Disappointing
Bobbie — 2 out of 5 stars
I struggled between one star and two, but it does toast flat, ordinarily shaped bread well, so two. That’s about all the good bits, and even then it toasts with lines (like a griddle pan does to a steak). Now the bad (other than the price tag): It’s huge, about twice the size of a normal toaster so its footprint on a kitchen counter is enormous. It doesn’t do well with frozen bagels/thick sliced toast, which is brown/burnt on the outside and cold in the middle. Have to microwave it first now. It doesn’t do well with unevenly cut bread or bagels (and yes I’m putting them in the precise way it needs to work) - it only “sees” one part of the slice so lets the edges burn while the middle is toasted. It will not allow any oversized item. Tried to toast a larger piece of bread with part sticking out, with the intention to flip and restart. Absolute no. Just won’t work. No manual override, just spits it out. We’ve had an older Breville toaster for years. It was awesome. Yes it was starting to be a bit uneven but we’d had years of great use for a fraction of the price. Now I have this huge monstrosity taking up space in my kitchen, refusing to toast unless it gets everything the way it wants with perfectly even bread only and even then not doing as good a job as the one we discarded (even when that one had better days). If you only want to use pre-sliced square bread it’s fine. But don’t make the mistake of thinking this thing is intelligent, because it’s just not. And we are less so for spending the ridiculous amount of money on it.