Breville BTA820XL Die-Cast 2-Slice Smart Toaster

This may be the best toaster we've ever owned. We've owned only a few toasters, not spending much money on any except an "automatic" one 30 or more years ago. We bought this after seeing one at a cousin's home and they could not say enough good things about it. While we've had it only a month, if it lasts and continues to work as well as it does now, it will be worth the admittedly steep investment. The lighted "status bar" gives you an idea as to how long your toast is going to take and the "a bit more" button helps in the rare instance of needing to add some time to your toast. Highly recommend!

It's expensive but it beats any other toaster in my life hands down. i was impressed by last Hamilton Beach toaster with cancel and defrost buttons, but frankly compared to this one it was a pile of junk (costing half as much, it's true). The Hamilton Beach only lasted 2.5 years, ceasing to operate after an effort to gently clean out all the crumbs.That one had two extra long slots for four slices, but I decided to get this two slot one because after all, I can toast as many slices as I want anyway. This one has wider slots. I don't often toast artisan loafs that you can slice into really long slices or that feature would have been important.There is just no comparison of the build quality of this one to previous toasters. It dispenses with that noisy, wobbly spring loading lever to insert the toast and pop it up. Instead it has a totally silent, smooth electric elevator for the bread. The toast no longer pops up like a Jack-in-the-Box. It gently glides up. This is a more respectful way to treat your food. It's also got a very nice, professional artistic design. The style is kind of Art Deco, very nice.The toaster is gorgeous with its real beautiful brushed stainless steel and electronic led lit buttons. The outside does not get hot and burn you like previous toasters I have owned. That's a very nice thing. You really don't want to have something big and burning out on the counter while your busy preparing food.Unlike other toasters, where you have to guess the setting for each type of bread and hope you get it right, it has a nifty "peek" button that lifts the toast up briefly for inspection in the middle of the cycle, along with a cancel button if you find the toast is done. There's a handy "little bit more" button if the toast is not quite dark enough.It also has an LED display that tells the progress of the toasting, another great feature for timing food preparation. Most toasters you have no idea when it will finish.The metal grids that hold the toast in place are much better designed- they are also motor driven and grip the toast firmly. They are not part of some rube goldberg mechanism that is powered by pressing the lever. It's a precision machine.Of course the most important thing about a toaster is the toast. I've never made such evenly browned toast. It's a delight. Not perfectly even like a tan, but no parts are burnt or untoasted. It's a nice even toast. I am so used to toast that comes out with some burnt parts in order to get all of it toasted, that I am astounded by what this machine produces. It's of restaurant quality. Almost. It's not perfectly uniform, there are lighter areas, but it's close. It's got a nice variagation.The defrost button works better than on the Hamilton Beach, which I was not able to use. I no longer have to defrost the bread first.The toast is chewy inside but firmly browned on the surface. I don't know how they do it since the basic toasting method is the exact same bands of heating wires. They don't look any better or more uniformly placed than other toasters. On previous toasters the toast often came out dry or crispy if it was dark enough; not this one.It may be that they worked out the heat production of the elements and the distance from the bread very carefully to produce an even browning without burning. I've only been using it one day but it doesn't look like you can burn the toast even if you set it all the way up- the degree-of-browning setting has a limited range, and changes slowly, so it's hard to get it wrong. That could be a problem if you want to have super dark toast or you have bread that for some reason needs a lot of heat to brown, but it's a blessing for me.So it's pretty expensive for a toaster but you sure see all the money sitting there. It's seems like a fair deal. It doesn't have the look of typical American products that often lack sophisticated design. Breville is an Australian company but the toaster has a German design feeling to it. Nothing about it says wallaby or watch out for the sharks.Toasters are not your most attractive appliance. Compared to mixers, blenders or coffee makers they are homely, bloated and covered with large irregular orifices and levers. So it's amazing that you can imagine these Brevilles getting shortlisted for a toaster exhibit at the Modern Museum of Art, (OK the Italian Smegs are very pretty for a toaster and have a higher rating but do they give your bread an elevator ride? No. Their beauty is surface deep.)One downside to the toaster is that I am eating a more toast, because it tastes so good.

