Australian manufacturer Breville have been known for their highly innovative and effective toasters for quite a while now and the Breville BTA720XL is a continuation of their good form. With a slick stainless steel design and a myriad of stunning features and functions, the BTA720XL is one of those toasters that seems to tick every box. Not only can it give you world class toast every time you use it, but its intelligent design makes using it so much easier than many other similar toasters. Not just that, but with a price tag of just $70-90, you could find yourself getting amazing value for money from the BTA720XL.

The Breville BTA720XL is such a smartly designed toaster that its hard to believe just how affordable it is. With its entirely stainless steel exterior you’d be forgiven for thinking this toaster is on the heavier side, but weighing just 4 pounds you can tell that it absolutely is not. With dimensions of 11.2 x 8 x 7.8 inches to go alongside its lack of weight, the BTA720XL is a compact and transportable appliance that will not take up too much room in your kitchen. And with its stainless steel outside, you can be sure that the Breville BTA720XL is a durable product despite its weight. While the lightweight nature of the BTA720XL is very convenient in that you can easily move the toaster around if you have to, Breville do sacrifice certain capabilities of the toaster because of this.

With just two slots, this toaster can only fit two slices of bread inside it at any one time. This gives you less options compared to toasters that can fit four slices inside and give you the option of carrying out two different toasting cycles at once. However, this may only be an issue if your toaster is commonly being used by the same people at the same time. While there are only two slots for bread on the BTA720XL, these slots are extra large and can accommodate both large breads and other foods such as bagels or English muffins. This design feature is useful in that gives you more options than just only being able to use the toaster for standard slices of bread.

Like many Breville toasters before it, the BTA720XL is packed with innovative and smart features. The toaster, powered by 900W, makes use of some of Breville’s cutting edge technology to give you more freedom when making toast. One of the toaster’s four main function buttons is the ‘a bit more’ button which allows you to put your food back in to the toaster for a short period once the regular toasting cycle is complete. This way, if you are not completely satisfied by the toast coming out of the BTA720XL, you can just put the toast back in for a bit until you are satisfied.

The lever-controlled ‘lift and look’ function also allows you to check on the progress of your toast, and it seems that Breville really put their all into ensuring user satisfaction with the BTA720XL. Aside from the ‘a bit more’ button, the function buttons on the toaster allow you to toast bagels, toast frozen food or cancel. The cancel button also works as an alarm adjuster for the toaster too. By pressing the cancel button, you can change the settings of the alarm between high volume, low volume and muted whatever your preferences may be. Despite the variety of features seen on the BTA720XL, unlike many other toasters it does not feature a reheat function, although it has functions for bagels and defrosting. An interesting feature that the Breville BTA720XL does have is an extra high lift that allows you to safely remove bread from the toaster without causing yourself any harm. While this feature is useful for standard bread slices, the lift may not be of enough help to get English muffins out of the toaster, a task that you may struggle with.

While some of the functions of the Breville BTA720XL work better than others, they all work well together in order to create high quality toast. Despite the fact that the 900W of power means that the BTA720XL is somewhat of a slow toaster, the result is inevitably an even piece of toast cooked exactly how you like it no matter what kind of bread you use. What’s more, Breville have created a toaster that can consistently make great, even toast no matter how much the toaster is used. So, while there are toasters out there that can make toast at a much quicker rate to this one, we’d imagine that the quality of their toast does not quite compare to what this Breville toaster can create. The BTA720XL is also a relatively easy toaster to use.

All of its control functions are clearly stated, light co-ordinated and simple to operate. Although the toaster can get very hot on top, the extra-high lever makes the toaster much easier to use and can be a really helpful feature to prevent burning, unless of course you’re toasting a muffin, which the lever is not too helpful with. If you’re interested in cleaning the toaster in order to try and maintain it as long as possible, there is a well situated removable crumb tray that can make cleaning a much easier process. The Breville BTA720’s lightweight and compact design also makes moving it around easier, and the toaster still manages to be durable despite its lack of weight.

All in all, the Breville BTA720XL is an intelligently designed and effective toaster, which at a price of just $70-90 can give you superb value for money. Though there are features that are either missing or not quite fully developed on the BTA720XL that could make it even more fantastic, this toaster offers you looks that could go amazingly in any kitchen environment as well as the most important feature of any great toaster: great toast! This toaster would be an amazing option for somebody that doesn’t want to pay over the odds for a top of the range toaster but still wants all the classic elements involved with one.