The Argos Value Range is something my husband and I say with irony, as I find it rarely to be of any value - this toaster included!

-- Price & Availability --

The toaster is available from Argos stores and online (£4.99 delivery charge applies) for the £9 - £9.50 mark (it tends to vary).

-- Looks --

It's a very basic looking, four slice toaster, styled in white plastic with a short (too short, in my opinion) cord and fused plug.

It is a 'cool wall' toaster, so if you leave a plastic packet of bread next to it, it won't melt onto the toaster, or burn your hands. It's very basic looking, but looks clean and functional.

-- Use --

It's very easy to use, though it does come with a short user guide. Simply use the dial to the right of the toaster to select your preferred toast browning stage and insert your bread, pulling the lever down on the side.

I find that the cord is indeed too short for my kitchen, you literally have to have the toaster right next to the plug which is irritating. On the first few uses the toaster smells strongly of burning plastic but this does go, and it doesn't seem to affect the taste of the toast.

The problem for me is that with a regular sliced loaf, the top of each slice is rounded. But this toaster will only toast the 'square' of the bread, leaving a bit of uncooked bread at the top. So I had to half cook my bread, then pop it up, turn it over and pop it back down again just to get an evenly (or as even as it was ever going to get) browned piece of toast. A huge hassle!

-- Recommend? --

Overall I cannot recommend this toaster. I purchased it when I first moved into my current home as a bit of a 'get me by' appliance (ie, I didn't really expect it to last, and intended to replace it with a better toaster when it went). To be fair to it, it never did go, but this may be more to do with me getting utterly fed up of it and replacing it after a few weeks with a much better Kenwood toaster, than it being of any particular decent quality.

For £10 I wouldn't say this was ultra cheap, you can get toasters (albeit two slice) for around £4 these days, if this toaster had been cheaper maybe I would have been fairer on it. But as it stands, you can get far far better toasters for only £15 or so, so the saving here just isn't worth it at all.

If you are going to uni and need a cheap toaster, buy a cheap two slice because you'd never get to your lectures in time with this toaster making your breakfast! Or, if you prefer, just eat bread and butter, cut out the middle man (or useless toaster, in this case).

A waste of nearly a tenner, and once again, Argos Value excels itself in hypocrisy ;) take my advice, if you're a toast fan, avoid this niggly, irritating, flipping waste of space toaster!