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See why.The Best Long-Slot Toasters
With plenty of room for big bagels and oversize artisan breads, long-slot toasters reflect the way Americans eat bread today. But do you have to spend a lot of money to get one that works well?
By Updated Feb. 23, 2023
We are demoting the Dash toaster from its winning spot in our recommendations. Apparent quality-control issues on the part of the manufacturer mean that many readers have had bad experiences with it, and we no longer recommend it. In its place, we are promoting the Russell Hobbs Glass Accent Long Slot 2-Slice Toaster model.
Top Picks
See Everything We Tested
What You Need To Know
Is your toaster stuck in the 1950s, when all bread was white, skinny, and square? As recently as 2017, sandwich bread made up only 17.8 percent of bread sold in America, according to market research firm Statista. Bigger, heartier loaves made up 68 percent of bread sold: 37.9 percent were “crusty/hot hearth” breads, and 30.2 percent were “artisan.” Home cooks love to bake bread, too. So why can't most toasters handle it?
The last time we tested toasters, our winner, the Magimix Vision Toaster, was unique because it had one extra-long, extra-wide bread slot that fit any kind of bread. It toasted evenly, using responsive quartz heating elements. It also boasted glass walls that let you watch your toast and a “stop” button to halt toasting at your exact browning preference. The downside? At about $250, it's a staggering investment, even for someone who's fussy about perfect toast.
But there's hope: Recently, a handful of “long-slot” toasters have appeared on the market at a range of prices. We bought eight models, including our old winner, priced from about $35 to about $250; all had one or two long, wide slots. We toasted artisan loaves, big bagels, and (of course) white sandwich bread. We tried light, medium, and dark settings and recorded the average speed of the toasting cycles. We filled the toasters to capacity and made full batches of toast in rapid succession. We checked whether the models' exteriors got too hot. Finally, we made 365 consecutive pieces of toast in each of our top three contenders to simulate a year's worth of use. The goal was efficient, consistent, uniform toasting of a variety of breads at the browning level we'd selected, with intuitive controls, easy toast retrieval, simple cleanup, and durability.
What Color Is My Toast?
When you set your toaster for light, medium, or dark browning, what do you get? Most toasters let us down. We think the lightest setting should brown a little, not just warm the bread; none of our models managed this. On the darkest setting, we want deeply browned toast, not charcoal. A few toasters burned the bread solid black, filling the kitchen with smoke. Aside from these extremes, the problem was that for most toasters, getting medium–golden brown toast was a cumbersome, lengthy process. Only two toasters gave us one-and-done, reliable browning that corresponded to the controls, without endless fiddling and retoasting.
Even if they generally hit the right color, evenness was often a problem. Some toasters gave us very patchy brown-and-white blotches across each side of a slice of bread, while others made toast that looked evenly golden on one side but completely different on t...
Everything We Tested
Recommended
- Speed: 3 stars out of 3.
- Cleanup: 3 stars out of 3.
- Ease of Use: 2.5 stars out of 3.
- Performance: 2.5 stars out of 3.
We appreciated this toaster's slim, neat profile; its extra rack for warming buns and croissants; and the way it lifted finished bread a full 2 inches out of the toaster for easy retrieval. It toasted quickly, making golden, appealing toast, but we had a major setback when the toaster died after four pieces of toast. (A replacement copy worked fine.) Finding the best settings required a small learning curve, but then it was reliable, and even on the darkest setting, it didn't scorch. Some testers felt that the plus and minus buttons to set toast color were confusing.
- Speed: 3 stars out of 3.
- Cleanup: 3 stars out of 3.
- Ease of Use: 3 stars out of 3.
- Performance: 2 stars out of 3.
This toaster is a pleasure to use, with glass walls and a big “stop” button to let you watch and halt toasting at your ideal color. It makes gorgeous, evenly colored toast, and its exterior stays cool. However, toast browns too much at any setting past the middle of the dial, sometimes burning and smoking. For its price, this toaster should be perfect.
- Speed: 2.5 stars out of 3.
- Cleanup: 3 stars out of 3.
- Ease of Use: 2.5 stars out of 3.
- Performance: 2.5 stars out of 3.
Long, slim, and streamlined, with all controls on one short end, this toaster looks stylish and its plastic exterior stays cool to the touch. It toasts fairly evenly and moderately quickly. It doesn’t burn bread at the highest setting, but an extra cycle is sometimes required to get the desired shade, particularly if the toaster is cold. (A “toast longer” button that extends the cycle was helpful.) The slot was wide enough for a chunky bagel, but we wish it were just a bit longer, since two slices of our favorite (admittedly oversize) white sandwich bread just barely fit side by side.
