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I've had a small panosonic combination microwave / convection oven for about 18 years. In the college dorm, I was able to defrost and then bake lasagna when everyone else could only heat stuff up. It worked ok. The only drawback is that the moving hot air tended to dry out the top of food, so if you were baking a cake for instance, you'd need to shield the top of it with some aluminum foil. Now that I live in a house, I would rather use the regular range, but if I ever move back into cramped conditions, I'll be taking my convection oven with me.
I have a KitchenAid double oven with the top oven (the one I use the most) being regular or convection. I've had it 9 years and love it...I use the convection feature for many things. I haven't tried it for regular layer cakes but have used it for tube pan cakes, turkey at Thanksgiving (I cooked a 25-lb last year), frozen biscuits, cookies, and many other things. It seems to make it cook more evenly throughout and in less time. Like Marwood says, just be careful it doesn't dry out the top. I recently bought a small toaster oven that has convection baking. I use that for re-heating many things like pieces of chicken, etc. instead of firing up the big oven. Takes so much less time and comes out great.
I just got a Kitchen Aid double oven with convection in the top oven in March and we love the convection. We bake cakes, pastries, bread, & pizza from scratch a lot (dinner is for 8 people) and we really have noticed a difference in the evenness of the baking and improved results.
We have also started roasting meats (last week we did 8 racks of baby back ribs and a 8 pound filet roast) and our roasting results have improved dramatically. So for us the Convection feature is worth the cost just for the improved results. Now I can't say that the shortened baking time has made that much of a difference to us. Convection may cut 5 or 10 minutes off most things we bake.
Now, if I didn't use the oven much for complicated baking and roasting, etc., and used the oven mostly for heating up Stouffer's dinners and baking the odd pan of brownies and other straightforward prepared foods, I probably wouldn't need or want to pay for Convection.
Ovens cost a lot of money these days and I was overwhelmed by the info and choices out there. Good luck with your research. I know what you're going through!
I got a Kenmore self cleaning smooth top convection oven with a warming element and warming drawer. I LOVE it!
As it turned out, the 'higher end ' ranges were on sale at Sears, and the oven I got was only a few hundred $ more than an electric coil range, yet still well within the budget I had set, (enough for new cookware perhaps, the stainless steel stuff I've got my eye on comes on sale in January, and I can wait)
The thing I'm most pleased about? cinnamon buns baked from scratch came out beautifully! the top crust was soft and browned up nicely. YUM! and I can bake a whole batch of cookies at once.
Good to know you love the oven! Does your 'warming element' work as a Proof Box for your yeast baking?
Our Kitchen Aid has a 'proof' setting and that alone has improved my bread baking so much.
My cinnamon buns really turn out nicely too, and the set up has made it so easy to bake at home that we seldom buy baked goods any more. We even bake our own Pita Bread. (Very easy.)
