The 5 best 4-slice toasters of 2024, tested and reviewed

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During the rushed and hungry morning hours, you don't want to waste valuable time waiting for your turn at the toaster. While our guide to the best toasters is great for general use, the best four-slice toasters are ideal for more browning in a limited time, whether you have a large family, several roommates, or just need to prep for BLT night.

I have over six years of experience testing kitchen appliances professionally; to find the best four-slice toasters, I browned over 120 slices of bread, 72 waffles, and 54 bagels in 10 toasters. Our top pick is the Cuisinart CPT-640P1 4-Slice Custom Select Toaster because it did the best in our tests, features intuitive controls, and has useful settings. Our budget option, the Hamilton Beach Classic 4 Slice Toaster, will save you almost $30 and does a solid job toasting, but it isn't as user-friendly. 

And if you're looking for maximum toasting potential, our best long-slot model, the Breville "A Bit More" Long Slot Toaster, earned a spot in two of our toaster guides. 

Learn more about how Business Insider Reviews tests and researches kitchen products.

Top picks for the best four-slice toasters

Best overall: Cuisinart 4-Slice Custom Select Toaster - See at Amazon

Best budget: Hamilton Beach Classic 4 Slice Toaster - See at Amazon

Best long-slot: Breville "A Bit More" Long Slot Toaster - See at Crate and Barrel

Best design: Smeg 4x4 4-Slice Toaster - See at Williams Sonoma

Best wide-slot: Breville Die-Cast 4-Slice Toaster - See at Williams Sonoma

Best overall

We tested two Cuisinart toasters for this guide, and they finished in first and second place in our testing. The Cuisinart 4-Slice Custom Select Toaster (model CPT-640P1) got the overall best four-slice toaster nod because it excelled at toasting bread quickly, evenly browned, and perfectly shaded. A light shading only took a minute, while the darkest shade was ready in three.

The Cuisinart Custom browned bagels and waffles well on the low and medium settings, but it struggled to produce a dark color on high. No problem: just put the bagels and waffles in for a few minutes longer if you want them as dark as a moonless night.

The controls are basic and easy to use, even with rare features like English muffin and pastry settings. It also has separate waffle and defrost settings, though we didn't notice a difference in performance when using these functions together versus separately when toasting waffles. 

While it's the best four-slice toaster we've tested, the Cuisinart isn't perfect. After putting bagels in the wrong direction several times, we discovered that the Cuisinart toasts bagels better when facing outward instead of toward the middle. Additionally, the left toaster lever didn't stay down easily. It usually took multiple tries. Lastly, the crumb tray is only accessible from the back, so you may have to pull it away from the wall to clean it.

The runner-up Cuisinart is the 4-Slice Touchscreen Toaster, which dominated our waffle testing by producing evenly-cook waffles quickly. It lacks all the settings of our top pick and attracts fingerprint smudge, but it performed well and is a few bucks cheaper than our pick. We could take or leave the touchscreen, which was hard to see in a brightly lit kitchen.

Best budget

Of the best 4-slice toasters we tested in the $50 or less range, the Hamilton Beach Classic 4 Slice Toaster was the best, but the budget category wasn't too impressive overall. We recommend going with one of the best toasters with two slots instead for a value pick.

First, the good: the Hamilton Beach Classic was among the best at toasting bread, especially on the lower settings. While it was fast and roughly averaged out to the target shading, the resulting toast was uneven. 

The speed was there again with bagels and waffles, but they came out underdone, suggesting you should go up a shade or two to get your desired color. The waffles were uneven on each test, while the bagels were more uniform.

The Hamilton Beach toaster has buttons for one slice, bagels, and defrost. However, the shade dial was confusing. You can choose on a scale from a black bread slice to a white bread slice. Maybe, it's my neurodivergent side coming through, but it wasn't intuitive to me that the white bread slice was the darkest shade. 

Also, the bagels face outward, but, fortunately, there are little icons to clue you in. Lastly, thicker bagels don't fit in easily. We had to push them down to get them to toast. Ultimately, we think these minor negatives are easy to look past at this price point.

Best long-slot

I only tested one long-slot toaster for this guide, the Oster Long Slot 4-Slice Toaster, and it did so poorly with bagels that I disqualified it from future testing. Fortunately, Business Insider contributor Taylor Tobin wrote a whole guide on the best long-slot toasters, and we selected her top pick for this guide.

The Breville "A Bit More" Long Slot Toaster combines sleek aesthetics with performance. The brushed stainless steel exterior exudes charm. The intuitive controls feature clearly labeled LED-lit buttons. A progress light above the browning switch lets you know precisely where your bready goodness is in the toasting process.

The Breville Long Slot Toaster shined in the bagel and bread toasting tests. In our long-slot tests, we used frozen bread, and the "frozen" setting on the Breville produced even browning. Tobin particularly liked the "A Bit More" button, which allows users to extend the toasting cycle.

Another convenient feature is the High Lift lever, safely elevating toast from the heat source to protect your fingers. "Lift and Look" allows for mid-toast peaks at your bread without interrupting the cycle. Lastly, the crumb tray is easily accessible, discreet, and great at catching seeds and crumbs.

The Breville "A Bit More" is the best four-slice toaster if you're looking for one that can handle both long slices of artisan bread and four slices of reasonably sized delights.

Best design

I'm one of those annoying people who like to post food photos on social media. One morning, I was particularly proud of a bagel breakfast sandwich I made. I inadvertently included the pink Smeg 4x4 4-Slice Toaster in the background, and people went nuts. Forget the sandwich, they wanted to know where to get the toaster. The $280 price tag will be a dealbreaker for most people, but if you want a retro piece available in eight colors to make your kitchen Instagram-worthy, this is the best 4-slice toaster for design lovers.

