Four Slice Toaster Guide - Your 7 Tips to Hassle Free Buying

Nowadays as with most home appliances, the four slice toaster comes in a wide variety of styles. No long just utilitarian in look, you can find designs that range from contemporary to retro. Designs and styles to suit any home decor. But design should be one of the last factors you think about when buying a toaster. Sure, you want it to fit in and play nice with the other kitchen appliances, but you want a 4 slice toaster that will stick around and give reliable toast for years to come. Here's what to look for.

Consistent Browning
The best toasters will consistently brown you bread to your desired color. One assumes this as a given, but you'd be surprised by the variety of browning that different toasters provide. If you put your toaster at a certain setting you should be able to count on having the same color toast time and time again. Along with this, you want to have some variety of the browning available. The best toasters allow for light to dark and a bunch of in between colors too.

Comfort & Safety
Traditionally, plastic covering on a four slice toaster meant that it kept the toaster cool on the outside. Nowadays this is no longer a big concern. Metal toasters nowadays keep just as cool as the plastic ones of yore. Oh yeah, while we're at it, consider automatic shut off, the last thing you want is burnt or burning toast setting off the fire detector alarms. The best ones have an automatic shut off.

Here are a couple more tips to keep in mind when researching your four slice toaster purchase. If you follow this advice you won't go wrong when buying a toaster and it will give you great toast plus years of loyal service.

Overall Convenience
When talking about convenience we're looking at things like the controls and the slot size. Look for electronic controls or numbered dials, the shaded ones are lazy and inexact. When looking at slot sizes think about what type of bread products you like to eat most often. Is it long bread, thick bagels or just your usual lazy loaf from the supermarket? Many 2 slice toasters and 4 slice toasters for that matter have shallow slots less than 5 inches long. You don't want to be turning your bread upside down half way through!

Extras in Convenience
Some of the best toasters on the market now have a slide out bread crumb tray. This can be super handy in cleaning. Dragging the whole toaster over the kitchen sink to clean a hinged tray is annoying and cumbersome. Consider one that has a slide out tray. Another nice to have is a bread lifter. When the toast is done and it pops up, it can be handy to have a bread lifter that will help lift the bread an inch or so higher out of the slots. Not only is this convenient but it keeps you further away from the hot elements and the risk of those annoying little toaster burns.

Hopefully you've come to appreciate all the lovely little features that are now available on a four slice toaster. They sure have come a long way in just the last 20 or so years. There are some really lovely features to consider now. Let's wrap it up with a few last tips to ensure your toaster buying is easy and enjoyable.

Pop Goes the Weasel (Toast)
Some four slice toasters and the two slice toaster too don't have automatic pop up. The manufacturer might suggest that this helps keep the toast warm. I'd suggest that it keeps me annoyed. It is much more convenient to have the toast automatically pop up when it's done and not just sit deep in the slots with the elements off. I don't know about you, but when my toast is done I want to get to the eating!

Cord Craziness
Consider how long the cord is on your toaster. Some of them can be quite ungainly. It is also helpful to have cord indentations on the toaster so you can wrap the cord around the bottom of the toaster to store it more conveniently. This is of course more of a personal preference but still something to consider.

Big Foot
Last but not least, consider the footprint of your toaster. Think about your kitchen layout and space. Do you need a long rectangular toaster or would a square one be more practical. There is no right choice here, only what works in your particular kitchen environment but you'll be surprised how few folks overlook this.