This toaster was so poor, I brought it to work and bought another one.
Pros:
Versatile, compact.
Cons:
Terrible design. No timing and poor clearance in oven part, uneven toasting in upper part.
The Bottom Line:
I wouldn't buy this toaster for me or someone else, even if I didn't like them.
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Overall Rating:
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Author's Review
Barring some odd malfunction, every toaster ultimately toasts bread the same way. The quality of the end product is not a function of the device but really just calibration by the user. The rest is really just marketing and ergonomics.
My hopes were high when I saw a toaster that combined both ideas - upright and toaster oven. Wow!
Sadly, although the Hamilton Beach Toastation can toast bread, I was very disappointed over its functionality.
As an upright toaster, toasting was fair. The tops of the bread (or bagel) were less toasted than the bottoms because of the lack of enough depth in the toaster. Keep in mind, I'm not toasting 1 metre long French bread here, just Wonderbread.
As a toaster oven, this product was downright aweful. There is no timing feature on the bottom half, so if I wanted toast with cheese melted on top (my favourite), I had to babysit the oven while on. This led to a lot of burnt toast. Stroke anyone?
Finally, the clearance in the toaster oven is VERY low due to the upper unit. Sometimes I forgot that the operation on the bottom oven part means that you don't push the side lever down. This resulted in the lowering mechanism squishing my food. Fine, my fault. The lowering mechanism, even when not pushed down, gets in the way. The clearance in the oven is very tight, and if you want to bake a sandwich, you can pretty much forget it unless it's open-faced.
I could have and should have returned this toaster to the store, but I got lazy and lost the receipt. Instead, I brought it to work for the lunch room since there's no toaster there. To prevent anything personal happening, it was an anonymous gift.
Hamilton Beach: Fantastic idea, extremely shoddy design.
