Kitchen counter space comes at a premium in most homes, so if you're planning to occupy any part of it with a small appliance, you should make sure it's one that will see plenty of use.
The June Intelligent Oven impressed us with its automatic cooking of different dishes, but even its most affordable model is quite pricey at $599.
The new second-generation Tovala Steam Oven is just over half the price at $349, and adds steam cooking to the mix.
It's much smaller than the June and lacks its sophisticated sensors, but it's a super-functional multi-purpose smart oven capable of baking, broiling, and steaming foods through app control and QR codes.
It's an ideal cooking appliance for individuals or couples, and worthy of our Editors' Choice.
Honest, Objective Reviews
Daxdi.com is a leading authority on technology, delivering Labs-based, independent reviews of the latest products and services.
Our expert industry analysis and practical solutions help you make better buying decisions and get more from technology.
Design
This is the second-generation Tovala oven, redesigned after the successfully crowdfunded and distributed first model.
The controls are much more direct and functional here, and the overall size of the device has been reduced while keeping the same cooking capacity.
Setup is also much easier, relying on an ad-hoc Wi-Fi connection to the app rather than a pattern of flashing lights.
The Tovala looks like a simple toaster oven.
It's an 11.0-by-17.0-by-10.8-inch (HWD) dark gray metal box, with a flip-down door on the front bearing a large handle and a window.
The cooking cavity measures 7.1 by 12.5 by 10 inches, or just over 0.5 cubic feet, and features a removable crumb tray for the bottom and three positions for placing the included cooking rack.
The oven is markedly smaller than the June, which boasts a 1.0-cubic-foot cavity.
There's plenty of space to prepare a dinner for two, but you won't feed a big family in one cooking cycle with it.
A plastic drip tray fits outside the cooking cavity, directly under the door.
An 8-by-11-inch baking sheet, a 300mL (1.25 cups) measuring cup, and a fabric potholder are included with the oven.
Three glossy black circles surrounded by matte black buttons sit on a panel to the right of the door.
Each circle contains a white LED display, and is surrounded by buttons related to the information it shows.
The top circle is for cooking mode, with dedicated buttons for Bake, Broil, Steam, and Toast, along with Reheat and Scan.
The middle circle is for temperature, with plus and minus buttons for adjusting by 25-degree (Fahrenheit) increments in Bake and Steam mode, five preset levels in Toast mode, and Lo and Hi in Broil mode.
The bottom circle shows cooking time, with its own plus and minus buttons for setting the number of minutes to cook.
Two smaller, half-circle buttons to start cooking and cancel or power off the oven sit below the three displays.
Discounting the large, shiny handle on the door, it would be easy to assume the Tovala is a very basic, traditional countertop oven.
The only hint that the oven is more than it seems, apart from the multiple cooking modes, is a rounded black protrusion on its upper right corner.
This holds the oven's QR code reader, which automatically sets the cooking mode for any Tovala meal kit or recipe card.
The protrusion also holds a flip-up spout for pouring in water for the steam function.
Setup, App, and Meal Kits
You can cook using the manual controls on the Tovala itself, but to get the most out of the it, you need to use the app and connect it to the internet.
The oven requires a Wi-fi connection to read QR codes for recipes and to enable app control.
Setting it up through the app is very simple, with a step-by-step process that walks you through creating a free Tovala account (or signing into one you already made) and connecting the oven to your Wi-Fi network.
Once it's set up, you can scan QR codes for recipes by pressing the Scan button on the oven, or directly setting your own cooking programs through the app.
It doesn't have any sensors or circuitry that automatically adjust cooking based automatically based on what you place inside of it, like the June does; the QR and app-based recipes are all built on specific cooking temperatures and times.
Controlling the oven through the app is easy, even if the cooking controls under the Oven tab are a bit small.
A large blue box in the top half of the screen displays the cooking process, temperature or setting, and period of time.
Tap any of them to make adjustments, then tap Add Step to cue that part of the cooking cycle.
You can set multiple cooking types for a cycle, letting you steam your dish for a period of time, then finish it off with a quick broil for texture.
If you use a cooking cycle regularly, you can save it and load it later without adding each step.
Tapping Cook loads the cycle onto the oven, but it doesn't begin cooking; you still need to press the Start button on the oven itself (a good safety measure, since it prevents any accidental activation of a cooking cycle when you're not near the oven).
The app lets you order Tovala's meal kits, if you haven't already set up a subscription plan over the web.
Each meal is $12, and you can order three to 12 kits on a weekly basis.
The meals rotate every week, and include everything you need to prepare your dish with a fork, and the foil trays the ingredients come in.
Every ingredient comes pre-cleaned, pre-trimmed, and pre-cut as needed, so you don't need to do any knife handling like you do with non-smart-oven meal-kit delivery services.
