If you find yourself fighting over who gets to use the toaster first in the morning, it may be time to upgrade to a 4-slice toaster. Since you can make two separate batches at once, they can be a great help if everyone in your house eats toast in the morning or if you like to host brunch and stacks of fresh toast are on the menu. The best toasters produce consistently toasted bread, regardless of the spot you're using and the number of batches you make in a row. They should also offer a variety of settings that produce different results, allowing everyone to customize their toast to their liking. It's nice if the slots are big enough to accommodate thickly sliced bread and bulkier bagels, but they should also pop up far enough that you can remove your more compact frozen waffles and English muffins without burning yourself.
We've tested 20 toasters; these are our recommendations for the best four-slice toasters for most people. If you're looking for another type of toaster, check out our recommendations for the overall best toasters. If you might be interested in a toaster oven instead, check out our list of the best options. We also recommend the best smoothie blenders if you like a blended drink with breakfast. Or, find an air fryer that can serve the whole family on our list of the best large-capacity air fryers and a quick way of reheating leftovers on the best budget and cheap microwaves.
Quick Look
We've put our 20 toasters through the wringer to help you make a confident buying decision. But how do we do it? It starts with buying the products ourselves, just like you. We take it a step further with our lab, where we measure a variety of characteristics, like toasting evenness, so that a prospective toaster's performance doesn't come as a shock. You can even compare models and results, making it easy to find the right toaster for your needs.
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Best 4-Slice Toaster
The best 4-slice toaster we've tested is the Breville Die-Cast 4-Slice Smart Toaster. While you can get a similar or better toasting performance with a cheaper option below, it's worth considering for its higher-end design and extra features. It has four slots that are slightly wider, deeper, and longer than many toasters, including the cheaper picks below. They easily fit bagels, thickly sliced bread, and taller slices. Its aluminum body gives it a premium look and sturdy feel, and it has an incredible toasting range, making anything from barely toasted to charred sandwich bread in a single cycle. Denser bread, such as multi-grain or rye, which takes longer to brown, also gets properly toasted in one cycle. It toasts bread decently evenly, but unfortunately, some slots produce somewhat darker toast than others. It also produces darker toast on the second batch than on the first, so you must adjust the setting for consistent results.
There are a few design features that you don't find on most toasters: it has cycle countdown indicators so you can tell when your toast will be ready. You can use 'Lift and Look' to lift the slots and check on your toast without interrupting the toasting cycle, and the 'A Bit More' button to add some time to the end of a cycle. It has buttons to lift and raise the slots instead of levers.
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Best Mid-Range 4-Slice Toaster
If you want to pay less without completely giving up on premium touches, you might prefer the Beautiful 4-Slice Toaster with Touch-Activated Display. This toaster from Drew Barrymore's kitchenware brand 'Beautiful by Drew' is sold by the brand at Walmart. It has a modern look, with touch-sensitive buttons that light up only when the toaster is on. Unlike the Breville Die-Cast 4-Slice Smart Toaster, it comes in several pastel colors to suit your style. The slots are wide and deep enough for thicker and taller slices. It's better than the previous pick at evenly browning the bread in every slot and on both sides. It's also more consistent over multiple batches. Aside from the more typical functions like 'Bagel' and 'Frozen', it has a gluten-free setting, which adds a bit of time to the end of a toasting cycle to help brown denser bread.
However, unlike the Breville, it has only seven distinct shade settings. You can't set the dial between settings to fine-tune the cycle length. Unfortunately, none of the shade settings produces golden brown sandwich bread, so if that's what you want, you'll have to add time to the end of a lower setting or cancel a higher setting early. On the plus side, it includes cycle countdown indicators to tell how much time is left before your toast pops up.
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Best Budget 4-Slice Toaster
The Black+Decker 4-Slice Toaster TR4900SSD is the best budget 4-slice toaster we've tested. Unlike previous picks, this inexpensive option has no modes other than the standard ones for bagels and frozen items like waffles. It doesn't have cycle countdown indicators, so you can't tell how long it takes until your toast pops up. However, it's still made of metal rather than plastic and has a better toasting range than the Beautiful 4-Slice Toaster with Touch-Activated Display. You can use the presets to produce anything from lightly toasted to charred sandwich bread in a single cycle, and you won't have to run an extra cycle to toast denser breads properly.
Its dials let you make small adjustments to the shade setting, so you're not limited to the seven marked settings. It tends to toast the inner face more than the outer face, but otherwise, toasts bread very evenly, with each slot producing similar results. You might need to adjust the dial after the first batch to get consistent results, since it tends to overcompensate for the machine heating up and makes lighter toast after the first batch.
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Best Long-Slot 4-Slice Toaster
For maximum versatility, consider a long-slot toaster like the Smeg 4-Slice Toaster. This high-end toaster has two slots that can each fit two slices of sandwich bread side by side, so it has the same capacity as 4-slot toasters but can also fit longer slices of homemade or bakery bread. Plus, the slots are deeper than most, so taller slices won't stick out the top. It performs similarly regardless of where you put the bread and produces pretty consistent results batch after batch. It has settings for bagels and frozen items as well as a 'reheat' function for warming up cold toast or adding some time to the end of a cycle.
In one cycle, it can make anything from lightly toasted to dark brown toast from white sandwich bread. However, anything that takes longer, such as denser bread and bagels, may require more than one cycle for proper browning. It doesn't tell you how much time remains in a cycle, which is disappointing for such an expensive toaster. While it also comes with a glossy, retro look that helps justify its high price, the Cuisinart Long Slot Toaster is another good option if you don't want to spend the money on a high-end toaster. It doesn't look as fancy, but it's much cheaper and performs similarly. However, you must manually raise the lever to grab even normal-sized toast without burning your fingers, which is annoying. Plus, its slots are quite shallow when pushed down, so taller slices can stick out the top.
Recent Updates
Dec 02, 2025:
We've checked our picks to ensure they're available and made small edits for clarity.
Apr 14, 2025:
Minor updates to the text for clarity, but our recommendations haven't changed.
Feb 14, 2025:
We've checked the text for accuracy and verified that the products are available, but there hasn't been a change to our recommendations.
Nov 18, 2024:
We've made minor updates to the text and checked that the products are in stock.
Aug 22, 2024: We've made minor updates to the text and checked that the products are in stock, but there hasn't been a change to our recommendations.
All Reviews
Our recommendations above are what we think are currently the best four-slice models for most people. We factor in the price, feedback from our visitors, and availability.
If you'd like to do the work of choosing yourself, here's the list of all 4-slot and long-slot toaster reviews. Be careful not to get too caught up in the details. While no toaster is perfect, most are good enough to please almost everyone, and the differences are often not noticeable unless you look for them.