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Cookworks Stainless Steel 4 Slice Long Toaster
by Beccky
When we moved house a few years ago we had to buy appliances on a budget, but still wanted them to look nice enough. We bought a Cookworks stainless steel kettle from Argos, and decided to buy the matching toaster. We paid £15 for it, although since then it has been updated slightly and now costs £20 (but is currently on offer at ... £16.99).
The toaster came in a standard cardboard box, easy to fold down and put in the recycling. The toaster has a black central belt, with stainless steel panels on both sides. It looks smart, model and tidy. Granted, it's not a designer style toaster but I think it looks a little more expensive than it was. The toaster has a 70cm power cord which can be wound underneath eh toaster for safe keeping if you don't need that much length. My toaster is near to a socket anyway, but an extension cable is something you might need to consider if you're kitchen doesn't have sockets where you would like your toaster.
The toaster has a knob and three buttons on the side. The knob allows you to pick the level of browning you would like - from 1-6. The three button are to cancel, defrost or reheat. There is a plastic lever on the same side as the buttons and knob which allows you to push down the bread once you have placed it into the toaster.
As this is a 4 slice toaster it has two wide slots for your bread. This is very handy because it means that you can toast very large slices of bread, or longer items such as sliced baguettes without having to try and fit them into a small slot that a 2 slice toaster may have. I have also used 'toastie bags' successfully in this toaster which was a bonus as I think they are too wide for some toasters.
There is no way to use one side of the toaster, so if you're only doing 2 slices of bread in one slot the other slot will also heat up. It would be helpful, from a power-saving point of view, to be able to operate each slot separately, however I don't expect functions like that from a £15 toaster. I like my toast slightly browned and find that between 2 and 3 is the perfect setting for this.
One problem I have encountered with this toaster is that if you use it in quick succession after it's already been on, it remains hot and therefore cooks your toast much quicker meaning that if it's left on the same setting it can come out much darker than it normally would. So if you intent to make more than 4 slices of toast straight after each other then I would turn the setting down to prevent burning.
There is a stainless steel crumb tray that sits underneath the toaster and this can be slid out to dispose of the crumbs it's collected, and easily slid back in. It saves getting crumbs all over the work top and is a great addition to the appliance! I also find that although the toast pops up when ready, if you are using it to warm up something smaller, like the hot cross bun I put in yesterday, it doesn't always pop up enough for you to remove it. Although Argos state that this toaster has a 'high lift' function, I find pushing the lever up quite fast gives a higher lift and allows whatever is in the toaster to pop out. If it's being stubborn.
The toaster is around 38cm long x 20cm high, and 15cm deep. It's quite chunky but doesn't take up a huge amount of space considering it's a 4 slice toaster. It's easy to keep clean and a quick wipe over keeps it looking nice.
Overall, I would really recommend this toaster. We bought it on a budget expecting it to be a temporary appliance in our kitchen but a few years on it's still working well and looks great.
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Cookworks 4-Slice Toaster
by Ash2508
We bought this 4 slice Cookworks KT223 toaster from Argos. It has some great features for the price we paid, of £16.99. We have also seen it cheaper than that, at £14.99 elsewhere, including in another review I found of this toaster.
This toaster only seems to come in white, which was fine with us as our kettle is white so it ... was a good match, yet this perhaps wouldn't be much good for those who want it in another colour to match other appliances or decor.
It is a four slice toaster, with individual settings for each 2 slice half of the toaster. There are Defrost, Cancel, and Reheat buttons, at the top on both the left half and the right half of this toaster, which light up - in a nice warm orange colour - when one has pushed the lever down which starts the bread toasting.
Perhaps we were unlucky, but the Cancel button on the original toaster we purchased stopped lighting up after about two weeks. As it was still under warranty, we took it back and got a replacement. It did occur to us that if this kept happening within warranty we could keep taking it back, and we would always have a newish toaster!!
HIGH LIFT
There is a high lift feature on both halves, to lift the toast up so it can be got out of the toaster easily once it has finished toasting. This works fairly well.
DEFROST
The Defrost button is for when you want to defrost frozen bread slices. It works well, although it does not leave you with a nice moist slice of bread for making a sandwich but instead a rather dry sided one.
CANCEL
The Cancel button cancels the toasting and pops the lever and the bread back up. This works very efficiently.
REHEAT
The Reheat button is for moments such as those when you forget about the toast and it has popped up and then gone cold, or it has popped up before the rest of what you are cooking is ready for it. So you can use Reheat to heat it up again, without burning it. I think this is an extremely handy feature - and (looking sheepish) I myself use it quite a bit and it works well.
