The best toasters for a better breakfast

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Good toasters should excel at their primary task of consistently browning bread evenly. Yet, the best toasters do more: easily popping up English muffins, defrosting frozen waffles, and accommodating bulky sliced bagels.

We've tested dozens of models and gone through countless loaves of bread to find the best toasters for every kitchen. The Breville 'A Bit More' Toaster earned the best overall spot in this guide, plus our review of the best long-slot toasters. It optimizes the toasting experience so you get the perfect golden brown every time. For a simple yet effective budget toaster, we like the Cuisinart 2-Slice Compact Toaster. Though it's not a high-tech appliance, the Cuisinart does its job efficiently.

Our guide features a toaster oven recommendation, but you can learn more about this appliance in our guide to the best toaster ovens.

Top picks for the best toasters

Best overall: Breville Bit More Toaster - See at Amazon

Best budget: Cuisinart CPT-122 2-Slice Compact Toaster - See at Amazon

Best 4-slice: Breville Die-Cast 4-Slice Toaster - See at Amazon

Best toaster oven: Cuisinart Digital AirFryer Toaster Oven - See at Amazon

Best overall

The true test of the best toasters is whether or not they consistently produce even golden-brown toast. Of the toasters we evaluated, the Breville Bit More's toast was some of the most impressive (outdone only by the Breville Die-Cast's), with few white spots and no burnt edges. This model performed consistently; we toasted four batches of white sandwich bread, and the color and texture were identical when done in the same setting.

While most toasters' special features don't add all that much (we found that bagels toasted on a "bagel" setting typically turn out the same as those done on standard toast mode), this model has two genuinely useful additions: the "Bit More" and "Lift and Look" buttons. The former lets you add 30 seconds to underdone toast without interrupting the toasting cycle. The latter raises the carriage to check on your toast (or boost smaller carbs like English muffins so you don't have to fish them out).

The Breville Bit More easily accommodated puffy bagels during our tests, and it defrosted frozen waffles quickly and thoroughly in both "defrost" and regular mode (medium settings 3 and 4 worked best for this purpose). Its crumb tray also detached smoothly, making cleanup swift and easy.

We feature Breville's long-slot version of this toaster in our guide to the best long-slot toasters. For more info on this rockstar appliance, check out our Breville 'A Bit More' Toaster review.

Best budget

The Cuisinart CPT-122 has few bells and whistles, but the simple and effective design is part of why this is one of the best toasters we tested. There's a knob to adjust the darkness settings (from 1 to 7), three buttons for additional modes (bagel, defrost, and reheat), and a fourth button to cancel the toast cycle. Although this is one of the few plastic toasters we tested (as opposed to metal), its construction feels sturdy, except for the lever, which wiggles when you press it.

It took trial and error to find the optimal settings on the CPT-122. For example, in our experience, 3.5 to 4 was ideal for sliced sandwich bread, while the tops of bagels began to scorch on anything higher than 3. Once we had the settings down, this model produced bread just as golden brown and evenly toasted as many of its' notably pricier competitors. And, speaking of bagels, we didn't have to squish them to fit them in the slots.

The CPT-122 was one of the best toasters speed-wise; it popped out fully toasted bread in about a minute and a half (the average was just over two minutes). As one of the most compact, it's ideal for small living spaces.

Best 4-slice

To ensure you get the most evenly golden-brown toast possible, invest in the Breville Die-Cast 4-Slice Toaster. It produced the best results out of all the toasters we tried and earned a spot in our guide to the best long-slot toasters. Like our top pick, the Die-Cast leaves bread with almost zero white spots or burnt edges and performs with exceptional consistency.

The similarities between the Die-Cast and the 'A Bit More' don't end there: both feature Breville's patented 'A Bit More' and 'Lift and Look' buttons, which allow you to add 30 seconds to underdone toast and raise the carriage to check your toasting progress, respectively. They both easily accommodate bagels, leave English muffins evenly browned, and defrost frozen waffles so they're crispy on the outside and chewy inside.

Where the two toasters differ (aside from the Die-Cast's slightly higher performance) is the Die-Cast's dual controls, which allow you to toast on two different settings at once. So, if one person in your household wants a bagel for breakfast and another wants waffles, you can toast both to perfection in one go.

Best toaster oven

For our guide to the best toaster ovens, we tested eight units, and the best overall was the Cuisinart Digital AirFryer Toaster Oven. To compare toaster ovens to dedicated toasters, we assessed how many bread slices each oven could hold and how evenly and quickly they cooked. In every case, a toaster performed better at the specific tasks, but the Cuisinart did a workable job.

We set the Cuisinart shade setting to 4 on a scale of 1 to 7. After three minutes, the top was closer to a 2, while the bottom was almost burnt in the center while minimally toasted on the edges. If you plan on using this toaster oven for regular toasting, we found it helps to increase the time and flip the bread halfway through.

