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A toaster in 1951 was $21, which is about $250 today. I would argue that a $250 toaster today is still not a "buy it for life" item, but it would certainly hav
by fullstop 3y ago
A toaster in 1951 was $21, which is about $250 today.
I would argue that a $250 toaster today is still not a "buy it for life" item, but it would certainly have a lot of bells and whistles and almost no user-serviceable parts.
- asylteltine 3y agoI’ve had the same toaster for at least 5 years and it’s fine. It’s… a toaster
- Gigachad 3y agoIt's kinda just random luck I'd think. My toaster is about 15 years old now, just a generic Breville one. Still works fine. I imagine anything that would break in a toaster is absolutely trivial to fix, but you are working with mains electricity so in most places you probably need a license to service it. Which just costs more than a brand new toaster.
- willis936 3y agoToasters are an interesting case study. I went on a tear last year after being fed up with every toaster doing the same bad job. I thought maybe someone made a proper toaster. What I found is that when you pay more the coat of paint gets nicer and maybe there's an MCU+LCD, but the guts and logic are identical. There is no good commercially available toaster today. It's sending a very loud message about how markets operate, and it's not pleasant.
- ericbarrett 3y agoThey are probably all made with the same guts from one or two manufacturers. Same with microwaves, nearly every model from $100 to $5000 is made by Midea. (Source: Wirecutter)
- defen 3y agoWhat can a $5,000 microwave do?
- ericbarrett 3y agoSame thing a $100 microwave does, just really stylishly: https://www.subzero-wolf.com/wolf/microwave-ovens/30-inch-m-series-drop-down-door-professional https://www.subzero-wolf.com/wolf/microwave-ovens/30-inch-m-... (Ok, fair, that's only $2,500)
- fullstop 3y agoI've had good luck with toaster ovens, but even those only last 10 years before they die. The heating elements should be replaceable!
- Panzer04 3y agoWhat are you expecting? Toasters are not complicated devices. Are lots of people having toasters randomly fail?
- kriro9jdjfif 3y agoI use a cast iron pan to toast bread :-/
- marginalia_nu 3y agoBig part of the problem is the disappearance of brick and mortar stores, along with the constant bait and switch from e-rerailers making product reviews impossible. That rave review was for an identical toaster with different guts, or with amazon reviews, something else entirely.
- klausa 3y agoEither I'm having insanely good luck or I have extremely low expectations of a toaster, but I genuinely don't understand how a toaster does "bad job". What were the issues you were having?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- Nux 3y agoAgreed 100%. We've been using a cheapo £10 tesco or argos one for the past few years. It toasts.. I used Dualit in various places, it does as good or bad a job, can't tell the difference. I love the Dualit idea, but in the end can't justify the price, not for this particular kitchen item.
- blackoil 3y agoI have a ~20 years old Philips toaster cost around (1500 INR)20-30 dollars than. We don't use it every day, but I don't see what can go bad.
- CaptainZapp 3y agoSeconded. My Philips toaster is more than 30 years old and in the super cheap bracket. Every few years I have to shake out the bread remains and that's about all maintenance it gets. Works like a charm and the outcome is very predictable. Granted, I only use it for sliced toast bread. But I'm happy with the results.
- willis936 3y agoMy biggest issue is with the lever. I have to push it down between 5 and 10 times before it will trigger, without fail. I've had this across most all toasters I've owned. My second biggest issue is related to the same mechanism: the "pop" is impotent and does nothing to eject what's being toasted. The most I can hope for is that I can manually push the lever up. The next biggest issue is with heating element distance. If there's anything that is wider than a slice of wonder bread it's going to get sizzled by the heating element. In the worst cases it causes smoke to be emitted for several runs afterwards.
- analog31 3y agoThe MCU is the problem. They toast by time. This just can't work well. My parents' Sunbeam had a temperature sensor.
- xethos 3y agoMy Sunbeam has a temp sensor. This toaster is at least twice my age, and it will likely outlive me. It's such a rare feature that I'm sure your parents and I have the same model (though likely a different year or style, as it varied by decade)
- paleface 3y agoModern retail toasters, don’t seem to be able to fit a proper standard English sized, slice of bread - the size of which, I’m not convinced has increased over time - but rather, the toasters have been designed primarily with US sized slices (which I’m under the possibly erroneous impression, are smaller?!), as the target market. Quite annoying…
- WrongAssumption 3y agoDualit is a quality hand built toaster made in the UK since the 1950s.
- paleface 3y agoYeah, I know - I actually mentioned it in another comment here. Even with Dualit, I would still only purchase from a professional catering retailer. Just in case, there’s any differences, and the fact that purchasing from a professional catering retailer, implies a greater level of longevity, if it ever did breakdown - for potential small claims court, reasons, in the future. Regardless, Dualit also pretty much make every part of their toasters replaceable, for this exact reason. Hence why I think it’s one of the only decent toasters, out there!
