I have to own up although I'd looked at this before, I only actually went and bought it last week after reading someone else's review on dooyoo.

Our grill recently went a bit wonky and the fan on it now makes a horrid racket when it's in use. Apparently it's no longer fixable and is useable just very noisy while being used, so we'll need to replace the grill and oven, but as I can't really afford to do that at the moment I've been using the whole combo as little as possible and doing more cooking in the slow cooker and on the hob etc.

One thing I have been missing is my toast - ok I know I could still make the toast on the grill, but the noise first thing in the morning when I'm only partly awake is not a good one.

Anyhow, I had a look in Tesco when I first found that the grill was playing up and noticed their value toaster for £5.25 (£5.29 on Tesco direct btw). I debated buying it and then didn't because I was worried that this would be one of those 'cheap' products that would fall apart after 2 minutes, and although I may not need this for very long, I have to say I'd prefer it if it didn't fall apart or set my kitchen on fire or something. In the end despite looking at this and a couple of others I put it off.

Anyway, last week after reading what someone else had to say about this very toaster, I decided to go back and buy one and I have to say so far I'm quite happy with my purchase. I know that generally one's expected to wait more than a week and a half before reviewing something, but it's a toaster... I've used it in the only way it's possible to use it and several times now, so I figure I'm probably ok to review it now and if it suddenly blows up or something I'll add a footnote ;-)

This a basic white coloured 2 slice toaster. It has a simple leaver control on one end to let you push down the bread into the toaster, and a dial that lets you select how dark or pale you want your toast. There's also a cancel button so that you can stop the toasting process part way through if you want to.

Now when it comes to making toast, I use my own home made bread. Because of this, I can slice it as thickly or thinly as I want to, and I'm used to opting for fairly thick toast in the morning. With this toaster I do have to be a little bit careful not to slice the bread too thickly or it fits in the toaster but won't pop up again properly as the slot isn't that wide, but overall it's not too bad and will even take a standard thickness of crumpet although the super fat Warburton's ones don't fit. To give you an idea what I mean, I'd have thought it would take a standard thin, medium or thick sliced loaf slice of bread without any problem, but an extra thick slice would be too much for it.

My bread maker makes a rather tall loaf meaning that each slice is rather longer than that of the average sliced loaf, so I wasn't sure if it would fit ok in here. Upright it's a little long and the top curve of the bread does stick out a bit, but this is where the cancel button sort of comes into its own because I can pop up the toast part way through, turn it upside down and restart it so that top and bottom of the slice get toasted and the middle is a little more well done. Again, if you were buying regular sliced bread I doubt you'd have a problem with sticky out bred.

The toaster has a crumb tray underneath so you can empty any lose crumbs out, but I haven't needed to do this on each toasting, and have found every 2 or three times is enough.

Overall, this is pretty damn good for the price, and I'm glad I bought it.