Breville The Bit More Plus BTA440 (4 Slice)

Loved this toaster! Only changed over to a two slice that would fit in our pantry once we renovated the kitchen but brilliant appliance and never had an issues. Show details

Not worth the money – I have never before disliked a toaster, but I dislike this one! It toasts very unevenly with one side of the bread hardly getting toasted at all and the other side of the bread being burnt at the edges and the centre just barely toasted. There is no 'stop' button and toasting 'a bit more' is difficult to judge without burning. We only toasted wholegrain bread and once, crumpets. Show details

Useful as a Nuclear Reactor – When I was a kid we had an enormous chrome toaster. It produced perfect toast, even in rapid succession, and lasted decades. Technology moves on and now we have electronics and all the bells and whistles. Take this Breville toaster for example. If you do two loads of toast in quick succession, the second load will be burnt to a crisp. If you set… Read more

the knob anything above two, the toast will be burnt to a crisp. The higher settings might be useful to kick-start a nuclear reactor, who knows? Oh, and the crumb tray is especially useless.

The burnt toast pro! – If you love a consistent dose of carcinogenic char on your toast then this is a perfect choice! I thought it was the type of bread we were using that was giving us blackened, smoking edges with no brown in the centre of the slice – but I tried the same bread on a mate's toaster and it came out perfectly. Definitely avoid this one. Show details

Disappointing – Update:: This review is actually for the Breville Toast Control LTA670 Model. Just reliased I put the wrong model in the title and am unable to change that now. ***** My current toaster is the BTA440, I‘ve been happy with it so far... but still early days (only 4 months old) toasts evenly, although it seems to dry bread out a bit. We only ever… Read more

toast on setting 1 or 2. Setting 3 and above just burns toast so not sure why a scale to 6? *****

Bought the Breville Toast Control LTA670 in August 2019, stopped working in Nov 2020 after only 15 months! The spring mechanism broke, so the lever wouldn't stay down. Would expect an 80$ toaster to last a bit longer, was willing to spend that extra bit more for a good brand. As it was just outside of the 1 year warranty I made a complaint to Breville and they offered me a 40% discount if I purchased another Breville toaster from their website. This gesture of goodwill restored some of the faith in the product name.

Cooks evenly – Like this toaster as in the past l have found it very difficult to find a toaster that cooks both side evenly. Like to large opening for thick bread. We don’t use any of the features. Show details

Seemed ok while it worked, but lifespan not good – Seemed ok while we had it, but stopped working (wont stay down) after about 18 months. Would expect more life span on a toaster so we don't have to contribute to land fill so often! Show details

Had high expectations- let down – Had high expectations due to function of a little bit more - unfortunately it constantly burnt edges of toast regularly- I’ve never know our smoke alarm to go off more in 15 years - can not cook crumpets- & now has stopped working after 9mths - (won’t stay down) - our last toaster Avanti lasted nearly 14 years Show details

Slide out crumb tray only catches 50% of crumbs – Had the toaster for 9 months. I am happy with its performance in toasting however the slide out crumb tray is next to useless. If you lift the toaster after toasting there are crumbs underneath. Show details

Okay, not great – This review is for the BTA440BSS "Bit More" four-slice toaster in brushed stainless steel. I can't say I'm particularly impressed with this toaster. You'd think in this day and age it would be easy to design a device that toasts bread evenly and consistently, but apparently not. It is hard to find a setting on the dial that doesn't result in… Read more

either barely-toasted or burnt-to-a-crisp bread, and even when I do find that elusive setting, I often find parts of the bread are burnt around the edges. We previously owned a very cheap, plastic Kenwood toaster with no fancy features whatsoever, but it actually produced better toast than this Breville one.

The best thing I will say about this toaster is that it looks nice and the features are handy and well-implemented. The "Bit More" button gives you an extra 30 seconds of toasting time. The idea is that if your bread pops up and isn't quite brown enough, you toast it again, but press the "Bit More" button any time within the first 30 seconds and the toasting will end after that first 30 second period.

Apart from the poor toasting performance, the thing that bugs me the most about this toaster is the crumb tray. There are always crumbs under the toaster, so the crumb tray isn't doing its job well. I suspect it's either too narrow or too flat, allowing crumbs to fall out the sides. And there isn't a clear passage from the bread section to the crumb tray. When you look down into the slots, you'll see two flat "ledges" under the length of the heating elements where crumbs are guaranteed to get trapped. Why is this ledge there? And why isn't it at least angled so that crumbs can roll off it? It's such a bad design.

The pop-up mechanism is very noisy too. When the toasting cycle is finished, the bread springs up with a loud and uncontrolled CLACK. The crudeness and lack of quality here is disappointing. Is it asking too much for a quieter, smoother action in a toaster with a recommended retail price of $89.95?

