When I open the door on my personal toaster oven, it automatically pulls a rack partially out of the oven (using a little hook on the door), so there is no need to put my hands inside the appliance. Knowing this, I position the food items toward the front of the rack so that they will come out easier.

You might have to be careful when removing things that have toppings or whatever, but since a normal toaster can only produce dry toast, it would be unfair to leave those items in the comparison criteria. So, we should just stick to dry toast.

With a toaster oven, you can always just grab dry toast from the top edges, and your hand, which we’ve already established doesn’t need to actually enter the toaster oven if it has a feature like mine, doesn’t even have any chance of coming into contact with the rack, either.

I also don’t think a toaster oven is necessarily slower than a toaster. It simply depends on the heating elements. Even among toasters, some are faster than others.

I will admit that subjectively, it probably feels like toaster ovens are slower due to a difference you didn’t mention, which is their more complicated controls and mechanisms. But since my recommendation was predicated on not needing overly specialized tools, I think a lot of specialized tools are simpler to use than general use tools. And this difference becomes smaller and often irrelevant as you get used to the tool.