Best Maxim Toasters

Very poor design - doesn't cook well and is noisy – I hate this toaster. Even though it is a single slice toaster, it is just as long/deep as a toaster that is two slices side-by-side. It is difficult… Read more

to see on the pictures, which is why the size took me by surprise. I believe the problem is that, unlike regular toasters where the heating elements are thin and run across the entire height of the toaster, this has a single bar on each side at the bottom, so the space is to accommodate those bars.

Which brings me to how the toaster cooks very unevenly due to the placement of the heating bars only at the bottom. So, obviously, the bottom cooks faster than the top, so you spend a lot of time rotating bread every which way in a hopeless attempt to get it evenly brown.

There is no lever to lift the bread rack. So, if you have bread shorter than a full slice, good luck getting it out without risking electrocution.

The bars at the bottom of the bread rack are really wide, so if you have a bread that is even remotely crumbly, then you are likely to lose large chunks down between those bars. Then, when you try to clean out the chunks, you find that the crumb tray slot is narrower than the size of the bread chunks permissible by the bread rack.

Regarding the functions/buttons. Why do you need a power switch on a toaster? And, even more annoyingly, one which lights up when on, so you either keep that light powered continuously or you have to turn it on and off with every use, which gets old quickly.

Then, there's the NOISE of the buttons. I've never had a toaster than makes any noise other than purely mechanical. Every button makes a beep and it ain't a quiet beep. Then, when the unevenly cooked toast has "finished" it beeps loudly at you three times. Combine that with the unending rotation and re-cooking to get an even brown, that's a LOT of beeping for a slice of toast.

I'm throwing it out and getting a new one.