The Best 4-slice Toasters of 2024

The Breville A Bit More 4-slice toaster is a sleek toaster that combines aesthetics and functionality. The brushed stainless steel exterior looks great on the counter, especially when paired with other stainless steel appliances. The toaster’s wide slots accommodate a variety of bread types, including thick slices and bagels. Instead of four separate slots, the Breville features two extra-long slots that fit non-standard sandwich slices (like those from artisan boules).

Breville exceeded our expectations for performance. When it came to toasting bagels, the majority of toasters left pale spots on the surface. Breville stood out by achieving consistent browning throughout.

The variable browning control dial offers five shade settings, with the lowest providing a subtly light toast with a delightful texture. While the highest setting was a tad too dark for our preference, the toasting was even and stopped just short of burning. The medium setting was the sweet spot, delivering perfectly toasted bread in just over two minutes. It exhibited consistent results on both sides of the bread, regardless of the position in the slot.

The toaster has several standout features, too. The Lift & Look function allowed us to see how the bread was progressing without disturbing the toasting process. The A Bit More button is also helpful for adding extra time to the session without interrupting the toasting cycle.

Then, there's the LED bar, which indicates browning progress. It sounded cool, but it was a little flawed. It didn’t actually help us understand how much time the bread would be in the toaster, and it didn’t work when we moved the browning slider up or down after starting a toasting session.

Our only other complaint is that the toasting slots are on the shallow side, so we struggled to retrieve short items like English muffins. In the end, we found these small grievances were outweighed by excellent performance.

The Zwilling Enfinigy Cool Touch Toaster was the most expensive toaster we tested, but it was also one of the top performers.

The four wide slots provide ample space for toasting thick slices or bagels, and the toaster comes with three pre-programmed settings: Bagel, Defrost, and Reheat. We did, however, have to read the manual to understand which button did what, and to learn that the cancel button was the Zwilling logo underneath the lever.

While the Zwilling was the slowest toaster we used—taking over four minutes when most of the others finished in about half that time—we found ourselves forgiving the extended time. Each slice was perfectly even and achieved a crisp texture, regardless of the heat setting. We also love that the toaster was cool to the touch, even after toasting multiple pieces of bread.

This Cuisinart toaster feels like something from the future, with a dynamic LED display and an automated lever-less lift that slowly lowers toast into the chamber below.

It was the quickest toaster in the group, edging out our top pick and toasting a slice of bread in just over two minutes. We thought the bread was a little dark for a medium setting, but the toasting pattern was fairly even, only exhibiting some pale patches here and there.

The bagel setting was the least consistent, so we’d recommend using a lower toast setting and flipping the bread halfway through for ideal coverage.

The toaster has a wide variety of functions, including the ability to change the toaster settings for bread type. Choose from white bread, pastry, bagels, English muffins, whole wheat, or waffles, and select the toasting shade.

It can hold up to four presets in memory, and it also has functions for defrosting, adding 30 seconds to the cycle, toasting a single piece of bread, and a quick view that allows you to view the toast’s shade without interrupting the toasting process.

The KitchenAid 4-Slice Toaster with Manual High-Lift Lever landed pretty firmly in the middle of the pack in our tests. This no-frills toaster had the least number of functions, featuring a simple dial with five shade choices, a cancel button, and a bagel button. Although it has a manual high-lift lever, it was one of the few toasters that was too shallow to retrieve English muffins without putting our fingers in the unit.

The bagels toasted pretty evenly from end to end, but the toasted bread exhibited a pale ring around the edges. That said, we appreciated that it was the only toaster that had a noticeable color difference between the shade settings.

Most of the toasters only created texture on the lightest setting, but the KitchenAid was able to produce a light brown pattern.