From Australian manufacturers Breville, comes the BTA840XL, one of the most innovative and spectacular toasters we’ve ever happened to come across. With a focus based solely around user convenience, the BTA840 manages to perform in a way that very few toasters before it have been able to. The toaster is powered by an entirely button-based design that allows it to perform tasks that make the toast-making experience easier and more fun than it’s ever been. Plus, if you were under any suspicion that the Breville BTA840XL was all style and no substance, then you’d be taken aback by its supreme toasting abilities, which is one of the best and most consistent out there. At a price of $160-180, this is certainly in the upper bracket in terms of price tags for toasters, but upon use you will see just why this appliance is considered so valuable.

In terms of appearance, the Breville BTA840XL just oozes style and sophistication. Despite only coming in only one colour, the stainless steel design looks as though it could fit nicely into any kitchen environment, and you’d be hard pressed to find another toaster that looks nearly as classy as this one. As far as toasters go, the BTA840XL is certainly on the heavy side at 9.48lbs and is not one of those appliances that you’ll want to start moving around your kitchen too many times.

However, once you start using this toaster, you are unlikely to want to move it anywhere at all, not least of which due to how attractive of an appliance it is. The toasters controls are almost fully button based, with the lack of vertical levers really adding a lot to the already impressive sleek die-cast aluminium design, a feature that we have come to expect from Breville at this point. On top, the BTA840XL is made up of four slots that allow up to four slices of bread inside. The slots are rather wide, allowing for other foods such as bagels and pastries to also be toasted inside of them. These are just some of the features that show that the Breville BTA840XL was designed with the customer’s needs in mind.

The performance levels shown by the Breville BTA840XL are truly quite astounding. Before we even consider the quality of the toast that it cooks, there are so many smart features to unpack. On the front face of the toaster there are two horizontal levers that allow you to select your preferred shade of toast. This gives the user a sense of freedom that very few toasters offer, and having two of these levers allows you to set different shading preferences for either side of the toaster. This is just part of the BTA840XL’s dual-control settings that are primarily focused on enabling more choice. With the dual-control settings, you can choose to toast bread differently depending on which side of the toaster the bread is on. The two slices on the left can be made using completely different settings to the ones on the right; a feature that is quite brilliant in its convenience and should leave nobody complaining that their toast isn’t made exactly how they like it.

The BTA840XL’s LED toasting progress indicators also allow you to view how far along your toast is and what shade it currently is, but that’s still not all. The technologically wonderful ‘lift and look’ feature allows you to check on your toasts progress simply by pressing a button, which then lifts the toast out of the slot for you to see how far along it is. If you consider it to not quite be done yet, a simple press of the ‘a bit more’ button should help give you the toast that you’ve been looking for. When using the Breville BTA840XL you almost get the sense that it knows exactly what you want, and it has all features you’d like it to have to make your toast making experience even more convenient.

By this point, we know that the Breville BTA840XL is packed with awesome features that make it one of the innovative and smartest toasters we’ve ever seen, but is it actually any good at making toast? Thankfully, you’ll be glad to know that the BTA840XL produces some of the best toast around, and can do so on a consistent basis. Powered by all of 1800W, the BTA840XL toasts in such an even manner, and no matter what shade of toast you prefer, you will be satisfied by what comes out of this toaster. Although many toasters can quickly suffer from damaged heating elements that tend to result in the evenness of the toast suffering after extensive use, this doesn’t seem to be the case here. Even after using it for quite a while, the Breville BTA840XL still manages to consistently produce an evenly cooked piece of toast that’s better than what most toasters can produce on their first attempt. So not only can this toaster tell you every last detail about its process in cooking your slice of bread, the end product that you come out with surpasses the strong majority of other toasters available on the market.

You only have to take one look at the Breville BTA840XL to see that is was crafted with the user in mind. Despite the buttons on the toaster giving you a much wider variety of choice, they are all very simple to understand and follow. The ‘lift and look’ and ‘a bit more’ features give the user an element of choice that no toaster prior to it has ever offered, even though the quality of toast is usually so consistent that you rarely ever need to actually use the ‘a bit more’ option. These options also eliminate any dangers of being burned by the toaster, as there are always buttons that can be pressed to ensure that you never have to stick your fingers inside the toaster. In other areas, the BTA840XL has two removable crumb trays that are easily cleaned and can be regularly cleaned to ensure that the toaster lasts as long as possible. The only slightly inconvenient element of the Breville BTA840XL is its weight, which can cause a slight bit of bother when needing to move it. However, if Breville had to sacrifice the appliance being light in favour of all of the wonderful features and abilities, we should be thankful that they did.

As you’d expect from such a fantastically manufactured piece of equipment, Breville’s BTA840XL commands a premium asking price of around $160-180. And while many would struggle to bring themselves to spend so much on a toaster, it’s hard to argue that the BTA840XL isn’t worth every single penny of that. With a vast array of intelligent, user-friendly features and even more impressive cooking capabilities, no toast-lover would ever regret investing in a high quality product such as this.