What makes a good toaster
- Build quality: A toaster should feel sturdy, with no wobbling, flimsy levers, or loose buttons. Beyond the body itself, I paid attention to the lift lever and any knobs or dials. Thoughtful construction shows up in the details.
- Large item capacity: A good toaster should handle more than standard sandwich bread. The best ones can accommodate a variety of sizes and shapes, lowering each piece fully and toasting it evenly all the way through.
- Browning range: There should be a clear, consistent gradient from barely toasted to deeply browned, with a noticeable difference between each setting. If the lightest and darkest settings look the same, that’s a problem.
- Defrost without over-toasting: A defrost function is only useful if it works. Too many toasters spit out frozen waffles that are burnt on the outside, cold in the middle, or just soggy. The best ones thaw and toast in a single cycle, producing results that are warm, crisp, and cooked through.
- Intuitive settings: Toasters don’t need to be complicated. The best models keep controls straightforward with clear knobs, simple buttons, and no unnecessary features getting in the way of good toast.
Other toasters we liked
Breville Eye Q 850 Auto 2 Slice Toaster
Breville’s newest model makes the biggest promise of any toaster we’ve ever tried: The company says the Eye Q will be able to tell what shade of brown your bread is. Instead of a timer, which is what every other toaster setting we’re aware of is based on, the Breville uses optic sensors to measure the rate of change in color on the bread. Big if true! We used this toaster a lot over more than a month, and it doesn’t entirely deliver on its promise. We didn’t get a very wide range of shades on the toast; most of toast came out golden brown, even if we set it to the lightest or the darkest setting. However, that also meant this is the only toaster we’ve ever used that made it actually impossible to burn a piece of toast, which is pretty impressive. It’s also the only toaster that comes with a dedicated sourdough setting. After speaking with one of the people who led the development of the Eye Q, senior editor Noah Kaufman learned that that setting takes into account the fact that sourdough tends to come with darker, harder crust than some sandwich breads and is easier to char and can interact with the optical sensors differently. The model comes with Breville’s dramatic automatic toast lift and has an all-around premium feel. All that technology comes at high price, though, at $300 for a two-slice model.
Martha Stewart 2-Slice Toaster
This toaster from Martha Stewart’s brand-new line of countertop appliances performed well in my most recent round of testing. The sleek touchscreen interface includes a whopping 10 different browning settings, which is impressive (if perhaps a tad excessive) and means this toaster is a good option for anyone who wants ultra-precise control over exactly how golden their carbs are. I ultimately felt that the Beautiful toaster accomplished a similar look, feel, and performance quality at a lower price point, but I’d still recommend the Martha toaster if it appeals to you.
Smeg 2-Slice Toaster
Not only does the Smeg look nice, it’s also a dream to use—glossy cherry red exterior (though it comes in a dozen other shades), chrome lever, and intuitive control knob that satisfyingly clicks into place as you select your toasting preferences. While it toasts evenly on all temperature settings, we did notice it runs a little hot and slices could come out darker than expected or even burnt. But we did like the generously sized slots, which could fit hunks of sourdough, and the slide-out crumb tray that makes cleanup a breeze. Overall it’s a great toaster, but an expensive one. We found other models to be better values. Still, we’d recommend this in a heartbeat to anyone who prioritizes style in their kitchen appliances.
Breville Die-Cast Toaster
Breville Die-Cast Toaster
The two-slice version of our favorite four-slice toaster, the Breville Die-Cast, looks sleek, works well, and has a hefty price tag. Unlike some models, the Die-Cast has no lever, only buttons. You adjust your setting, press a button, and watch your slice get magically lowered away and pushed back up for your enjoyment when it’s done. The design is also friendly for small spaces—all the controls are on the short side of the toaster instead of the wide side. This makes it easier to nestle in a small spot in your kitchen. Still, the Die-Cast’s a good $60 more than the ‘A Bit More,’ which might push it out of your price range.