The kits are completely optional, though subscribers who commit to 100 meals when they order the oven get a $100 discount.
The app also offers a few dozen recipes for basic dishes, which you can search by general ingredient, like vegetables or seafood, or by cooking time.
The recipes are much more simple than any of the Tovala meal kits.
That's ultimately a good thing, since you can use the basic recipes like "pork chops" or "roasted broccoli" as building blocks to create your own preferred dishes with your favorite flavors.
The spices you use ultimately don't affect the cooking process the ingredients require (except perhaps for certain marinades and sauces).
Cooking Performance
I cooked three Tovala meal kits with the oven, using the instructions on each package to prepare them and the QR code on each package to set the oven to the correct cooking modes.
The meals come with the primary ingredients in multiple metal trays sealed with plastic, with additional ingredients like sauces, oils, and garnishes in smaller plastic cups.
Each set comes with instructions for how to combine the ingredients in the metal trays, which are designed to be placed directly in the oven for cooking.
The first meal I prepared was ancho coffee chicken breast with southwest grains and cumin-spiced carrots.
The spiced chicken breast came in one metal tray, and the grains and vegetables came in another.
To prepare the meal for cooking, I poured a small container of lime juice and oil mixture over the chicken breast, then placed both trays in the oven.
The remaining containers of escabeche, queso fresco, and pepita pesto were left alone, for optionally adding after the dish was cooked.
I closed the oven and pressed the Scan button, which made the reader light up and display a red bar on the counter right in front of the oven.
It read the QR code, which set the oven to cook the dish (steaming at 440 degrees for 20 minutes).
When the meal was ready, the oven sent a notification to my phone.
Aside from the 20-minute cooking time, the entire preparation and plating process took just a minute or two, and all of the elements were cooked perfectly.
I also tried nuoc cham meatballs with coconut-braised kale and tofu.
The dish is Vietnamese, with four citrus-glazed meatballs served over a kale and tofu stew flavored with coconut milk and lemongrass.
The meatballs and stew come in separate metal trays, with directions to pour nuoc cham sauce over the meatballs and mix ginger stock into the soup.
After I performed those tasks, I put the trays in the oven and scanned the QR code to set the 18-minute cooking process.
It steamed the trays for 16 minutes at 425 degrees, then broiled them on the high setting for another two minutes.
After the program ran, I poured the stew into a bowl and placed the meatballs on top, sprinkling coconut flakes over it.
The dish was fantastic, but that could partly be because I'm a sucker for coconut milk, lemongrass, and ginger.
The extra step to broil the trays made the meatballs just slightly crispy, which balanced well against the texture of the stew.
I cooked some food using my own takes on the recipes offered in the app.
For vegetables, the Tovala app includes recipes for roasted cauliflower and roasted broccoli, with cauliflower taking a bit longer to cook.
I prepared a mix of fresh broccoli and cauliflower florets and tossed them in some olive oil and lemon juice, then spread them out on a foil-lined baking tray and sprinkled them with some salt and pepper.
The oven steamed the vegetables for 14 minutes, then finished them off with a three-minute broil cycle.
The result was perfectly cooked, tender cauliflower, and well-done broccoli with slightly crispy heads (which is my personal preference for the vegetable, and was a calculated risk I was pleased by).
Finally, I tried cooking a marinated tilapia fillet and some shrimp in the Tovala.
Since the fish was already marinated I didn't do anything else to it, but I tossed the peeled and deveined shrimp in some olive oil and lemon juice mix and added salt and pepper to them.
I set the oven to the shrimp preset, which broiled the seafood for seven minutes.
The shrimp came out perfectly, with just the right color and bite, and the tilapia was moist and flaky.
A Clever Countertop Companion
The Tovala Steam Oven is an impressive little countertop appliance.
Its multiple cooking modes and extensive, multi-step cooking programs make it incredibly useful for whipping up nearly any meal.
Tovala's prefab meal kits are also excellent and offer some very sophisticated flavors, though at $12 each they're a bit pricey.
They're a nice option to have, however, and don't detract from the oven's functionality thanks to extensive app-based and manual controls.
Whether you subscribe to the meals or not, the Tovala is a very useful smart oven for baking, broiling, roasting, and steaming.
It's half the size and doesn't have the sensors of the June, but it also doesn't cost nearly as much, and has a steaming function the June oven lacks.
That makes it a powerful appliance to keep on the counter, as well as our Editors' Choice.
Tovala Steam Oven (2nd Gen)
Pros
Multiple cooking modes including steam cooking.
Easy to program multi-step cooking cycles.
Reliable steaming and broiling.
Surprisingly tasty, easy meal kits available.
View More
The Bottom Line
The second-generation Tovala Steam Oven can easily cook foods in multiple steps, letting you steam, bake, and broil your meals to perfection.
