The best luxury toaster for enthusiasts: Dualit NewGen 2-Slice Toaster If you aren’t convinced yet, both models come with a three-year limited warranty (two years more than the typical warranty on toasters). Got an even smaller kitchen or family? There’s also a two-slice model. A space under the top lip could snag crumbs easily, and the crumb trays need a solid push to be firmly seated in the base, but it was quick to clean, and the plastic sides didn’t show fingerprints. We found that gluten-free bread started to turn black on the higher setting and bagels had a bit of char on the bottom. The Cuisinart 4-Slice Compact is not perfect - modern toasters are as flawed as the humans who use them. It was able to toast bagels completely through but without desiccating them, leaving the right amount of give, something that was missing in similarly priced toasters. This toaster produced evenly browned toast with color to the edges on the medium (above 4) and higher settings.

The levers stayed in place, and the ability to peek or raise toast while pulling it out was helpful. You can barely brown waffles for your children while getting a nice even crisp for your toast. It also has two separate sets of levers and controls, so it functions as two separate two-slice toasters. The Cuisinart has seven different heat settings, three modes (bagel, defrost and reheat) and a cancel button so you can interrupt the process if things are getting overly browned.

It is as compact as the name suggests, equivalent in size to the two-slice models from Oster and Dualit. The rounded white plastic toaster (it also comes in black) effectively fits four bagel halves yet takes up the least amount of counter space of any four-slice toaster we tested. This is the rare appliance decision that is straightforward. Your CNN account Log in to your CNN accountĪmong the more affordable models we tested, the Cuisinart 4-Slice Compact Toaster simply outperformed more expensive toasters, is easy to use and is more flexible than many four-slice models, making it a clear choice.

Handy toaster mat crumb catcher