Around 6 months ago my trusty M & S toaster went bang, well more fizzle after approximately 5 years of use. I didn't want to spend a small fortune on a new one, so shopped around for the cheapest decent looking one I could find.

Tesco had little to offer at the time, their Vale products were quite expensive but have now come down quite a lot in price.
A quick trip to Asda later and I spotted the Asda Smart Price Toaster. The one I purchased is black, not white as pictured above. Even better, as my kitchen is predominantly black, so it matches!

It is exactly the same toaster apart from the colour TA8120B, the addition of the B in the catalogue number I assume represents black!
I paid £9.97 for the toaster although on the website they are currently for sale for £9.96.

The toaster is well packaged and is sold in a cardboard box depicting the toaster, with a few simple instructions for use on the side. Surprisingly, the box doesn't look cheap and nasty, had I been bought this as a gift, I would have expected it to cost more!

It is a no frills toaster, quite a simple design but it does everything I expect a toaster to do.
It has two slots, these are automatically variable depending on the thickness of the bread being used. Once the bread is placed in the toaster, a lever at the front is depressed in order to lower the bread.

The browning of the toast is controlled by a dial underneath the lever on the front. It has 7 settings, the user must adjust according to preference. I don't like mine too dark so it remains in between numbers four and five.

There are three small buttons to the left of the dial. The upper button is the defrost setting, meaning that bread can be toasted from frozen.
The button below this is to re-heat. Quite handy, as I'm always forgetting about my toast when the children are around and tend to get round to eating it half an hour after it was originally toasted!
The lowest button is to cancel whatever the toaster is doing. Press it and the bread/toast pops up.
Each button has a small light next to it, this illuminates red when the buttons are depressed indicating that the facility is in use.

The toaster is quite easy to clean although being black it tends to show smudges and finger marks more than a white one would do. It has a removable crumb tray which I seem to be forever emptying, if I don't do this every couple of days the crumbs tend to spill onto the counter. It could therefore probably be improved by making the tray a little deeper.

So how does it toast? I have to admit, it certainly isn't as good as my last toaster. I had thought that one toaster would toast the same as any other, producing the same result! Unfortunately it doesn't. I have tried toasting on various settings but the finished product always seems to come out quite hard and brittle.
This obviously isn't the case with the lowest settings but then the bread is barely toasted.

I also find that when toasting only one piece of toast I have to be careful. As the individual piece of bread is not protected from the heat by another piece of bread it toasts more quickly on the offending side. When toasting only one piece of bread, I cancel mid cycle and turn the bread over so that it toasts more evenly.
This problem would however occur with any toaster that does not have individual pull down levers for each slice of bread.

I would say this toaster produces toast that is best eaten with something on it, eg beans, spaghetti etc. Something with a sauce as opposed to eggs, bacon etc.
It's ok for the price but when this breaks I will definitely spend a bit more. I think that you get what you pay for - as I paid less than £10, I am quite happy!