A toaster is a compact appliance for toasting slices of bread. This is a fairly simple device that can often be found in kitchens around the world. As a rule, these devices rarely break, and therefore, when purchasing a toaster, you need to be prepared that you will have to live with it for a long time. How to choose the most suitable toaster, and what nuances should you pay attention to when choosing this simple kitchen device? Let’s figure it out.

Toaster device

All toasters are basically the same: the device has chambers corresponding to the size of a standard (toast) piece of bread. Inside the chambers there are heating elements, as well as “paws” for capturing toast. Outside, there are controls – a knob for adjusting the heating and timing, as well as a lever that lowers the toasts into the working chamber (it also acts as a button for starting the heating process). At the bottom of the chamber are springs that eject the finished toast at the end of the cooking process.

Below (under the working chamber) there is a small crumb tray, and on top, some models allow the installation of a grate for heating sandwiches, croissants and other pastries.

A heating element

Older models of toasters often use a metal heating element (for example, a tubular heating element), more modern ones use a nichrome thread, a ceramic or quartz heater.

From the user’s point of view, there is little difference between the heating methods: it is believed that a toaster with a quartz heater heats up faster and provides slightly better toast, and also consumes less electricity. However, these advantages can be easily leveled by errors in the design of the device, and therefore, the presence of only a quartz heater cannot serve as an unambiguous recommendation in choosing one or another model. The same story happens with other types of heating elements. Therefore, the only recommendation that is not in doubt is that, if possible, you should avoid buying a device with a metal heating element. However, it will not be so easy to encounter such a device today: they are practically not used in modern models.

Working chamber and number of toasts

In today’s market, the most common toasters are designed for 1, 2 or 4 slices of bread. It is clear that the number of toasts that need to be cooked at the same time depends on the size of the family. The most common are models for 2 toasts – they are used by families consisting of 1-4 people. Models for 4 toasts are suitable for families from 2 people, as well as for use in small offices. Single toast models are designed for one person.

Note that models designed for 4 toasts sometimes have two independent control units, which allows you to fry toasts in pairs – with different degrees of roasting. This will be useful if there is no consensus in the family about how hard to toast the bread.

Power

The power of the vast majority of toasters is in the range from 700 to 1300 watts, although sometimes you can find models with a power of 1.5 kW for 2 toast models and up to 2-2.5 kW for 4 toast models.

Is there any rule that more power means better toasted bread? In our opinion, no. However, logical reasoning suggests that a higher power will brown the bread more on the outside, leaving it soft on the inside. Heating at a lower power for a longer time, on the contrary, will dry the bread both outside and inside.

It is clear that these arguments do not claim to be universal (after all, in the end, everything depends on the design features of the device and the settings for various cooking modes), but we would take this moment into account as an additional (but not the main!) parameter when choosing a toaster.

Built-in programs and adjustment of various degrees of roasting

This item is the most important when choosing a toaster for the home. The fact is that the quality of a toaster primarily depends on how well it copes with roasting bread in various modes. A high-quality toaster will equally well cope with the minimum roasting of bread (barely more than simple heating), and will not burn bread at the maximum allowable modes.

Therefore, the key parameter that you should pay attention to when choosing a toaster, we consider convenient control – the ability to flexibly adjust the degrees of roasting. Well, since the vast majority of household toasters do not have the ability to adjust (that is, they can either heat or not heat), the presence of various programs and modes essentially boils down to setting different time intervals during which the bread will be toasted.

Don’t be embarrassed by the fact that on the lowest setting, the bread may look underdone, and on the highest setting, the toaster can burn the toast to a black crust: different types of toast require different toasting times. For example, ready-made “sandwich” sliced bread will toast faster, while special toast bread (which looks slightly damp) will take longer to cook.

The presence of a large number of programs / modes will allow you to choose the most appropriate roasting time, depending on the bread that the user is used to. Agree – it is better to have a device with several “extra” modes (which will never be used in real life) than to purchase a toaster that, even at the maximum duration, will not be able to fry the toast to a golden crust (which you are used to).

In our opinion, when choosing a toaster, it makes sense to consider models that allow you to set from 6 (and preferably more) different degrees of roasting.

The presence of additional features, in our opinion, only slightly increases the attractiveness of certain models over competitors: almost all models have a “cancel” button; decisive when choosing a toaster. The same can be said about the mode of defrosting bread.