Finally, our unit developed an electrical fault after 10 months and repeatedly tripped our circuit breaker. Fortunately it has a 12 month replacement warranty, so I was able to take it back to Big W who gave me a new one. But it does make me wonder if it will happen again, maybe outside the warranty period next time.

thought it would be easy to make a good toaster – Had the toaster for 13 months then one morning just wouldn't work, it did a good job for the 13 months while it did work. Then went and brought a Kambrook KTA140 4 slice toaster it cooks one side of the toast great and the other side not a sign of brown, didn't think it would be so hard to toast bread in our modern world. Shame can't try toasting before buying! Show details

Good Toaster, but could do with a better crumb tray – I have had this Breville toaster for about five and a half months now. The best feature on this has to be the "little bit more"function. This is a life (bread) saver. One thing I have noticed is if you put in the first lot of toast at set at say level 3, the toast comes out light brown. If I then put in four more straight after on the same setting… Read more

the bread will almost burn. Need to turn it down if you have a large family. It seems fairly well made except the pop-up is fast and loud I have a conniption every morning. The crumb tray is far to small and you always have crumbs under the toaster. Other than that, I quite like it.

Good features, but toasts unevenly – Love the `bit more' feature, really useful. Why didn't anyone think of that before? I'm always using it. Frozen bread feature seems to work ok. Lift feature is pretty good. Slots are a good width and depth, I'd say just right. Cooks reasonably quickly. But as I've read in other reviews, why can't it cook evenly? You would think that is a pretty… Read more

standard requirement for a toaster and not so hard in the era of nanotechnology, landing rockets on Mars etc. Specifically, when I get most of the toast as I like it, one of the corners is always charred. So, I'd love to give this toaster a 5 star review because I really do like the features I mentioned, but recently I was at holiday accommodation where there was an el cheapo, no name toaster that happened to turn out absolutely perfect toast, and I did have to wonder again why my fairly expensive one just can't do that. Mr Breville, any thoughts on what went wrong there?

very pleased – We bought the Breville 4 slice toaster (the Bit More Plus model) just recently and have found it to be most effective. So far, we have toasted Hot Cross Buns, Frozen Fruit bread and sour dough bread - all of which proved to be perfectly browned. The settings are easy to manage and the wide slots are the main reason why we bought the unit. An excellent product!  Show details

12 months.... broken – Don't bother with this one. The snazzy buttons and cool features aren't even worth it. Sometimes you just want evenly toasted bread but this toaster always burnt certain sections of the toast. Eventually one whole side stopped heating completely so we ended up just toasting 2 slices of bread at a time. Avoid at all costs.  Show details

Disappointed – Less than 1 year and it is already broken. Yes, it’s 12 month replacement warranty but I can’t be bothered to take it back to Myer. I was a fan of Breville. Most of my kitchen appliances are Breville but lately I noticed that the quality has gone down. So I won’t get Breville anymore. Just get a cheap one.  Show details

Disappointed – Had a previous Breville 4 slice toaster, so when it gave up, I bought the Bit More Plus 4 slice toaster. We mainly toast frozen bread, so thought the 'Frozen' feature would be great. It burns the edges, doesn't cook the middle and the bottom is so undercooked it is actually soggy! Plan to return it this week. Won't be buying another Breville toaster.  Show details

Very Unimpressed – Had a similar Breville 4 slice for about 10 years. Cooked fairly evenly. So when it died a couple of weeks ago, thought might as well replace with a similar one by Breville. What a total piece of crap. Paid about $64 for it. The edges of the toast burn and middle is pale. Have moved it to all different positions in the toaster and it makes no… Read more

difference. Some parts will burn and other bits are barely golden! So now I'm stuck with this unacceptable toaster until it dies because I really can't afford to blow that $64 by throwing it in the bin....which is what I really want to do. I definitely would not recommend the 4 slice toaster! Don't know if the 2 slice cooks any better! This one doesn't seem to have the problem with the "bit more" button that others have talked about. That appears to be fine so far (only had it for 2 weeks) but it just doesn't cook the toast evenly enough. Worst toaster I've ever used for that. Had a $7.50 Kmart one for camping a few years back and that cooked the toast better than this one!!!

Should be recalled – Absolutely terrible, it never cooks the bread the same, it either under cooks or burns, the bit more button just puts it on for another entire cooking cycle and it nearly caught on fire. Might as well use the grill as you have to constantly keep checking whether it's cooked or burnt.  Show details

A bit More Plus a whole lot Less – I had the previous model BTA430 4 Slice "Bit More". I was happy with it, and liked to use the "bit more" feature until the toaster broke down after only 2 years. So I bought a replacement, now the BTA440 4 slice "Bit More Plus", but the "bit more" button does absolutely nothing. The button lights up, but it just toasts for a whole cycle again. … Read more

As suggested by Breville support I returned it to the retailer and got a new one. This replacement behaves exactly the same way.

Now, I'm in a bind. They have told me to take it back to the retailer again, but surely a third model will be the same?

How can the special feature of a toaster be missing?

I'm curious to know if anyone else has experienced this.