Convection oven

A convection oven (also known as a fan-assisted oven, turbo broiler or simply a fan oven or turbo) is an oven that has fans to circulate air around food to create an evenly heated environment. The increased air circulation causes a fan-assisted oven to cook food faster than a conventional non-fan oven, which relies only on natural convection to circulate the hot air. Fan-assisted convection ovens are commonly used for baking as well as non-food, industrial applications. Small countertop convection ovens for household use are often marketed as air fryers.

When cooking using a fan-assisted oven, the temperature is usually lower compared to that of a non-fan oven, often by 20 °C (40 °F), to avoid overcooking the outside of the food.

In the context of ovens, the term "convection" is widely used to mean "fan-assisted", but this is perhaps not the most precise way to differentiate fan-assisted ovens from conventional ovens, since both types of oven cook using convective heat transfer (transfer of heat due to the bulk movement of hot air). Conventional ovens circulate hot air using natural convection and fan-assisted ovens circulate hot air using forced convection, so scientifically the term "convection" applies equally to both conventional (natural convection) ovens and fan-assisted (forced convection) ovens.