6 Best Toasters You Can Buy Part 2
4. Philips Toaster HD2647: The best 4 slice toaster under £50
A simple design that toasts well and is power efficient too, the Philips bests many more expensive toasters
The Philips Toaster HD2647 (or the 4 slot 2 function Metal square Toaster to give its full name) is a no-nonsense, four-slice design. The design has no flourishes, no retro appeal, no colour options, no pretensions whatsoever. Thankfully it's not only business-like to look at, it's also the business when it comes to toasting bread.
The design is eminently practical and everything feels well made, especially so given the reasonable price of just £40. The crumb tray is at the front for much easier access. It pops out with a click when you press it in, inside it's actually divided into two trays. The toast slots have no bottom section so crumbs are free to fall straight through to the tray, meaning this is one toaster that should stay free of detritus.
Above the crumb is a typical dual control setup with two browning knobs, which click pleasingly as you turn them, and buttons for cancel, reheat and defrost - with the latter two glowing blue when engaged. You can also cancel toasting by simply lifting the lever, which is handier than reaching for a button. There's no bagel mode here, so if you love a bagel or two then do yourself a favour and look elsewhere, toasting bagels on both sides is simply wrong.
The dimensions of the slots are better than average. The 38mm width should contain all but the most ridiculous doorstop slices, while a length of 138mm is the second biggest we've seen, meaning that any sliced loaf, and even most hand cut slices, should be able to lie down in the slot for even toasting. This makes the relatively shallow depth of 113mm a bit of a secondary consideration. It's easy to get your toast out too with 75mm of it exposed when the additional lift on the levers is engaged.
The best things about the Philips Toaster HD2647 is how fast and efficient it is. It toasted our slices in a very respectable two minutes and 15 seconds, and used just 0.030kWh of electricity doing so. Consistency across each side was good, getting close to the very corners, plus both sides of each slice were very similarly done. Overall it's an excellent result, with toast that was more evenly done than that from some more expensive models.
The Philips Toaster HD2647 is an excellent buy, it may not be as stylish as some, but it's good at making toast and is cheaper than most. It's our Best Buy award-winning toaster and only bagel fans need look elsewhere.
Read More About Philips HD2647 4 Slice Brushed Metal Toaster Click Here
5. Dualit NewGen 4 Slot Toaster: The best 4 slice toaster, if you can afford it
Still the best toaster you can buy, fast, flexible and built to last
Dualit makes arguably the most iconic toasters in the world, it has been through a few revisions over the years but the basic design and functionality is still prized in professional kitchens around the world. If you're unfamiliar with the design, then it's worth pointing out that the Dualit doesn't work in the same way as any other toaster we've tested, in that it doesn't pop up.
Instead of having an electronic timer, the Dualit has a mechanical one, you simply twist it around to the time required and the heating elements come on for that amount of time. A single, manual lever moves all four slices of toast up and down. So to toast you pop in the bread, twist the timer, pull up the lever to lower the bread, wait till the timer pings and then raise the toast to get it out.
It all sounds like a bit of a faff, and you can see why pop-up toasters have largely taken over, but the Dualit method does have its advantages. First is that you have to set the timer each time, which means you quickly get used to how long things need, edge it up for bigger, heavier items for example; it even has a mark on it for the first round of toast, when the toaster is cold and needs to heat up.
As the lever isn't connected to the timer, you can also lift the bread during toasting to check on it without interrupting the timer. This is so handy that some pop-up toasters now include lift-and-look as a feature. And if you didn't toast it enough, just twist the dial for an extra 30 or 45 seconds to finish it off. In short, the very manual nature of the Dualit leads to both greater toasting confidence and a rather perfectionist attitude, both of which we approve of.
The only other control is the selection switch, which lets you choose from one to four slices, or one or two bagels (where only one side is toasted). It's a brilliant design, as other toasters struggle to toast a single slice, with unwanted heat penetrating through from the other slot and spoiling the balance. There's no cancel button, you simply twist the timer down to zero to turn off the toaster, and no reheat button, just set the timer to 30 seconds if required.
The Dualit appears more durable by design, the simplicity of the timer and lever mean they should last for decades. The Dualit is built like a tank and everything feels lovingly engineered. All the parts are also easily replaceable, we know as we took one largely apart to double-check. And that includes the toasting filament boards, which are usually the parts which break on a toaster.
The filaments are the other big difference between the Dualit and all other toasters we've seen, including its own stablemate the Dualit Architect. Each one is covered by a transparent layer that allows the heat to penetrate through, but keep the delicate filaments save from harm, such as the knife you use to clear out that stuck piece of errant crust. This is what really makes the Dualit tougher than other toasters.
The filaments in the Dualit are slimmer and more closely packed together. They certainly give out a lot of heat with the toaster coming near the top of those tested in both power consumption and speed at one minute and 56 seconds to produce the perfect slice, using 0.041kWh to do so.
