In my quest to match my kitchen utensils to my new stylish kitchen one of the key items to buy was a toaster and the model I ended up buying was DeLonghi CTO4003.OB. This retails at around £60, I had a few vouchers etc so ended up paying £39.99 in cash, using £20 of vouchers. Therefore this a very expensive toaster from a brand known not only for quality but ofr producing more "high end" market goods. Now, the past 4 toasters I have owned never even came to that much between them so paying out £40 cash for a toaster was something I did after much thought, but I wanted my new kitchen to look nice and this is just a gorgeous piece of equipment.

It is part retro, part modern and just caught my eye when browsing as it stood right out as something I had not really seen before. Ideally I wanted a four slice toaster, as we eat a lot of toast and theres nothing worse than waiting time and time again for a two slice toaster, so it more than matched that criteria.

Again it came down to the looks. Is it worth the money? Of course! As with all toasters this is very light and the insides feel very loose inside. This would not survive much of a drop as the plastic feels thing and I must admit although worth it for the look you cannot really feel where your money has gone on this. Then again, it has survived a few months now without a hitch so at least it does what it is advertised to do. Be warned though, if you felt it without knowing the price you would assume it was cheap.

How does it perform? Very well indeed! It toasts very fast and the range of temperature settings are easy to control and there is actually a difference. I have found in cheaper toasters you tend to get the same toast on most of the "settings" but here you can feel the control at your fingertips and it works oh so well. The usual settings are there such as defrost and do not be put off by all knobs on the front. It is a doddle to use.

A great little feature here is you can have each toasting slot on a different setting, this is ideal for some households like mine where we all like our toast different. It means one slot can be cooking until golden, another till almost burnt and another till its barely toast at all! This works a treat and means less hassle all round. Anything to make life easier in the kitchen...

So despite the issue over the pricing here and the fact it feels flimsy, it looks great, works great and feels stylish.

Also on CIAO