- OJFord 3y agoI think Dualit still make pretty straightforward mechanical ones. Or if not, you can buy an old one that's already been someone else's toaster for life and can now be yours.
- chubot 3y agoI mentioned my Zojirushi toaster oven in another comment .. I use it as a toaster, and for a dozen other things. But it looks like they don't make the bread slice kind of toaster.
- Baeocystin 3y agoHighly relevant Technology Connections video on toasters: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1OfxlSG6q5Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1OfxlSG6q5Y
- shiroiuma 3y agoIf you want a great toaster, just get this one: https://www.amazon.co.jp/-/en/gp/product/B07PHLN9DD https://www.amazon.co.jp/-/en/gp/product/B07PHLN9DD
- denton-scratch 3y agoDualit 2-slice toaster: £160. It's held together with ordinary screws, contains no transistors, the timer is mechanical, and all spare parts can be ordered. It costs nowhere near $2,000.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- vinnymac 3y agoWe don’t even call them toasters anymore in my household. Our Cosori air fryer has a toast setting that works beautifully. It cost less than $250. It warms, bakes, roasts, dehydrates, as well as 10 other settings. It has 3 different racks, so I can toast 3-4x as much bread than I could in a regular toaster. I’ve only had it for 6 years, but it has held up nicely, no issues whatsoever. I guess what I am trying to say, is that the product is the bells and whistles these days.
- ctoth 3y ago> Our Cosori air fryer has a toast setting that works beautifully. If you're not aware, they had a recall on a bunch of models recently, you should check to see if yours was one of them!
- vinnymac 3y agoAppreciate the heads up! I looked it up here: https://recall.cosori.com/ https://recall.cosori.com/ Fortunately my model is not on the list of recalled products. The one I use is an older version of the `Cosori - Original Air Fryer - Silver`.
- kube-system 3y ago> I would argue that a $250 toaster today is still not a "buy it for life" item, but it would certainly have a lot of bells and whistles and almost no user-serviceable parts. Not if you buy one that is $250 because it has bells and whistles. You can buy a $250 dollar toaster that is just a toaster and it will be of good quality. https://www.webstaurantstore.com/waring-wct708-4-slice-commercial-toaster-120v/929WCT708.html https://www.webstaurantstore.com/waring-wct708-4-slice-comme...
- Pxtl 3y agoThis is a good point: The problem isnt that long lasting, durable products no longer exist. It's that they're no longer marketed for home use. You can get stuff just as good as back in the '60s, for comparable after-inflation prices. But they don't sell them at Sears or HomeSense, they sell them at industrial or kitchen or office supply stores.
- kube-system 3y agoThe thing is, if someone decided to stock that toaster on the shelf at Target, it wouldn't sell. Most people make so little toast that the words "duty cycle" or "slices per hour" are not even in their vocabulary. People are simply making purchasing decisions with a higher weight on other criteria. Maybe, for the environment's sake, people should be buying and using appliances for 70 years. But do people actually want a kitchen full of appliances that are 35 years old on average? Probably not, thrift shops are still full of contemporarily made appliances that were discarded before their useful life ended.
- pixl97 3y agoI think that is some of what people miss. Way back when a cheap toaster at Sears was still expensive. Now you have hyper cheap toasters for like $15 bucks now, which would have been a dollar or so back then, you just couldn't get a toaster that price back then. So the cheapest item has drug the average quality down to it.
- reeddavid 3y agoThe reviews suggest this $250 toaster isn't any better: "was hoping it lasted longer & would be better quality but was disappointed" "All the coils do no not glow and It toasts unevenly" "one side stops working after 6 months or so. I’ve gone through three of these" "Bought two of these toasters both stopped working" "Have to replace this toaster about once a year, one side will always stop working" "Lasted me about a month or so and it no longer works". "Died so quickly!" I think this is a perfect example of the problem. There is a market for $250 toasters, but even for that price you can't buy a reliable toaster.
- kragen 3y agomy toaster is an enameled steel tray with a steel wire grille on top of it. you put it on a gas stove burner to heat up the enameled steel enough to radiantly toast the bread resting on the grille. it's tray-shaped to catch the crumbs so they don't end up on your stove; the grille flips up so you can clean the crumbs out before they burn. a handle, made out of the same steel wire as the grille, allows you to remove it from the burner without burning your hand, and folds in for compact storage when you're not using it these cost about US$4 locally: https://articulo.mercadolibre.com.ar/MLA-934643608-tostador-hornalla-enlozado-plegable-tostados-sandwichera-_JM https://articulo.mercadolibre.com.ar/MLA-934643608-tostador-... (the price listed on that page is $3499 but currently the black-market dollar is at $950 bid, $1000 ask, so that's a bit under US$4) but i got mine out of the neighbor's garbage during our eight-month-long covid lockdown, gambling that it wasn't covered with cyanide or something the electric kind you're probably talking about goes for about US$20–US$40 around here but i wanted to point out that there does exist a more reliable alternative