Whether White, Wheat, or Waffle, These 2-Slice Toasters Brown It Best

Best Overall

Breville Die-Cast 2-Slice Smart Toaster

View On Amazon $160 View On Walmart $190 View On Williams-Sonoma $160

Our favorite thing about this Breville toaster is a small but fun feature: When you drop in slices of bread, it grabs them and pulls them down into the slots automatically. You can think of it as a friendly robot who lives on your counter and loves nothing more than to make perfect toast.

But it's not just fun; this toaster is easy to use and works really well. There's a slider bar on the side with five levels of browning, plus separate cooking modes for bread, bagels, and frozen items. We tested the Breville with sandwich bread, hamburger buns, English muffins, and bagels, and we were impressed with how consistently it toasted them all despite their different sizes and compositions. After testing the different toast settings, we decided level two is optimal—you might like yours darker than that, but the highest level made full-on burnt toast that we don't think anybody would enjoy.

The Breville also has two clever features for perfect toasting: The "lift & look" button pops the toast up for a moment mid-cooking so you can check its color without canceling the cycle entirely, and the "a bit more" button adds 30 extra seconds of toasting to add just a bit of browning. If you're someone who's very exacting about getting your toast exactly the right color and texture, this machine lets you control things with a lot of accuracy. Cleanup is easy, too, thanks to a crumb tray that slides out from beneath the doneness slider. You'll never need to flip the toaster over and dump it out, let alone even lift it off the counter.

The major negative with the Breville is cost. Well over $100 is a lot to pay for a toaster when there are perfectly good ones out there for under 30 bucks. On the other hand, this model outperformed machines that are double (and triple!) its price.

Dimensions: 6.8 x 10.3 x 7.5 inches | Weight: 2.6 pounds | Power: 950 watts | Toasting Levels: 5

Best Budget

Amazon Basics 2 Slice Toaster

View On Amazon $25

As the name suggests, this toaster is no-frills, but it does the job—and for an extremely low price.

The best thing about the Amazon Basics toaster is that is has lots of room for large breads. The extra-wide slots had no trouble with oversized bagels or thick slices of Japanese milk bread. There are modes for just standard toast, bagels, and frozen foods, with six choices for shade. That covered all the breads, bagels, and waffles we tried in testing, though not with a ton of room for customization, especially since the top two shade settings made for burnt toast. For cleanup, it has the standard slide-out crumb tray that makes everything very easy.

The machine also cooked somewhat unevenly, with toast coming out darker in front than in back. It wasn't bad enough to ruin any toast, but it was noticeable. And the body gets quite hot during cooking; keep your hands away from the sides. (Note that there is a high-lift lever to keep your fingers away from the surface while you grab your toast.)

In all, this is a very cheap toaster that well outperforms its price. It was the least expensive model we tested, yet it finished far from the bottom of the list.

Dimensions: 10.7 x 6.4 x 7.6 inches | Weight: 2.2 pounds | Power: 900 watts | Toasting Levels: 6

Best Smart

Revolution InstaGLO R180 Toaster

View On Amazon $325 View On Walmart $350 View On Williams-Sonoma $250

This futuristic appliance might as well have fallen out of a time machine. Its touchscreen offers 126 distinct toasting operations: You choose from six bread types, seven different color levels, and whether you're using a fresh, frozen, or reheated item. Revolution says its special heating elements are faster and more efficient than the competition, and it was pretty amazing to watch the InstaGLO R180 run four 90-second cycles in a row and put out eight basically identical slices of toast.

Besides standard bread, there are settings for bagels, English muffins, waffles, and toaster pastries, plus extra-large bagels. (That last one might sound unnecessary, but between supermarket, bakery, and homemade bagels, there's a huge range of sizes out there.) We were impressed with how intelligently the InstaGLO was able to adapt to different sizes and types of food. Its doneness levels are also well-calibrated to satisfy any preference—level one gave us barely the slightest hint of browning, while level seven was just on the edge of burnt.

Like many of the toasters in this roundup, the InstaGLO has a removable crumb tray to make cleaning easy. But the other toasters in this roundup can't sense when it's time to clean the tray and pop up a message for you. The screen also works as a kitchen clock when you're not using the toaster, and there's even a separate panini press accessory that can extend its capabilities to warm, toasty sandwiches and quesadillas.

After toasting, the InstaGLO is supposed to raise the bread up above the top of the slot so you can grab it easily. This didn't work so well with smaller slices; we wound up having to use tongs rather than fingers on one test batch. That's really our only complaint about performance.

