Light the way to a brighter day! (Breville PT15 Lightning)

Member Name: STARCHILD1

Product:	Breville PT15 Lightning
Date:	14/02/07 (246 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: light system, browning control, cancel button, rewarming, easy to use,simple design

Disadvantages: none really

I purchased the Breville Lightning Toaster from Curry's around 3 years ago. The main reason for buying this toaster was simply that we needed one as we had just moved homes. But for this reason alone I could have bought any old toaster but this one really did catch my eye. It looked very appealing and different from other toasters, well at the time it did, now you have a whole range of these kinds of toasters in the market. It had a light system, thus the name 'lightning', whereby you could interpret how much time was remaining for the toast to be ready by how many lights were lit up.

FEATURES

*A Warming Rack*
This is useful for warming all kinds of foods such as pastries, buns, bagels, croissants, pizza slices etc. By adjusting the brownness controller you can acquire the perfect heat for warming foods. The rack is elevated by pushing down on the lever on the left side of the toaster. Once the food is warmed the toaster turns off by itself.

*Brownness controller*
This is in the form of buttons that have lighter and darker marked on them, you can adjust to your preference. It has a digital display rather than the normal dial. When the setting is on 1 you would obtain slightly warmed bread and on 9, that is the highest setting, you would have very browned toast. It is great because in a family everyone usually has different tastes and with this toaster every body's requirements can be met.

*Cool Walls*
This is for safety rather than anything else. It is good because the toaster does tend to go to a very high temperature, especially if it used to make lots of toast so if you do happen to accidentally touch the toaster, which does happen then you will not scald or burn your hands. This is also useful if you have young children.

*Defrosting*
This is for defrosting the bread so that it is at room temperature, I personally have not found the need to use this function but it is good to have it included as one of the functions.

*Cancel/Stop Button*
Obviously this is for cancelling and stopping the chosen program, so if you have chosen a wrong browning setting or if you think your toast are about to burn then one press of this button will stop the program.

*Re-warming*
If you are like me then you will need this function because by the time I get round to removing my toast from the toaster they have already gone cold. By pressing this button you can reheat the toast, if you would try to heat the toast from scratch then more often than not you would end up with burnt toast!

*Two slots* (non-adjustable)
This toaster has only two slots so you can only toast two slices of bread at a time. But in this range the makers have also made a larger, four slot version, ideal for the larger family.

*Removable crumb tray*
This is fantastic for cleaning it makes it much quicker and easier to do. Every time you toast, the crumbs are collected in the tray so you just have to remove the tray, dispose of the crumbs, give it a quick wipe and re-insert it into the toaster.


APPEARANCE

The toaster is only available in one colour, white. On the right side of the toaster all of the operating functions are displayed. It has two levers, one on each side of the toaster. The lever on the left is to elevate the warming rack and the lever on the right is for toasting, re-warming and defrosting. It has a long electric cord that can be hidden underneath the toaster by twisting it around a coil so you will not have it getting in the way all of the time. The removable tray is underneath the toaster.

ADDITIONAL INFO

The toaster has a 13 amp fitted plug. We have found that to achieve the best toast the toaster should be on setting 5.

Over time I have noticed however that sometimes the toaster goes off by itself, I think this is something to do with the fact that it is digital toaster. The toaster looks very nice in the kitchen and ii is not at all a bulky or space consuming design.

OVERALL

This toaster has worked properly for all of the 3 years I have owned it, it is low maintenance. It was purchased for £24.99 and seeing as it has lasted long that makes it pretty good value for money in my book. I also think that if it did stop working for any reason, touch wood, I would be sure to go out and buy another one exactly like it.

Summary: A toaster that looks great and does what it is supposed to perfectly.

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