The Dash Clear View Long Slot is an affordable toaster that has a single long slot with room for two slices of regular sandwich bread or a longer piece of bakery bread. It stands out for one unique design feature: a glass panel that lets you watch your items toast. Since you're meant to keep an eye on the toasting progress through the window, it doesn't have a cycle countdown indicator, but you'll find typical toaster settings like buttons for bagels and frozen items, a shade selector with seven settings, and a cancel button. It comes in a range of glossy colors to match your style.
Our Verdict
The Dash Clear View Toaster delivers fantastic toasting performance. In order to leave the viewing window clear, this toaster uses quartz heating elements, the kind found in most toaster ovens. These heating elements are unusual for a slot toaster, but they work well in this design, toasting bread very evenly on both sides, though the lower elements tend to burn the bottom edge at higher settings (five and up). This toaster delivers an outstanding toasting range, so you can get anything from barely warmed to charred sandwich bread or toast denser breads in a single cycle. And if you tend to make many batches of toast for brunch, this toaster easily keeps up, consistently delivering golden-brown slices without having to adjust the settings between toasting cycles.
Toasts evenly.
Produces a wide range of browning levels.
Toasts consistently batch after batch.
Burns toast's bottom edge on higher settings.
Check Price
Differences Between Sizes And Variants
The Dash Clear View Toaster comes in ‘Red,' 'Cool Grey,' 'White,' 'Black,' 'Cream,' and 'Aqua.' We tested the Cool Grey variant. See the label for our unit.
If you discover another variant, tell us about it in the comments, and we'll update our review.
Popular Toaster Comparisons
The Dash Clear View Long Slot is a budget-friendly toaster with a single slot that's long enough for two slices of sandwich bread or a longer slice of a homemade or artisanal loaf. It has a unique design with a glass panel on one side, so you can watch your toast as it browns. Typical toasters, like the GE 4-Slice Toaster or the Cuisinart 4 Slice Compact Plastic Toaster, brown bread by heating thin nichrome wires until they glow red hot. Since this would block the view into the toaster, the Dash instead uses the type of tubular quartz elements usually found in toaster ovens, with one above and one below on each side of the toasting chamber.
This setup delivers better toasting performance than other long slot toasters we've tested. For example, the Dash toasts much more evenly and provides a wider toasting range than the Cuisinart Long Slot Toaster, making it easier to reach your desired shade. Its toasting performance is more similar to the high-end Smeg 2-Slice Toaster. Both options offer a fantastic toasting range and toast very evenly, though the Smeg heats up after the first batch, producing darker toast with each subsequent cycle if you don't adjust the settings. Overall, while you may find the Dash's viewing window somewhat gimmicky, this budget toaster is a fantastic buy and even stands out from more premium models, consistently making excellent toast, whether you prefer it barely toasted, golden brown, or practically charred.
If you want more to consider, see our picks for the best toasters, the best budget and cheap toasters, and the best 2-slice toasters.
The Dash Clear View Long Slot and the Black+Decker 2-Slice Toaster T2569B both deliver fantastic performance, but while the Black+Decker comes out ahead in this area, you may also prefer the Dash for its unique design. While the Black+Decker has a pretty standard 2-slice toaster design, the Dash has a single long slot that fits two slices of sandwich bread and features a glass panel so you can watch your bread get toasted. Both toasters offer an outstanding toasting range, meaning that you can barely warm or completely char a piece of sandwich bread in one toasting cycle, and they toast consistently, so you don't have to change the setting between cycles to get the same results. That said, the Black+Decker toasts significantly more evenly.
The Dash Clear View Long Slot delivers better toasting performance than the Breville Die-Cast Smart Toaster, but the Breville offers some quality-of-life features that may still sway you. They both provide an outstanding toasting range, so you can easily get your preferred shade or toast denser artisan slices in a single cycle. However, the Dash toasts more evenly and consistently, so you don't have to adjust the settings between batches to get the same result. While the Dash has a glass panel that lets you keep an eye on your bread as it toasts, it doesn't have a cycle countdown indicator like the Breville. The Breville also includes a 'Lift and Look' button, which raises the slots mid-cycle so you can check out toasting progress away from the glow of the heating elements, and a button that adds a little time to the end of a toasting cycle.
The Dash Clear View Long Slot is a better toaster than the Smeg 4-Slice Toaster for most people. It toasts more evenly and consistently, so you get similar results batch after batch without changing the settings. The Dash offers a better toasting range, too, since it can char sandwich bread in a single toasting cycle. Neither toaster includes a cycle countdown indicator, but the Dash features a glass panel that lets you monitor your toast's progress, while the Smeg has a lever you can use to lift the slots up. Beyond those features, both toasters are fairly simple, with just the standard buttons for bagels and frozen items. Although the Smeg comes with a much steeper price tag than the Dash, it's also made of more premium materials. It has a powder-coated steel body, whereas the Dash is mainly plastic. It also has a larger capacity, with room for four slices of sandwich bread at once, so you may prefer it if you need the extra toasting space.
The Dash Clear View Long Slot provides better toasting performance than the Beautiful 4-Slice Toaster with Touch-Activated Display; however, they have very different designs, so you may prefer one over the other depending on your needs. As their names suggest, the Beautiful is a typical 4-slot toaster with touch-sensitive controls, while the Dash has a single long slot for two slices of sandwich bread and a glass panel on the side that lets you keep an eye on the toasting progress. While the Beautiful toasts more evenly, the Dash offers a wider toasting range, making it easier to achieve your desired shade, and it toasts more consistently, so you don't have to adjust settings between toasting cycles to get the same result.
Test Results