Oster Jelly Bean
Oster Jelly Bean 2-Slice Toaster
Don’t let the silhouette and your assumptions about the flimsiness of the plastic body fool you—the Oster Jelly Bean is actually a quality toaster. While the curvy, charcoal silhouette of the Oster sets it apart from some of its sleek stainless-steel contemporaries, the matte look actually makes it resistant to fingerprints or smudges. It also performed pretty well. It evenly toasted everything I put it up against, even on the higher settings—though the curved design does mean the bread doesn’t get fully submerged for toasting, leaving the tops of your bread bare.
Haden Dorset 2-Slice Toaster
Haden Dorset 2-Slice Toaster
I was charmed by the retro design of this toaster from Haden. Its simple interface is intuitive to use but has everything you need to get the job done: a dial for switching between the six browning levels, and Defrost, Bagel, and Cancel buttons. I didn’t feel it was able to achieve quite as evenly browned results as our top pick, and I thought the different shade settings lacked a bit of variety from each other (especially the middle ones). This toaster also struggled with thicker bread options—its slots were barely wide enough to fit a halved bagel, and the bagel got stuck instead of popping out after toasting. That said, if you’re drawn to this Haden aesthetically, it’s not a bad option.
Toasters we don’t recommend
For one reason or another, these toasters didn’t earn our seal of approval.
The KitchenAid toasts bread pretty evenly, but it doesn’t include a defrost option. We would’ve overlooked this—especially considering it seemed to make frozen waffles just fine using the regular toaster function—except that the one other setting it had for bagels didn’t work well at all.
The four-slice version of our favorite two-slice toaster, the Breville Long Slot toaster is designed to fit slices from much wider loaves of bread. Nice idea, right? Well, the longer length meant there was a gap in the heating elements that left a pale strip in the middle of out bread.
The Cool Touch Toaster offers a lot of curb appeal. It’s a sleek black with nondescript buttons (they’re labeled with icons instead of words), but the high-quality look didn’t translate to high performance. Even on the highest setting, the Zwilling produced, at best, a mid-level of browning.
This toaster from Alessi garnered quite a few compliments from our officemates who spotted it perched on a desk before testing, which makes sense: It’s quite the looker. Unfortunately, it produced nearly identical pieces of toast at settings 3–6 and failed to produce anything browner than what we’d expect from a middle heat setting. It failed spectacularly at toasting bagels, unable to brown them in the slightest even at the highest setting.
This futuristic-looking toaster from All-Clad has a touchscreen display and shiny stainless-steel finish that are the definition of sleek, and we found it very fun to operate. However, we were ultimately let down by its performance. Despite its seven settings, it wasn’t able to produce the full toast gradient we were looking for, and it could only get bagels to a light-to-medium brown even on its highest setting.
We liked how the CPT-142 captured a range of browning with the different toasting levels—which is more than other models can say—but it performed weakly when defrosting waffles.
While this KitchenAid model certainly looks nice with its bulbous retro shape and vintage-inspired control panel, it weighed a ton. We disqualified it before testing because we could hardly lift it onto the counter.
In addition to the nice motorized lift and lower function we liked in the Breville, the Tineco adds some other techy features. Instead of buttons and a lever, you select all of your toasting preferences using a small touchscreen that juts out from the front of the machine. It toasted evenly, especially on the darker settings. It did a particularly good job toasting all the way to the edges of the bread. However, despite all its technology, the Tineco didn’t do well with frozen waffles. Even using the defrost mode on the highest setting only still yielded pale and soggy results. If you don’t have kids and aren’t plating up Eggos on the regular, that might be okay, but they’re common enough demands for toasters that we don’t feel the Tineco is versatile enough.
Everything about the Cuisinart felt flimsy—it wobbled on the counter, the lever squeaked, and we sometimes got worried the loose control knobs would pull right off. The toasting power was also one of the weakest of all the models.
