De'Longhi Distinta Flair 4 slot toaster, reheat, defrost, one-side bagel & 6 browning settings, matte metallic design, CTI4003.S, Silver

Product Information

Breville The Bit More Plus 4 Slice Toaster BTA440BSS: No bagel setting, but included crumpet setting Although it’s not huge, it does everything you need it to, and it does it all well. There are six browning functions; we opted for mid-way but noticed that once the toaster was warmed up, we could dial it down a bit.

Hand-built in the UK since 1945, this is the toaster to buy if you don't want to fork out for another one for many years to come. It's a steep investment, yes, but the price reflects the fact that its makers believe it’s a toaster that will last a lifetime. The dial is also pretty easy to read, so you may have to play with it to get the right level. The sliding crumb tray on the side also makes it pretty easy to clean. It is an excellent first stop when it comes to looking for a cost-effective toaster with premium features. With our review out of the way, we can confidently say that the DeLonghi Distinta Flair CTI2003 has won this competition for the best toast NZ has available. It is the only reasonably priced toaster that combines all of the features we have discussed throughout this. It is only missing an audible beep and a mechanical lift. There’s no automatic pop-up, although it does have lovely wide slots, you just lower your toast in manually using the lever at the front then turn the browning control to the desired setting and it starts to count down. A toast defrost setting allows you to place frozen pieces of toast directly in your toaster. It adds an extra period of heat to account for melting the ice from the toast. All of the models we reviewed today include this feature. Reheating Toast

Each toaster has a tolerance level for the smaller items it can take. Some of them have specific settings for bagels or crumpets. We will list them out below.

It also has a defrost button so there aren’t any ‘Oh no, I forgot to take the bread out of the freezer’ moments, while the one side toasting function is good for bagels and the reheat perfect for those of us that sometimes get distracted and leave the toast to cool.

Customer reviews

The Kambrook Perfect Fit 2 Slice is our first stop on this toaster adventure. As expected, it does have a setting to defrost frozen bread, which the Perfect Fit is pretty good at doing. As far as standard bread, you can imagine it is just as good at handling that. The KitchenAid Artisan is our first step into the world of premium toasters. Regardless of it being premium, it does still have a couple of problems with the more complicated types of bread. However, this bread toaster is on the other end of the spectrum. It can handle crumpets. Typically speaking, a four-slot toaster crams two toasters together into one unit. It means that it will have four separate slots but two separate control areas. Each side should be considered a different toaster.