- Speed: 3 stars out of 3.
- Cleanup: 3 stars out of 3.
- Ease of Use: 2 stars out of 3.
- Performance: 2 stars out of 3.
This toaster beeps at the beginning and end of toasting; the first beep didn't seem necessary, but we appreciated the second beep alerting us when our toast was ready. Although it toasted fast, this model kept us fiddling with settings to get our desired color. It performed acceptably with single slices, but consecutive full-capacity batches of toast came out uneven and patchy. It failed twice to toast one half of a bagel, and the slots were just slightly too short for two slices of sandwich bread to sit side by side.
Recommended with reservations
- Cleanup: 3 stars out of 3.
- Ease of Use: 2 stars out of 3.
- Performance: 1.5 stars out of 3.
- Average Speed: 3 stars out of 3.
This toaster has well-designed controls, including an “A Bit More” button (to add a short toasting cycle for slightly darker toast), a bar of lights that indicates progress, and a “Lift and Look” feature to peek at bread without stopping the cycle. Its stainless-steel exterior stayed cool. Its crumb tray and simple surfaces are easy to clean. However, after our initial testing, we heard complaints from readers and retested this toaster. We found that it no longer performs as well as the model we originally tested. It took a great deal of fiddling to find settings that made it toast as desired, and it ran hot, making dark toast on medium and charcoal on high. The toast color was very uneven. While its slots are deep enough for tall breads, they are a bit narrow for two slices of sandwich bread to sit side by side; we'd prefer more wiggle room.
- Speed: 3 stars out of 3.
- Cleanup: 3 stars out of 3.
- Ease of Use: 2 stars out of 3.
- Performance: 1.5 stars out of 3.
The price is right on this model, which made pretty toast without any fuss. We loved its glass window to monitor browning. A “reheat” button lets you warm up cooled toast or add a bit more browning. Its profile is compact, and the exterior stays cool. On the medium setting, toast was too light, but once we pushed the dial higher, it came out reliably golden and uniform on both sides; the highest setting made great “dark” toast. One thing to note: this model occasionally threw toast onto the counter or floor.
- Speed: 2 stars out of 3.
- Cleanup: 3 stars out of 3.
- Ease of Use: 2 stars out of 3.
- Performance: 2 stars out of 3.
Big and shiny, this dual-slot toaster has clearly marked controls, but the tops of bagels stuck out and remained untoasted, and two slices of sandwich bread barely fit side by side in each slot. When we made consecutive full batches, the toast came out irregularly browned; we had to keep fiddling with settings to get a good color. It performed much better with single slices of bread, but we disliked that we usually had to put slices back in for a bit more toasting.
- Speed: 3 stars out of 3.
- Cleanup: 3 stars out of 3.
- Ease of Use: 1 stars out of 3.
- Performance: 2 stars out of 3.
- Speed: 3 stars out of 3.
- Cleanup: 2 stars out of 3.
- Ease of Use: 2 stars out of 3.
- Performance: 2 stars out of 3.
We liked that this toaster was more compact than other models, but its surface showed fingerprints and got very hot. It toasted quickly, yet browning was uneven from front to back on each slice, and it required fiddling and retoasting to get to the desired shade. Bagels stuck out of the tops of its slightly shallow slots, emerging with untoasted strips. The slots were long enough for two slices of sandwich bread to sit side by side or for a single large slice of artisan bread to fit easily.
- Speed: 1 stars out of 3.
- Cleanup: 3 stars out of 3.
- Ease of Use: 2 stars out of 3.
- Performance: 2 stars out of 3.
This toaster is like a sports car: beautiful, expensive, and a bit unreliable. While the pastel finish is striking, the exterior became quite hot, and toast sometimes flew up out of the slot. We liked the reheating function (which is similar to our winner's “A Bit More” setting) to add color or to warm up cold toast, and it often toasted evenly, but it took nearly 3 minutes to get there. The bagel function worked in reverse as compared to standard toasters: Outer slots heated up, not the inner ones, so we wasted a bagel. It also got stuck on the bagel setting even after we adjusted the controls for regular toast, and it took a few cycles to correct itself.
Reviews you can trust
The mission of America’s Test Kitchen Reviews is to find the best equipment and ingredients for the home cook through rigorous, hands-on testing.
Lisa McManus
Lisa is an executive editor for ATK Reviews, cohost of Gear Heads on YouTube, and gadget expert on TV's America's Test Kitchen.
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