Just unboxing this toaster and moving it to the counter caused plenty of loud rattles, so if you want a sturdy stainless-steel toaster, the plastic Hamilton Beach will probably disappoint. The heating elements also seemed weak. Other models offered more power and range in browning.
The Hamilton Beach Cool Wall felt flimsy. While light weight isn’t always an indicator of poor performance, we felt like each piece on this model was one toast away from falling apart.
The Black+Decker only worked on the highest heat settings, leaving pale, lightly golden waffles, bagels, and bread slices on any mid-range settings. While it did toast more evenly on those higher settings, we couldn’t get past the lack of range.
The highest heat setting on the Krups toasters yielded the type of browning you’d expect from one of the mid-heat settings—this was especially noticeable on the bagels. The defrost setting by comparison felt disproportionately powerful, burning waffles to a crisp on the highest setting.
We liked the idea of the Dash toaster, with its clear window that allows you to peek inside your toaster. That window seemed to fix one of the shortcomings of almost all pop-up toasters in that it lets you monitor the progress of your bread to make sure it never burns. Unfortunately that window revealed a toaster that produced incredibly inconsistent results.
Bella claims this toaster will fit anywhere, and it very well may be right. It’s incredibly thin, which would be ideal for kitchens that are tight on counter space. But while we liked its inoffensive modern design and simple interface, it toasted bread unevenly and there was not enough variation between browning levels, nor enough browning even on the highest setting. Its slim design also meant its slots were a touch too narrow to comfortably fit hefty bagels.
Each Dualit toaster is hand-assembled in England and fully repairable—which is why we were very disappointed when it practically disqualified itself by our second test. In the white bread test, we noticed very uneven browning on each slice. Then, when it came time for the bagel test, we couldn’t even fit the bagels in the slots. We also disliked the fact that you have to use a lever to manually lower and raise bread out of the toaster and that there’s no sound when your toast is done.
This 4-slice model from Haden failed to impress us for a few reasons. For one, its middle settings turned out quite pale, and it was unable to achieve a suitable level of browning on a bagel, even at the highest setting. But the main thing we disliked about this toaster was the interface: It’s got a mix of buttons, plus a small digital screen, that displays the browning level, but that screen is impossible to read unless you’re looking at it straight on (so if your toaster is at counter height, you have to stoop down).
This toaster performed okay in our testing, but we wished there was more variation in browning levels between some of the settings. Our biggest gripe was that it took longer to toast anything than most other models we’ve tested. For the price ($120 when we received it), we just don’t think it’s worth that.
White bread toasted using the first four browning settings of the CPT-122 looked practically identical—and by that I mean that they were all so pale, you could barely tell they’d been toasted. The slots on this toaster were also a bit too narrow to accommodate thick slices of sourdough without risk of it getting stuck. I was also unimpressed by the Bagel setting on this toaster: Bagel settings are meant to brown the cut side of the bagel while leaving the outside relatively soft, but this was not the case with this model. Instead, it seemed to toast both sides of the bagel somewhat evenly.
Like the CPT-122, the first several settings of the CPT-180P1 churned out white bread that was quite pale, and even the darkest setting failed to produce the deeply browned (nearly burnt) toast I was looking for on the highest setting. This model also faced similar issues with its Bagel setting as the CPT-122.
The GE toaster was inconsistent with its browning levels, producing browner bread on setting 3 than it did on setting 4. It also failed to display the wide range in browning capability I was looking for, and the bagel got stuck on its way out after its toast cycle.
What does the “bagel” function actually do?
Almost every toaster you can buy comes with a little button labeled “bagel,” but lots of people don’t know what happens if you push it. Because bagels are thicker than bread, they need to get toasted slightly differently than regular toast. Enter the bagel setting. This button will increase the temperature on the heating elements in the middle of the toaster—the ones working on the cut side of the bagel—while maintaining the constant temperature on the outside elements. This then gives you the perfectly toasted bagel with a firm but not burnt exterior and a nice crisp inside to spread your cream cheese across.
Your other everyday countertop needs
Additional reporting by Megan Wahn