I’m trying to find an under $60 2-slice toaster that works well. I’ve never had one that was worth a damn- one side black, one side blonde, toast gets stuck, lever breaks, release stops working, etc, etc.
Pretty much every under $60 toaster on amazon has 11-14% feedback of 0-1 stars stating that it’s a piece of flimsy junk or breaks quickly or toasts crazy unevenly- basically what I already have. I started the search for an under $30 toaster, and figured maybe I needed to widen my price range for a better toaster, but even the $30-$60 toasters all have the same percentage (and type) of poor reviews.
Usually when I research stuff on amazon I look at poor reviews first and can weed out ones that aren’t relevant to the quality of the item or the way I would use it (or the ones that indicate the user isn’t using it right), and can determine that the thing may work fine for me. But toasters? It seems like no matter what price point (under $60)- they all seem to have a troubling amount of quality/performance problems.
Anybody have an awesome toaster?
I’m posting this in IMHO because maybe there’s no such thing and this thread will go nowhere…
All I can say is I had the exact same problem a couple days ago. Well, not the exact same, I was looking for a long slot toaster, but the same result. The only ones that are consistently well reviewed are $200+.
I got a truly wonderful refurbished early1950’s toaster from Toaster Central in New York. I paid well for it but it makes perfect toast and I feel confident it will be toasting for another few decades. It is an appliance for the ages. Highly recommended.
We have this toaster - Cisinarat CPT-160 My Wife has made a bagel in it every day for 3 years. I think it works great, and am surprised that the reviews aren’t better :shrug:
I have an inexpensive Hamilton beach that toasts nicely but is much slower than I like and doesn’t have a good pop up, I also had a hard time adjusting the color. My old toaster was 30 or 40 years old and girlfriend trashed it because of age. Much better toaster.
I’m starting to wonder if bots go in and write good reviews to offset the bad, because the ratio of good to bad is so similar…
I’m writing this en route to a rumored clearance sale of a bunch of toasters at Meijer. I’m going to put my hands on a few of them and see how they feel (and then look up their reviews on amazon ) The quest continues…
I ran through several toasters over the years. Now, I have a Breville toaster oven, which makes better toast than all those Queasy-narts ever did. Even color, no tearing, and it beeps and shuts off when the toast is done. Plenty of room for thick or long bread. It did cost more. I paid $150. Cook’s Illustrated says it’s the best they tested.
When I was going through my toaster oven saga a while back I ordered a LATITOP Red 2-Slice Toaster from Amazon. Works great and will toast your muffin or bagel on the first try. I would add that if you are trying to toast large slices artisan bread, they’re not going to fit.
Black & Decker toaster ovens for me; they make great even-sided toast and last forever. My current one is about 40 years old and I have one MIB in reserve which means I am not going to have to shop for something like that again in my life.
I’d vote for “no such thing” if I could due to the experience I have had picking out toasters.
I found one, a Hamilton Beach toaster that is like 20 years old. I refuse to give it up. I am not going through that charade of finding a good one again. It seems no matter how much they lauded or how much they cost you get two settings “Soggy” and “Charcoal”
I had not heard of LATITOP until today when I found this and my lizard brain was oh so tempted (this is my every day breakfast) but my rational brain was like “don’t be fooled by the picture, it’s not ever going to be like that” hahaha
I just hold mine with a pair of tongs close to the stovetop burner, and when it burst into flames, I blow it out. Perfect (sorta) toast every time. But you can only make one at a time, unless you’re a really good juggler.
Wow, this is like stepping into an alternate universe.
We’ve always bought the cheapest toaster available at WallyWorld or whatever mart was handy. (Well, the cheapest one that would fit bagel halves, and the longish slices of Arnold healthy-nut breads that I tend to prefer.) So I’m talking about toasters in the $10 - $15 range. Other than a brief fling with toaster-ovens, I doubt I’ve ever spent more than $15.99 on a toaster in my life.
Sometimes (like with our current toaster) you could tell that one side wasn’t toasting quite as dark as the other side, but the difference would be on the order of one side completely medium brown, while the other side was a mixture of light and medium brown. (And you’re only gonna see one side while you eat it anyway.) But just as often, we’d have a toaster where you really couldn’t tell the difference between the two sides.
And those other problems the OP mentions?
toast gets stuck - with the big store-bought bread, almost never. With the round loaves of bread I get from the local farmers’ market that I slice at home (that result in some super-sized slices)? Yep, they get stuck more than occasionally. But nothing that takes more than a few seconds to fish out with the knife I sliced the bread with. Ditto bagels.
lever breaks - usually after five or six years. But it’s a $12 toaster. Next time I’m at WallyWorld, I buy another $12 toaster.
release stops working - can’t remember this ever going before the lever. The first thing to go is almost always the piece of plastic that you think of as the lever, which (after 5-6 years like I said) comes detached from the thin piece of metal that’s the actual lever. Once or twice, maybe, I’ve had a heater element go first.
I remember there was once we had a toaster we weren’t particularly happy with, though I can’t remember why. We replaced it after several months because we were tired of dealing with whatever the problem was. But when that happens with a $12 toaster, it doesn’t exactly blow your budget. And I think that was the only time we had a toaster we weren’t happy with.
Or not. We just picked up our second Black & Decker six-slice toaster oven; last one stopped heating properly after five years. Great for frozen pizza.
) The quest continues…