emitted from the machine in subsequent tests.

While scrubbing the interior machine (according to the manual) somewhat alleviated the issue, it didn't eliminate it. The manual discourages any cleaning of the cylindrical heating elements, which means any caked-on grease there will have to burn off on its own. And unfortunately, we found that these got pretty dirty after a few uses.

It's also worth noting that most accessories are not dishwasher-safe—only the baking pan is—which means even more hands-on cleanup is regularly required.

It takes up a lot of counter space

The downside to having a roomy countertop oven that's big enough to fit a whole chicken is, well, it's pretty big.

This bulky machine takes up a lot of countertop space, especially considering that it needs ample empty space around it (and above it) to ensure safety. And its heavy nature means you probably won't want to lug it in and out of storage after every use, so you'll want to ensure your kitchen has enough space before you make the purchase.

Should you buy the GE Profile Smart Oven?

Yes, if you're looking for a spacious countertop oven that's app-compatible

If space isn't a concern—and the lackluster "no preheat" promise isn't a deal-breaker—this is a fantastic smart oven to have in your kitchen. We loved the user experience of this appliance, from the sleek control panel to the convenient app compatibility. And it can even double as a smaller second oven thanks to its large capacity.

Although the lack of a preheat function means recipe instructions may vary, you'd just need to spend some time getting the hang of it. Once you do, you'll have access to a modern appliance that air fries like a dream, and takes the guesswork out of tasks like making homemade pizza and toasting everyday bagels.