Toasters are one of the most useful kitchen appliances, and at the same time also one of the simplest. You put bread in the top, push the lever, and a few minutes later it pops up: toast! The most basic toasters are very cheap indeed, and worth every penny for all the use you can get out of them.

However, unlike with many appliances, you will see visible improvements for every extra little bit of money you spend on your toaster. You can go from two slices at a time to four, from two minutes’ cooking time to one, get a bun rack for toasting things like croissants, get the capability to toast frozen bread, extra lift to allow you to toast smaller things like crumpets and muffins, and all sorts of other features besides.

Whether or not you need these features will generally depend on what you want to toast: if you just want toasted bread, you should be fine with a normal toaster, but if you want to toast all sorts of bread products, you start needing some other features, especially the extra lift and the bun rack. It can also be difficult to find the exact combination of features you want in a colour and design you would like, but don’t give up: just about every combination is out there somewhere.

One thing to be aware of with toasters is that, if toast or something else somehow gets stuck, you should never try to remove it with a metal knife or other metal object, because they conduct electricity and can lead to an electric shock. You should also make sure to keep the toaster away from water, and be careful not to use frozen bread unless the toaster is capable of it.

Another popular kind of toaster is the sandwich toaster, which differs from the usual slot toaster in that you put in more slices of bread, usually four, with things in between, and they then become sandwiches. This can be especially effective if you use things that will melt, like cheese, in the sandwiches – the traditional toaster’s inability to melt things onto the toast has long been considered a disadvantage.