Kitchen counter space comes at a premium in most homes, so if you're planning to occupy any part of it with a small appliance, you should make sure it's one that will see plenty of use.
The June Intelligent Oven impressed us with its automatic cooking of different dishes, but even its most affordable model is quite pricey at $599.
The new second-generation Tovala Steam Oven is just over half the price at $349, and adds steam cooking to the mix.
It's much smaller than the June and lacks its sophisticated sensors, but it's a super-functional multi-purpose smart oven capable of baking, broiling, and steaming foods through app control and QR codes.
It's an ideal cooking appliance for individuals or couples, and worthy of our Editors' Choice.
Honest, Objective Reviews
Daxdi.com is a leading authority on technology, delivering Labs-based, independent reviews of the latest products and services.
Our expert industry analysis and practical solutions help you make better buying decisions and get more from technology.
Design
This is the second-generation Tovala oven, redesigned after the successfully crowdfunded and distributed first model.
The controls are much more direct and functional here, and the overall size of the device has been reduced while keeping the same cooking capacity.
Setup is also much easier, relying on an ad-hoc Wi-Fi connection to the app rather than a pattern of flashing lights.
The Tovala looks like a simple toaster oven.
It's an 11.0-by-17.0-by-10.8-inch (HWD) dark gray metal box, with a flip-down door on the front bearing a large handle and a window.
The cooking cavity measures 7.1 by 12.5 by 10 inches, or just over 0.5 cubic feet, and features a removable crumb tray for the bottom and three positions for placing the included cooking rack.
The oven is markedly smaller than the June, which boasts a 1.0-cubic-foot cavity.
There's plenty of space to prepare a dinner for two, but you won't feed a big family in one cooking cycle with it.
A plastic drip tray fits outside the cooking cavity, directly under the door.
An 8-by-11-inch baking sheet, a 300mL (1.25 cups) measuring cup, and a fabric potholder are included with the oven.
Three glossy black circles surrounded by matte black buttons sit on a panel to the right of the door.
Each circle contains a white LED display, and is surrounded by buttons related to the information it shows.
The top circle is for cooking mode, with dedicated buttons for Bake, Broil, Steam, and Toast, along with Reheat and Scan.
The middle circle is for temperature, with plus and minus buttons for adjusting by 25-degree (Fahrenheit) increments in Bake and Steam mode, five preset levels in Toast mode, and Lo and Hi in Broil mode.
The bottom circle shows cooking time, with its own plus and minus buttons for setting the number of minutes to cook.
Two smaller, half-circle buttons to start cooking and cancel or power off the oven sit below the three displays.
Discounting the large, shiny handle on the door, it would be easy to assume the Tovala is a very basic, traditional countertop oven.
The only hint that the oven is more than it seems, apart from the multiple cooking modes, is a rounded black protrusion on its upper right corner.
This holds the oven's QR code reader, which automatically sets the cooking mode for any Tovala meal kit or recipe card.
The protrusion also holds a flip-up spout for pouring in water for the steam function.
Setup, App, and Meal Kits
You can cook using the manual controls on the Tovala itself, but to get the most out of the it, you need to use the app and connect it to the internet.
The oven requires a Wi-fi connection to read QR codes for recipes and to enable app control.
Setting it up through the app is very simple, with a step-by-step process that walks you through creating a free Tovala account (or signing into one you already made) and connecting the oven to your Wi-Fi network.
Once it's set up, you can scan QR codes for recipes by pressing the Scan button on the oven, or directly setting your own cooking programs through the app.
It doesn't have any sensors or circuitry that automatically adjust cooking based automatically based on what you place inside of it, like the June does; the QR and app-based recipes are all built on specific cooking temperatures and times.
Controlling the oven through the app is easy, even if the cooking controls under the Oven tab are a bit small.
A large blue box in the top half of the screen displays the cooking process, temperature or setting, and period of time.
Tap any of them to make adjustments, then tap Add Step to cue that part of the cooking cycle.
You can set multiple cooking types for a cycle, letting you steam your dish for a period of time, then finish it off with a quick broil for texture.
If you use a cooking cycle regularly, you can save it and load it later without adding each step.
Tapping Cook loads the cycle onto the oven, but it doesn't begin cooking; you still need to press the Start button on the oven itself (a good safety measure, since it prevents any accidental activation of a cooking cycle when you're not near the oven).
The app lets you order Tovala's meal kits, if you haven't already set up a subscription plan over the web.
Each meal is $12, and you can order three to 12 kits on a weekly basis.
The meals rotate every week, and include everything you need to prepare your dish with a fork, and the foil trays the ingredients come in.
Every ingredient comes pre-cleaned, pre-trimmed, and pre-cut as needed, so you don't need to do any knife handling like you do with non-smart-oven meal-kit delivery services.