You can see the result below, which are again affected by the Dualit's unusual design. On a typical pop-up toaster the moving section at the bottom of each slot is designed to hold the bread fairly upright, usually with an indentation in the middle. On the Dualit these are just dead flat blades of metal, which means the toast tends to fall over to one side of the slot. This puts it closer to the metal bars on that side, which means you get slightly lopsided toasting but there's a big visual benefit as those bars create attractive stripes down the toast.
The toast itself was excellent. Crisp on the outside but still moist in the middle, we find that the faster-than-average toasting speed is most certainly to our tastes. Due to the aforementioned leaning the toast is a little more even on the nearer, striped side, while the top of the opposite side tends to be paler. It's not a huge issue though when eating and the toast does look great. A more serious downside is that the slots are not particularly long or deep, so taller bread can't be laid down and pokes out the top when standing.
The crumb tray is worth a quick mention, it's big, deep and simple, covering the whole of the area beneath the slots and sliding out the front for easy access. No less than you'd expect from a toaster intended for catering use. The lever also pushes the toast high up, so getting hold of smaller items isn't a big problem. There's also reasonably priced and surprisingly effective extras such as the toasted sandwich cages (£11 for pair) and a warming rack for £15 (for items such as croissants)
The Dualit isn't perfect, those who toast bread taller than 123mm may curse its shorter slots leaving an untoasted stripe across the top of the bread, though most sliced loaves will just squeeze in horizontally. The lack of dual controls also means you can't easily start a second round of toast once one is in progress, or at least you won't have a timer for the latecomers.
Some may not take to its more manual, more perfectionist take on toasting, but we found it empowering and quickly felt we had mastered the device, and mastered toasting, after many years of uncertainty and lurking by out toaster. At £180 (or £200 for this all stainless steel version) it's certainly not cheap, but it should last a lifetime, making it our Ultimate-award-winning toaster. Oh, and it's made here in the UK too, so it's a toaster we can all be proud of too.
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6. Dualit Lite 4 Slot Toaster: Brilliant 4 slice toasting for under £75
The Dualit Lite 4 Slot has Perfect Toast Technology and it almost lives up to the claim
The Stoneware version of the Dualit Lite 4 Slot Toaster is yet another handsome toaster from the company. The Stoneware bit means it has a rough texture to the front and back sections, with the Granite version here having something of a concrete-like finish. It's decidedly modern without being slick or sleek, I really like it. It's also available in shinier and more colourful finishes, if you prefer, and they all function identically.
Unlike Dualit's trademark designs, the Lite is a more traditional pop-up design that works much like any other toaster on the market. It has all the features you could reasonably want, though, with frozen bread and bagel buttons - the latter warms on one side while toasting on the other.
All the buttons and dial have great feedback with nice positive clicks. The cancel buttons are neatly hidden in the middle of the browning dials (it confused me to begin with, though unless you're buying a toaster for a rental property it's not really a worry). There are two browning controls, so you can toast different things at the same time, and lift-and-look lets you check the progress without having to cancel the timer.
This is the first toaster I've seen with Dualit's new Perfect Toast Technology. The toaster has a thermometer inside that takes into account the ambient temperature, as a result of hot weather or from the toaster being hot from previous use. It takes this into account when you make toast, reducing or increasing the time taken. The idea is that you don't have to adjust the timer setting to account for such changes.
I tested the new Perfect Toast Technology by making rounds of toast in rapid succession. The first pair of slices came out in exactly two minutes, a little quicker than our previous from-cold test. For the second set, the toaster sliced 10 seconds off that time in order to try and maintain the same browning. The change succeeded in preventing the toast from burning but it wasn't enough of a reduction to match the first pair of slices, as you can see below.
In my tests, the Dualit Lite 4 Slot Toaster was faster than most, though not as quick as some of the Dualit models I've tested in the past. At 2 minutes and 10 seconds it produced a good pair of slices, using 0.036kWh to do so. That's on a browning setting of 3.8, with the highly-controllable Dualit having five clear clicks between each number on the dial. Browning was fairly even, though I've seen better.
The slots are long and wide, I measured them at 38mm and Dualit claims you can toast bread up to 36mm in them. When finished, the amount of toast protruding from the toaster isn't great at just 41mm but there's plenty of extra lift, raising it up to 60mm and making even small items like crumpets accessible.
Around the back are two crumb trays that come out together as one. The design means you wouldn't know they were there, so it's a good choice if your toaster is going to be on show from both sides, such as on an island.
The Dualit Lite 4 Slot Toaster, whether in this Stoneware or its more colourful standard finish, is a well-built device that makes good toast. It has all the features you'd want and though the Perfect Toast Technology doesn't quite live up to its claim in my testing, it did save a few rounds of toast that otherwise would have burnt. At around £75 it's a little on the expensive side but then it's very well made and toasts well, it wins our Recommended award.
Click Here For More Detail About Dualit Lite Stoneware Granite Finish Lite Range 4-Slot Toaster
6 Best Toasters You Can Buy Part 1