CRUMB TRAYS
There are neat little crumbs trays on the bottom of the back side of the toaster, one for each 2 slice half. This collects the crumbs and ensures the counter is not always covered in toast crumbs. It is easy to empty out and put back in place.
TOASTING SETTINGS
Grades of toasting range from 1 to 7 and are on easy to turn knobs, one towards the bottom of each 2 slice half of the toaster. I find that I have to turn the knob right up to at least 5 to get a decent browning of the toast. Our previous toaster only needed to be turned up to 3 to get this degree of browning.
It toasts both thick and thin slices, although I have had a bit of difficulty fitting taller slices in but they do squish in.
In summary, this is a nice cheap toaster with plenty of good features, however long it lasts. At the price we bought it for it is cheap enough to not worry if it doesn't last, and there is a one year guarantee to cover this which is quite a good long period of guarantee for something that has the wear and tear of a toaster and is so cheap in the first place. Yet in saying this there is both the inconvenience of having to take it back to get a replacement as well as the fact that this increases the amount of usage of the planet's resources.
I hope you found this review helpful! :-)
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Cookworks 4 Slice White Wide Toaster
by ClareM78
A couple of weeks ago my boyfriend and I moved into our first house together. Previous to this we have both always lived in rental accommodation and as a result we didn't have much in the way of kitchen appliances. Our priorities on moving in were a washing machine and a toaster so we headed off to the local retail park to see what ... Curry's, Comet and Argos could offer. We got our washing machine in Comet (but that's another review - coming soon!) but didn't think much of their toaster choices so we headed next door to Argos to flick through their colourful glossy catalogue.
I had already decided we were definitely getting a 4 slice toaster - my boyfriend wasn't so sure we needed that over a 2 slice but I used my powers of persuasion to convince him that it was a much better idea to be able to eat our breakfast at the same time. I had also decided, in my thrifty way, that we weren't going to get an £80 toaster, after all we only want it to toast bread and similar items so no need to go crazy on it. I spotted the Cookworks 4 slice toaster and after a bit more gentle persuasion this is the one we walked away with.
About the toaster
Obviously the toaster holds 4 pieces of bread (or other similar item such as crumpets) and as such has 2 levers on the front with 2 corresponding heat dials, so on those occasions when you only want 1 or 2 slices you only have to use half the machine, not heat up all the elements. On the top there are also 3 buttons for each toasting slot - cancel, reheat and defrost. It is a plain, white plastic toaster - it doesn't look flash or expensive but it doesn't look nasty and cheap either.
Using the toaster for toasting is unsurprisingly straightforward - put a slice of bread into the toasting slot, press down the control lever and the bread pops up when it is toasted and the toaster switches off. When you first buy this product you will probably need to do some experimenting with the heating dial to set it to produce the level of toastiness you prefer.
The cancel button I believe is a fairly standard button on most toasters, just press it to stop the toast toasting and make it pop up. However I am fairly bemused by the 'defrost' and 'reheat' buttons.
Personally, in the past, I have always just stuck frozen bread in the toaster, whacked the heating control up a couple of notches over what I usually have it on and voila toast! I have never experienced a 'defrost' button on a toaster before so naturally I was intrigued to try it out - again it is very straightforward, put the frozen bread in the toasting slot, press down the control lever and then press the defrost button which will make the LED button illuminate. The difference with using the defrost button over the normal function is that it defrosts the bread first and then toasts it, which extends the toasting cycle. I must say that after using this function my toast was indeed defrosted and toasted although to be honest it didn't taste any different from when I used to just stick frozen bread in on the normal cycle. As for the reheat button I must admit I have not used this and to be honest I doubt I ever will - why would anyone want to reheat toast?
Another function of this toaster which I have yet to mention is actually, in my opinion, a lot more useful than a reheat button and that is the high lift function. Basically all this means is that the lever can be pushed up a little bit which in turn pushes the toasting racks up to make it easier to remove those trickier items like crumpets without the need to stick a knife in the toaster
The results
So far I have been very impressed with the toaster. It toasts well and evenly and doesn't take an age to get the desired results. I am unlikely to take full advantage of the defrost and reheat functions but it is reassuring to know they are available. At £16.99 I think this is a very well priced toaster and I would highly recommend it.
Top Tip
If, like us, you don't generally bother reading instruction manuals especially for something as obvious as a toaster then let me share with you a valuable piece of information which is in the manual - when you first use the toaster set the heating controls to 1 and push down the control levers letting the toaster operate empty - do this twice before you put any bread in or you will end up with some pretty foul melting-plastic-smelling toast like we did 
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