The kits are completely optional, though subscribers who commit to 100 meals when they order the oven get a $100 discount.
The app also offers a few dozen recipes for basic dishes, which you can search by general ingredient, like vegetables or seafood, or by cooking time.
The recipes are much more simple than any of the Tovala meal kits.
That's ultimately a good thing, since you can use the basic recipes like "pork chops" or "roasted broccoli" as building blocks to create your own preferred dishes with your favorite flavors.
The spices you use ultimately don't affect the cooking process the ingredients require (except perhaps for certain marinades and sauces).
Cooking Performance
I cooked three Tovala meal kits with the oven, using the instructions on each package to prepare them and the QR code on each package to set the oven to the correct cooking modes.
The meals come with the primary ingredients in multiple metal trays sealed with plastic, with additional ingredients like sauces, oils, and garnishes in smaller plastic cups.
Each set comes with instructions for how to combine the ingredients in the metal trays, which are designed to be placed directly in the oven for cooking.
The first meal I prepared was ancho coffee chicken breast with southwest grains and cumin-spiced carrots.
The spiced chicken breast came in one metal tray, and the grains and vegetables came in another.
To prepare the meal for cooking, I poured a small container of lime juice and oil mixture over the chicken breast, then placed both trays in the oven.
The remaining containers of escabeche, queso fresco, and pepita pesto were left alone, for optionally adding after the dish was cooked.
I closed the oven and pressed the Scan button, which made the reader light up and display a red bar on the counter right in front of the oven.
It read the QR code, which set the oven to cook the dish (steaming at 440 degrees for 20 minutes).
When the meal was ready, the oven sent a notification to my phone.
Aside from the 20-minute cooking time, the entire preparation and plating process took just a minute or two, and all of the elements were cooked perfectly.
I also tried nuoc cham meatballs with coconut-braised kale and tofu.
The dish is Vietnamese, with four citrus-glazed meatballs served over a kale and tofu stew flavored with coconut milk and lemongrass.
The meatballs and stew come in separate metal trays, with directions to pour nuoc cham sauce over the meatballs and mix ginger stock into the soup.
After I performed those tasks, I put the trays in the oven and scanned the QR code to set the 18-minute cooking process.
It steamed the trays for 16 minutes at 425 degrees, then broiled them on the high setting for another two minutes.
After the program ran, I poured the stew into a bowl and placed the meatballs on top, sprinkling coconut flakes over it.
The dish was fantastic, but that could partly be because I'm a sucker for coconut milk, lemongrass, and ginger.
The extra step to broil the trays made the meatballs just slightly crispy, which balanced well against the texture of the stew.
I cooked some food using my own takes on the recipes offered in the app.
For vegetables, the Tovala app includes recipes for roasted cauliflower and roasted broccoli, with cauliflower taking a bit longer to cook.
I prepared a mix of fresh broccoli and cauliflower florets and tossed them in some olive oil and lemon juice, then spread them out on a foil-lined baking tray and sprinkled them with some salt and pepper.
The oven steamed the vegetables for 14 minutes, then finished them off with a three-minute broil cycle.
The result was perfectly cooked, tender cauliflower, and well-done broccoli with slightly crispy heads (which is my personal preference for the vegetable, and was a calculated risk I was pleased by).
Finally, I tried cooking a marinated tilapia fillet and some shrimp in the Tovala.
Since the fish was already marinated I didn't do anything else to it, but I tossed the peeled and deveined shrimp in some olive oil and lemon juice mix and added salt and pepper to them.
I set the oven to the shrimp preset, which broiled the seafood for seven minutes.
The shrimp came out perfectly, with just the right color and bite, and the tilapia was moist and flaky.
A Clever Countertop Companion
The Tovala Steam Oven is an impressive little countertop appliance.
Its multiple cooking modes and extensive, multi-step cooking programs make it incredibly useful for whipping up nearly any meal.
Tovala's prefab meal kits are also excellent and offer some very sophisticated flavors, though at $12 each they're a bit pricey.
They're a nice option to have, however, and don't detract from the oven's functionality thanks to extensive app-based and manual controls.
Whether you subscribe to the meals or not, the Tovala is a very useful smart oven for baking, broiling, roasting, and steaming.
It's half the size and doesn't have the sensors of the June, but it also doesn't cost nearly as much, and has a steaming function the June oven lacks.
That makes it a powerful appliance to keep on the counter, as well as our Editors' Choice.
Tovala Steam Oven (2nd Gen)
Pros
Multiple cooking modes including steam cooking.
Easy to program multi-step cooking cycles.
Reliable steaming and broiling.
Surprisingly tasty, easy meal kits available.
View More
The Bottom Line
The second-generation Tovala Steam Oven can easily cook foods in multiple steps, letting you steam, bake, and broil your meals to perfection.