UPDATE September 2013: If your BTA820XL is tripping a GFCI, check to see if there's some debris touching the heading elements.I've owned the BTA820XL for four months. This morning, I used it to reheat some buttermilk blueberry pancakes that I had made a couple of weeks ago and frozen. The first 2 pancakes heated without a hitch. When I tried to heat the second 2, the power to the toaster went out as soon as I pushed the Toast/Cancel button. It turned out that the GFCI (ground fault) had tripped. I reset it and tried several times more, with the same result. I thought it might be a faulty GFCI, so I moved the toaster to another outlet what was protected by a different GFCI, and it tripped as well. Scratching my head, I decided to plug the toaster into an outlet that was not protected by a GFCI...success...the toaster worked. I looked into the slots and saw a dark blob at the bottom of one. What really got my attention was the dazzling display of electric arcs going to the blob. I unplugged the toaster and, using a couple of chopsticks, removed a plump, wet blueberry from the depths of the slot. The blueberry had caused a short circuit between the heating element and the toaster electrical ground. Problem solved.ORIGINAL REVIEW:PROS: Beautiful appearance; motorized up-and-down; functional controls; nice crumb drawer; decent value for moneyCONS: Short (5 1/2") slots; occasional control lock-ups; slightly uneven toastingWhen I started looking for a new toaster, I knew I wanted something special. If I'm going to allocate precious counter space to an appliance, I want it to look good! I didn't mind paying a premium for a toaster with outstanding performance and looks. I didn't want a plastic body. I've had toasters with plastic bodies before and eventually they all melted to some degree. I have a  Breville 800CPXL Die-Cast Stainless-Steel Motorized Citrus Press  and a  Breville BES860XL Barista Express Espresso Machine with Grinder , both of which I like, so I trusted the brand to some degree. Reading the mostly positive reviews of the BTA830XL tipped the balance.Design: Right out of the box, there were aspects that I liked. The no-nonsense, clean die-cast aluminum body with a brushed finish is impressive. The hot parts of the body, made of chrome-plated steel, are isolated from the outer shell, making it much more difficult to burn your fingers and unlikely that the outer shell will suffer discoloration or distortion from heat over time. The dimensions of the slots are 5 1/2" by 1 1/2". The width is plenty generous, but I was immediately disappointed by the length because 5 1/2" isn't long enough for some breads and insufficient to hold 2 pieces of a muffin or bagel. The Crumb Tray is very accessible and well designed to catch the crumbs that are inevitably shed from the toasting bread.Operation: The motorized operation of the toaster is...well...mesmerizing. There, I've said it. This is clearly the feature that separates the BTA820XL from its competition. Is it functional? Possibly, in that there is no lever to push to lower or raise the toast. Since lever malfunction is often the cause of death for many pop up toasters, this may be a plus. It remains to be seen whether the motorized mechanism will stand the test of time. There is no doubt that it's a crowd pleaser, even if it's only a crowd of one slightly drowsy denizen of the morning who has yet to enjoy a cup of coffee. I sometimes find myself watching the slow descent of the bread for way longer than I should.Most of the other controls ('A Bit More', 'Bagel', 'Lift and Look') are useful and get a fair amount of use. I never use the 'Frozen' button because all of my bread is frozen, so I adjust the toasting time to make it work. I don't know whether it's a harbinger of nastiness to come, but twice so far (in 2 months of use), the toaster has locked up, with the toast in the down position and all lights flashing. When this happens, the toaster does not respond to any button pushing. I solved the problem by unplugging the unit and then plugging it in again. This seems to reset the control and it begins operating as if nothing had gone wrong. I considered sending it back the first time this happened, but decided against it. I hope this remains an occasional glitch and doesn't worsen over time.My old toaster produced toast with very uneven done-ness. One side would be pale and the other almost burned. I dealt with this by flipping the toast over half way through the cycle. Really annoying. The BTA820XL does much better in this regard, but it's short of perfect. There is a slight difference from one side of the toast to the other, but it's acceptable to me.The amount of toasting time is set by a slider, which is not unusual. What is unusual is the row of 14 LED's above the slider that give a visual indication of the amount of time remaining on the toasting cycle. I have a fairly structured approach to making breakfast and I find myself glancing over at the toaster's lights to make sure that my other activities will be completed when the toast is done and hot.I am happy with this toaster. For me, the cost premium is justified by the appearance and operation of the machine. I will update the review once I've had it for a year or so. Breville 800CPXL Die-Cast Stainless-Steel Motorized Citrus PressBreville BES860XL Barista Express Espresso Machine with Grinder

So far we really lime this toaster the options are great and the toaster itself seems to be well made

It ain't cheap, but the Breville brand is a gold standard of toasting. Our old one began pooping out after a long, busy family's-worth of service. I bought two toasters that were cheaper and both had weird fails or did bad work. So, we found it on Amazon and bought a new Breville and it's sturdy, gorgeous and works like a push-button dream. We have the 2-slice model; ours friends have the 4-slice model in their new kitchen. Dependable!