I moved into a new house back in January, and so I have found myself buying lots of new stuff lately, which will fit in with the colour schemes and styles of the new house. My kitchen has a stainless steel cooker, hob, oven etc, and so I was looking to buy a toaster to match, and I stumbled on a deal at Argos where if you buy the kettle (see previous review), you get the toaster at half price, so I decided to go for it.

The toaster in question is a Russell Hobbs 13949 which is a 4 slice toaster and is priced at £44:99 usually, but as I purchased it with the Russell Hobbs kettle, the toaster was reduced by £22:50 and so it only really cost me £22:49.

~~~~ The Russell Hobbs 13949 4 Slice Toaster ~~~~

This toaster has been well used in my kitchen for over 2 months now, and as well as looking stylish it also works very effectively. It is constructed from polished stainless steel, with a black plastic base, which sits on 4 little rubber (non slip) feet. Along the top of the stainless steel toaster there are 4 individual slots laid out next to each other for putting the bread into for toasting. There is a little black revolving knob to adjust the browning time (dependent upon what is being toasted) along with 2 black plastic buttons to eject the toast, and 2 black plastic levers which are used to drop the toast into the heating element area in order to start the toasting sequence. One of the black plastic levers lowers all four of the bread holders, and the other one just lowers two of the bread holders, which is very useful if only one or two pieces of bread are being toasted, as it only heats up (and uses electricity in) half of the toaster. Also a small orange LED light lights up on the side of the toaster when the heating elements are turned on, and the toaster is 1800 watt rated.

~~~~ My Opinion ~~~~

After 2 months of regular use, I have to say that I am very impressed with this toaster overall.
The toaster is a large solid unit, which feels well made in all aspects, and I get the impression it will last a very long time.
It is more than capable of toasting large slices of bread, which is something that many toasters struggle with, and it toasts very evenly over the surface of the bread. I find that the 2 slice / 4 slice option is superb, as I often only usually toast 2 slices at a time, and I can do this without using the whole of the toaster, but on the odd occasion when I am toasting bread for both my wife and I, or if we happen to have visitors around, the 4 slice option is there to be used, and can rapidly produce toast for one and all.

The slots for the bread are nice and wide, meaning that it can easily cope with thick bread, as well as crumpets, muffins etc without any problems.
The toaster has a pretty good lift when the toast pops up, and by lifting the levers a little more it brings the toast nicely out of the top of the toaster, making it easy to retrieve.

A very minor quibble with this toaster is that the length of the electrical cord could perhaps be longer, but for my kitchen it is perfectly long enough, but I suspect that some people would prefer it longer for certain situations. There is however a small cord storage area that can be used if the cord is deemed to be longer than required.
The removable crumb tray at the base of the toaster does a good job of collecting up the crumbs that fall through the toaster, and it slides in and out nice and smoothly.

Overall it is a great toaster which provides great flexibility to the user. It looks stylish, and the polished stainless steel is easy to keep clean and rarely gets fingerprints on it due to the good design and layout of the buttons and levers. It is quite big and bulky, and so it is probably not suitable for a very small kitchen (like my old one).
I feel that the full price of £44:99 is possibly a little excessive, but the £22:49 that I paid (when the offer is taken into account) is somewhat of a bargain for such a fabulous toaster.


Thanks for reading.


© L500589 2012