But that price tag; oof. This machine can do a lot, and it also costs a lot. It's a luxury device that works very well and offers an amazing level of control, but there are cheaper toasters out there that will toast your bread and bagels just as well. If you're truly dedicated to perfection in toasting—and if you can spare the cash—it's an impressive tool.

Dimensions: 11.6 x 6.1 x 8.4 inches | Weight: 6.4 pounds | Power: 1,500 watts | Toasting Levels: 7

Best Digital

All-Clad 2-Slice Digital Toaster

View On Amazon $106 View On Wayfair $130 View On Sur La Table $130

This toaster has a digital screen that counts down the time until it's done. That doesn't sound very impressive, but it turned out to be a really useful feature in testing. You can pop in the bread and then work on the rest of breakfast (or coffee) while it toasts. If you get distracted, an alert beeps when there are three seconds left. When you're still sleepy on a busy morning, that's very helpful.

Besides that, the All-Clad is pretty middle-of-the-road in terms of functionality. It has bread, bagel, defrost, and reheat modes (plus two ways to add extra time), and five browning settings. Its removable crumb tray is dishwasher-safe, which is relatively uncommon. Most importantly, it toasted extremely consistently when we put it to a serious test: On a hot day, we didn't want to turn on the oven for bruschetta and toasted a dozen slices of rustic Italian bread back-to-back. All came out the exact same shade.

The only problem we ran into with the All-Clad was when we tried to toast extra-wide homemade bread. The toaster slots are wide enough for bagels and thick slices, but they're somewhat short and simply can't accommodate certain shapes. Besides that, it's fairly expensive—not too crazy, but pricier than average.

Dimensions: 12.9 x 5.3 x 9 inches | Weight: 4.9 pounds | Power: 850 watts | Toasting Levels: 5

Best Design

KitchenAid 2 Slice Long Slot Toaster

View On Amazon $70 View On Home Depot $90 View On Webstaurantstore.com

KitchenAid makes several different toasters, but this model has a special design: Rather than side-by-side slots, it has one long one that can accommodate larger items. It was great for reheating frozen naan, which has an oblong shape that won't fit completely in most standard toasters. It also did well with bagels and sandwich bread, giving us pretty consistent browning from item to item.

The toasting-level selector on this machine can be set to anywhere in the range rather than just a few discrete notches, which gives you complete control. However, we did notice that it runs a little cooler than others: The toast came out lighter than expected, even on the darkest settings. But its "a little more" button can help add color if your toast is underdone. The machine also has settings for bagels, frozen items, and reheating that adjust temperature and time to ensure even toasting.

There's a high-lift lever that helps grab finished toast without burning your fingers. That's especially helpful when you're toasting oddly shaped items, but you may find the extra-long slot can only fit a single slice at a time of some breads. For cleanup, there's a crumb tray that's not dishwasher-safe but very simple to wash by hand.

Dimensions: 16.1 x 5.4 x 7.9 inches | Weight: 6 pounds | Power: 900 watts | Toasting Levels: Fully adjustable

Best Splurge

Smeg 2-Slice Toaster

View On Amazon $194 View On Wayfair $200 View On Wayfair $200

Smeg brings a retro aesthetic that we love to all of its products, from full-size refrigerators to drip coffee makers. They look like they might have come from the kitchen on "The Brady Bunch," but they're made using 21st-century technology. The brand's attractive toaster, available in an array of colors (there are 13 options at Williams Sonoma), will stand out on your counter for sure. It feels well-built, designed to last. And it'll make good toast, too.

The Smeg's self-centering slots are wide enough to accommodate thick slices but still toast thin ones evenly, which it did in testing with square sandwich bread and frozen waffles. There's not a ton of depth, though: Oblong sourdough pieces stuck out a bit from the top and didn't get fully toasted. At the lowest of this machine's six toasting levels, it was dead-on, just barely starting to crisp the bread without any browning. The highest setting yielded well-toasted bread that was maybe a bit light. If you like your toast very dark, you might need to run it through the Smeg a second time.

There are settings for frozen items and bagels, but that's it with the Smeg, which is a little disappointing given its high price. It performed reasonably well in testing, but its striking look is the main reason to pay extra for this machine. It's a piece of kitchen decor as much as it is a countertop appliance.

Dimensions: 7.6 x 12.7 x 7.7 inches | Weight: 5.4 pounds | Power: 950 watts | Toasting Levels: 6