But what you need to pay attention to is the presence of the function of automatic centering of bread in the working chamber and the uniformity of heating / frying bread. If everything is clear with the first function as a whole: when the roasting process starts, the bread is automatically pressed with the help of wires and, thus, is placed in the most “correct” position relative to the heating elements, then it will not be possible to determine the uniformity of roasting “by eye”.

Unfortunately, many toasters that look more than nice on visual inspection are not the best in terms of toasting uniformity. This is especially pronounced at maximum modes. As a result, the user gets some toast, which turns out to be overcooked or even burned in some places.

Unfortunately, it is not possible to predict such a result by examining a toaster in a store. And therefore – the only recommendation that is relevant here is to go before buying a toaster to visit the owner of the model you are interested in and fry a few pieces of bread there. Well, or just study reviews and tests of popular toasters on Internet forums and thematic resources (for example, on iXBT.com).

Design features

The reader may get the impression that when choosing a toaster, in principle, it is impossible to understand whether the device will be convenient in everyday use or not. However, it’s not all bad. A visual inspection of the device and the study of its design features make it possible to cut off clearly unsuitable models with a sufficiently high degree of certainty. So, for example, it would not be recommended in principle to consider devices without a button to cancel the cooking process, as well as without the function of automatic centering of toasts. Additional convenience will be provided by heating modes and the presence of a special grate for heating baking. It is also worth paying attention to the presence of a function, usually called “extra lifting”. With its help, it will be possible to extract non-standard (reduced) pieces of bread from the working chamber without resorting to improvised accessories such as forks.

An important parameter is the thermal insulation of the case. The fact is that in the process of operation toasters heat up quite strongly, and therefore if the heating elements are located close to the metal case, then it will be quite easy to get burned on such a toaster. Therefore, among other models, it is better to pay attention to those that have thermal insulation (for example, heat-resistant elements on the case). And, of course, it will be good if the developer leaves enough free space inside the device (first of all, between the heating element and the metal case of the device).

You should also think about how easy it will be to care for the toaster. Shiny metal cabinets will certainly look spectacular in any kitchen. However, as you know, such devices are especially good at collecting fingerprints and all kinds of splashes. Well, since the body of the toaster can heat up to fairly high temperatures, all these contaminants can “stick”, thereby significantly complicating the cleaning of the toaster.

Custom toasters

Finishing the conversation about toasters, one cannot but mention the “non-standard” devices that are practically never found in ordinary apartments. First of all, these are, of course, horizontal toasters, which are, in fact, a mini-oven for making snacks, sandwiches and other small-sized products. Such devices are not very popular primarily because of their rather large dimensions.

In small hotels and hotels, you can find horizontal toasters that work on the principle of continuous feeding of pieces of bread through the working chamber: the future toast is placed on one side of the device and slowly moves out the other side. Such a device allows you to quickly feed a large number of people in self-service mode.

Separately, it is worth mentioning the hybrid “breakfast” devices that combine the functions of a toaster, coffee maker, egg cooker, grill pan (all at once, or in any combination). Such a gadget, in our opinion, may be appropriate only in small apartments. And even then its expediency remains in doubt: it is clear that such a “centaur” is unlikely to be able to show a better result than several independent highly specialized devices.

But toasters with the function of printing images on bread deserve attention: if there are children in the family, then a cute drawing on bread will certainly cheer them up. In nature, there are even toasters that allow you to program the device to print an arbitrary picture, but we will naturally place these devices in the category of “devices for geeks”. It is clear that for the average user this functionality is redundant.

findings

Summing up the above, we are forced to come to not too rosy conclusions: having put together our experience, we could not come up with an algorithm that allows us to choose a good and high-quality toaster with 100% efficiency, which will serve faithfully and will not cause complaints during operation .

Focusing solely on the price, as the results of our testing showed, does not make sense – this is the rare case when a more expensive device is not necessarily better than a budget one.

However, we were able to highlight a few important nuances. After you decide on the number of toasts you need at a time, you should pay attention to the following details: when choosing a toaster, you should give preference to models with a wide range of different roasting modes, do not forget to pay attention to the thermal insulation of the body and the presence of thermal insulating elements. At the same time, the case itself should not cause problems during cleaning (at least it should not have places where dirt could hide).

The presence of an automatic toast centering system will increase the uniformity of toasting, but even it will not guarantee that your appliance will toast the bread evenly enough. Alas, it will be possible to check the uniformity of roasting only after purchasing the device – or by referring to user reviews and resources specializing in testing household appliances.