The Hamilton Beach 2 Slice Toaster with Extra-Wide Slots is a simple, budget-friendly toaster. Even though its slots aren't particularly wide, they can fit thicker slices of bread and lift high enough for you to grab smaller items like English muffins without burning yourself. It has a dial with seven preset settings but no bagel setting to help prevent burning the bottom of your bagel.
Our Verdict
It's a great toaster. This simple model toasts bread very evenly in both slots and on both sides of the bread. Its performance stays consistent batch after batch. However, you must use the highest setting to make golden brown toast from white sandwich bread. None of the presets chars white sandwich bread, so if your bread takes longer to toast or you like it well done, you'll have to run another cycle. Fortunately, its preset cycles don't take as long as some toasters'.
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Quick.
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Toasts both sides very evenly in both slots.
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Toasts lightly.
- 8.1 Toasting
Differences Between Sizes And Variants
The Hamilton Beach 2 Slice Toaster comes in 'Black' or 'White'. We tested it in 'Black' and you can see the label for the unit we tested here.
There's also a four-slice variant with the same features and design, but it may perform differently.
Compared To Other Toasters
The Hamilton Beach 2-Slice Toaster with Extra-Wide Slots is a simple 2-slot toaster. Most of its settings toast bread pretty lightly, so if your chosen bread takes longer to toast, you'll probably have to push it down again after the first cycle. If you usually toast multi-grain bread or bagels, you might prefer a better toasting range, like the KitchenAid 2-Slice Toaster with manual lift lever or the Oster 2-Slice Toaster with Quick-Check Lever.
If you want to see which toasters we recommend, check out the best 2-slice toasters, the best 4-slice toasters, and the best toasters.
Test Results
The photo above shows the results for slot 1, but you can see a full montage showing all the bread toasted here.
The photo above shows the results for slot 1, but you can see a montage showing all the bread toasted here.