The Smeg was almost eliminated after our initial round of bread toasting; it performed among the worst, toasting slowly and unevenly. However, it did much better with bagels and waffles, toasting faster and more evenly. Overall, the shadings were a little lighter than the setting would suggest.

We liked the little luxury touches, like the stainless-steel lever that feels nice to press down. You press the back-access crumb tray in, and it pops out. The cord wraps around the base for easy storage.

Yet, it wasn't all roses. Bagels face outwards when toasting, which is fine, except nothing indicates that's the case. We learned through trial and error. The icon for bagels was hard to read: the flat thing with heat waves coming off it looked more like stinky pancakes than bagels.

Best wide-slot

All of the cool features in the best long-slot toaster are available in the Breville Die-Cast 4-Slice Toaster. The main differences are this toaster costs twice as much and has four wide, not long, slots. It has the same "Lift and Look," LED progress tracking, and "A Bit More" elements; plus, you can toast two sets of bread separately. Take a look at the toaster lever in the picture above. You don't see it, do you? That's because the toaster automatically lowers the bread with the press of a button.

If we had a category devoted to the best 4-slice toaster for bagels, the Breville Die-Cast 4-Slice Toaster would win by a landslide. It toasted quickly and evenly, nailing the shading in our tests. The bagels fit in an intuitive fashion. Unfortunately, the performance was less impressive with bread and waffles. The bread was pretty even and the right shade on the lower settings, but it made the kitchen smoke on high. Waffles were undercooked, uneven, and slow, even with the "frozen" setting engaged.

That said, this was the easiest toaster to use and clean. The buttons are intuitive, and the crumb tray is accessible from the front for easy emptying. We strongly recommend this one to families of bagel lovers.

What to look for in a four-slice toaster

Four-slice toasters are ideal for homes or offices where several people might be toasting at once. Our testing found that the cheapest ones don't perform as well as the mid-range models, and the most expensive ones aren't necessarily worth the price. Here are some other factors to consider when shopping for the best four-slice toaster:

Slot sizes: Your favorite toasted products should guide you when choosing the ideal slot sizes for your toaster. For example, go with a long-slot toaster if you like artisanal bread with long slices. Wider slots are ideal if you love those burly New York bagels. Most units can handle your typical sandwich bread or frozen waffle.

Ease of use: Look closely at the toaster's controls on the product page or in-store. Make sure you can easily decipher the settings. For instance, if you love bagels, can you easily tell which buttons to press to achieve your ideal bagel shade? If you can't easily tell, you may get frustrated using it. Toasters must also be effortless to clean. Look for models with easily accessible crumb trays. Lastly, if you don't have counter space for your toaster, choose a model with cord storage and a lightweight design.

Settings: Several shade options are a must, as well as bagel and defrost settings. Other features may be nice, but generally aren't necessary. For instance, the Breville models we tested allow you to add "a bit more" time to the toasting cycle. While highly convenient, this benefit may not be worth the added cost over our top pick.

Performance: A toaster should toast evenly and quickly and achieve the browning level you indicate on the shading dial. You can't gauge this by simply looking at the appliance. Fortunately, our reviews give you the details. See the next section for how we test performance and more.

How we tested four-slice toasters

We chose 10 of the best four-slice toasters on the market to test for our guide. Here are the tests we put them through.

Bread: In each toaster, we toasted four slices of sandwich bread on low, medium, and high. We timed how long the toasters took and evaluated how close the average shade was to what was expected and how evenly they toasted. The Zwilling 4-Slice Toaster performed the worst, so we eliminated it from future testing.

Bagels: Using four bagel halves, we performed the tests again on low, medium, and high with the bagel setting engaged. Similarly, we timed how long it took and assessed the evenness and shading. We eliminated the three models that did the worst.

Frozen waffles: Using frozen Eggo waffles, we put the remaining six toasters through the same tests above with the defrost or waffle setting. Again, we evaluated speed, evenness, and shading. The Cuisinart 4-Slice Touchscreen Toaster did the best and narrowly missed earning a spot in our guide. If we had a runner-up category, it would be a shoo-in.

Ease of use: While performing the tests above, we paid close attention to what made each unit easy or hard to use. For example, toasters lost points if we struggled to get the lever to stay down. We considered toasters "hard to use" if they required bagels to be positioned counterintuitively (facing outward.) Functions needed to be effortless to decipher and use.

Design and storage: We noted when toasters had trouble fitting bagels and other practical design issues. We also ranked the six finalists by how attractive they were. The Smeg won by a landslide. You'll likely want to store your toaster if you have limited counter space. We looked at how heavy and large each toaster was and if they had easy cord storage.

Cleaning: We cleaned the toasters after each testing round and noted what made them hard or easy to clean. We assessed how accessible the crumb trays were. Bonus points were awarded if we could access the crumb tray from the front.

Four-slice toasters FAQs

How do toasters work?

The red glowing coils inside a toaster produce infrared radiation, which dries and chars the surface of the item you're toasting. When you press the lever down, a timer starts based on the shade you select. Once the time is up, the toast pops up. Contrary to popular belief, the shade numbers do not correspond to the minutes the toaster will toast.

How long do toasters last?

While most modern toasters have a warranty of just a year, they should last between 5 and 10 years. To lengthen the life of your toaster, you should clean it regularly. For how to do that, check out our article on how to clean a toaster.

Are expensive four-slice toasters worth it?

It depends on what you're looking for. You'll likely need to splurge on a pricier model if you're after fancy features and designs. A cheaper model will work fine if you just want a good workhorse, though we've found the cheapest toasters just don't pass muster when it comes to toasting evenly and accurately.