Okay, four tests for cheese toast in the Monogram Pro Advantium 240V: 1) Microwave. Not toast. Bread on a plate. Just like any kind of microwaved cheese bread. Very melty, bread soft and kind of sticky wet on the bottom. Tastes good if you like gooey. 2) Oven. Toast setting. Rack from toaster oven on metal tray. No preheat. The Advantium just sucks at toasting. The bread gets very dry and doesn't caramelize (brown). It gets hard and dry rather than toasty. The cheese didn't melt as fast as the bread cooked. I gave it extra time, which made the cheese okay, but further dried the bread, still without browning. Not a good outcome. 3) Oven. Toast setting. Rack. Preheat. Preheat took something like 10 minutes. The bread still didn't caramelize, though the cheese started to turn brown and hard by the time I pulled it out (browned bread is good toast, browned cheese is overcooked and means the texture has gone off, though small spots of it can be nice on a complex dish). Good crunch to the crust and far better than the no preheat version, but still not toasty. Make do. Not horrible. Not really good though. Better than poor, but not really fair. 4) Speed oven. Rack. I'm not an expert with speed settings so I go with the menu. There's a cheese bread setting for whole loaves and frozen slices, but I think it's talking about some kind of prepared product, not a slice of cheddar on a slice of bread, which is what I have. That leaves "garlic bread" and "Texas toast". I'm thinking garlic bread is more about melting the topping and leaving the bread as is, so I choose Texas toast, which also has a 1-2 slice fresh setting. It stops with a minute left to be turned over, so I just turn it back on. As it's finishing the set time, I can see the cheese bubbling all over and that it's just at that tasty doneness before it starts burning (i.e., going brown). I was right about the cheese. It was just right. Very flavorful without losing its texture. The crust was crunchy, though not as crunchy as the toast version. The bottom of the bread was dried out a bit the way it is on the toast setting but not as much, and the inside was much moister and warmer. I'd rate this fair to good. There's potential that with experimentation it could make it all the way to good. Not sure about if it could make it to great. Because the bread gets so dry, the rack doesn't seem to give an advantage. You could just as easily use the grill pan, and that might even be better unless it makes it sticky and mushy. I've used the grill pan on the toast setting before and it didn't allow the underside to toast, which is why I suggested the rack. What I think I've learned is that the problem with toasting in the Advantium is the convection. It's too windy, which pulls the moisture out of the bread and doesn't allow enough surface heat to caramelize. The rack didn't help in that case because the wind is cooling the bread as much as heating it. I think the other speed ovens, which are supposed to toast better, have a direct radiant heat element like a regular oven. I'm sorry I don't have a better answer for you. Since you eat your cheese toast daily, I'd guess you like it the way you currently make it. The Advantium may not do it for you. OTOH, if the toaster oven doesn't give you truly great results and you just like cheese toast, you might be able to find a speed setting that works well enough for your satisfaction. The Texas toast setting was acceptable, and you can adjust the proportions of different heat applications and all to your heart's content.

It depends upon how you want to use that second oven. The microwave/convection oven requires you to choose between a glass base or a metal base, depending upon which process you're using. If you envision using the Advantium (I presume the other alternatives are similar in this regard) for an oven frequently and you also use a microwave frequently, I think you would find changing these out irritating. If, instead, you will only use it infrequently as an oven and frequently as a microwave, then it's easy enough to use. My Advantium preheats in roughly 5 minutes. It cools down very fast and I have not had any problem using it as a microwave right after using it as an oven. (I'm using it now on the countertop during the temporary kitchen phase. A real godsend!) If you go this route, you want to have a convenient location for storing whichever base isn't being used at the time along with the rack that isn't used during microwaving.

The steam ovens don't cook faster like the Advantium or other speed ovens. Maybe somewhat, since steam transfers heat better than air, but not as much faster as microwave+convection dry heat. I would almost certainly choose the combi over a speed if I couldn't have both. If you don't also have room for a built-in microwave, and are not a big user of such, consider a very small counter top one, either on a counter, in a upper cabinet, on a pantry shelf, etc. I stacked a combi over a drawer microwave, with a cabinet drawer in between. They don't match at all (Gaggenau aluminum finish behind glass for combi, stainless for drawer), but looks okay to me. I have a range, so combi is the only wall oven other than microwave. This post was edited by attofarad on Sun, Aug 25, 13 at 21:04

I don't have a CSO, but I do have a speed cook oven...in my case, a GE Profile Trivection Double Oven (convection and speed cook on top oven, convection on the bottom oven). I use it all the time and love it! 20-minute baked potatoes with crispy skin baked chicken in about half the time -- although I often just use the lower convection oven b/c I'm baking potatoes in the speed cook oven! (convection is about 2/3 the time of a regular oven) I'm sad it's been discontinued b/c when we build again I would have liked to get it again. I'll be looking at other speed cook options. Do you have a range with an oven? If not do you have another oven elsewhere? If you do have another oven (range or wherever), is it a convection oven? If you don't get the speed cook, I strongly recommend convection in the other oven. (Ovens in ranges can also come with convection - my old GE Profile range from 1995 had it.)