In our other toaster oven tests, the Cuisinart excelled at cooking chicken, pizza, and cookies quickly and evenly. A whole chicken cooked in 52 minutes and had beautiful golden brown skin and juicy, flavorful meat. Frozen pizza was ready in six minutes, and cookies took 12 minutes, much faster than the average in our tests.

Setting up and using the Cuisinart Digital AirFryer was seamless with its easy-to-read backlit display. It features an easy-to-clean crumb tray. Overall, if you are looking for a toaster that can also air fry, dehydrate, bake, and more, and you have the counter space, consider this Cuisinart.

For even more versatility, check out our guide to the best air fryer toaster ovens.

What to look for in the best toasters

Ease of use: The best toasters are straightforward machines and should be intuitive to use. When we tested toasters, we considered whether we could operate basic and special settings without consulting a manual. No one wants to look for instructions before breakfast. We also recommend toasters that have easily removable crumb trays.

Special features: Nowadays, toasters can do more than just crisp up slices of bread. If you're interested in more multipurpose appliances, look for toasters with special features like a bagel mode, defrost setting, or 'A Bit More' button (a Breville feature that allows you to add time to underdone toast).

Design: Appearance and size factor into any kitchen purchase, especially when the item will be left out on the countertop. While this isn't a main consideration in our testing, we prefer toasters with a streamlined appearance and simple finishing options that fit into any decor.

How we tested the best toasters

We put every toaster in this guide through the same objective tests to find the best toasters based on these attributes.

Toasting performance: We toasted four types of food in every toaster and performed each test at least eight times — twice on four different settings — allowing the toasters to fully cool between rounds. We found that toasting anything on setting 1 produced barely noticeable results. Certain tests were performed a ninth and tenth time on toasters with special settings. For example, we defrosted frozen waffles two more times in toasters with a "defrost" setting.

• Bread: Since evenly toasting bread is a toaster's most important task, this test was given the most weight. We ran eight rounds of Whole Foods 365 white bread through each appliance, noting how quickly, evenly, and consistently they toasted.
• Frozen waffles: We evaluated each toaster to see how well they defrosted Eggo frozen waffles in four different settings. We also tried the "defrost" mode on toasters with that additional setting, although we found little difference between heating up an Eggo on defrost versus normal toast mode.
• English muffins: We noted how evenly each toaster browned Thomas' English muffins and tried out the English muffin setting on models with that feature. We also considered how easy it was to remove English muffins from each toaster — in models with less powerful pop-up mechanisms, we sometimes had to fish them out with utensils.
• Bagels: We noted if the slots on a particular model couldn't accommodate a sliced Whole Foods 365 plain bagel. We also tested the bagel setting on toasters with that feature.

Heat buildup: For our top picks, we ran three additional back-to-back testing cycles with white bread to see how the toasters performed when toasting one batch directly after another. In all three cases, the third toast cycle was slightly darker than the first but not so much that we'd recommend waiting for the toasters to cool before loading them again.

Speed: We timed how long each toaster took to pop out a fully done piece of toast.

Toaster FAQs

What's the difference between a toaster vs. toaster oven?

In our guide to the best toaster ovens, Roxanne Wyss, co-author of the toaster oven cookbook Toaster Oven Takeover, said, "The versatility of the toaster oven outshines the regular toaster. You can toast a wide variety of bread sizes and often toast the number of slices you need for a larger family...the toaster oven easily toasts English muffins, bagels, rolls, and a wide range of specialty rolls, pastries, and buns."

While this is true — most toaster slots aren't wide enough to accommodate a pastry or roll — a toaster may better suit your needs if you're mostly looking for something to toast bread, bagels, waffles, and English muffins rather than an appliance that functions as a mini oven. Toasters are also typically less expensive and take up less countertop space.

How long should a toaster take?

During our testing, we found that the average toaster took 2.5 minutes to toast bread on the medium setting. Of course, if you're working with frozen foods, putting your toaster in defrost mode will add some time — about 25 to 30 seconds in most cases.

How do you keep a toaster clean?

Best cleaning practices will vary from toaster to toaster, so it's important to reference the instruction manual for your particular model. That being said, this is how to clean your toaster in most circumstances.

1. Unplug your toaster.

2. Wait for it to cool down completely.

3. Remove and clean the crumb tray. Most modern toasters come with a removable crumb tray. If yours does, pull it out, shake off any loose crumbs, and wash it in warm soapy water. Then set it aside to dry before reinserting it.

4. Turn your toaster upside down and shake it out. If your toaster has no crumb tray, you'll probably have to shake it out over your sink or garbage can to dislodge any loose crumbs. If there are still any stubborn toast bits left in there, try loosening them with a pastry brush before upending your toaster again.