Kitchen — the toaster that lifts small slices up

Hamilton Beach Extra-Wide Slot 2-Slice Toaster (22633)

The verdict

The headline spec is the slot: extra-wide and self-adjusting, so thick bread actually fits instead of getting wedged or toasted on one edge. The rest of the package is the stuff you use every morning: bagel and defrost buttons, a shade selector, auto shut-off, a slide-out crumb tray, and Toast Boost, which lifts smaller items like English muffins higher so you can grab them without fishing around a hot slot with a fork — a small feature that matters a lot when you cannot see how far down the toast sits.

Hamilton Beach Extra-Wide Slot 2-Slice Toaster (22633) — about $38 · ≈4.3/5 from ~13,300 ratings on Amazon · the everyday toaster that fits real bread — bagels, Texas toast, and long slices included.

For a blind shopper, the buying check is the shade dial. It is a rotary dial with detents, so your method is simple: start in the middle, count your clicks, and adjust one click at a time over a few mornings until you find your number — then it is the same number every day. The bagel button is a separate press, and the cancel button stops the cycle instantly, so a too-dark piece of toast is a lesson, not a fire. Listen for reviews praising even browning on both sides and the crumb tray, and treat complaints about the toaster being 'too basic' as praise in disguise — basic is what a toaster should be.

Honest caveats: the shade dial has no tactile numbers, so your count-from-the-left method is the whole system — write your number down somewhere you can find it. Never use a metal utensil to retrieve toast; use Toast Boost and tongs, or wait for the pop-up. And empty the crumb tray regularly: crumbs near a heating element are the one real fire risk a toaster has. As of October 2026 the price was verified around $37.95 on Amazon.

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Last reviewed: October 2026.