Toaster design hasn’t really changed in the 100 years since the pop-up version was first introduced. They’re still built around temperature sensors and timers – despite the explosion of bread varieties available today. And that means the standard toaster doesn’t necessarily cook fruit breads or sourdoughs as it would the plain white slice.
Breville – the makers of some of the best coffee machines – reckons it’s come up with a solution in the form of the Breville Eye Q, the Australian brand’s new toaster that uses a proprietary optical sensor that judges your toast’s doneness by the color of the bread. In other words, it uses ‘sight’ to achieve the perfect toast.
According to Breville, the sensor “monitors” the slice(s) up to 10 times a second and, once your preferred level of toasting is done, the bread will be raised smoothly rather than popped up.
Furthermore, unlike other toasters, because it’s basing its cooking on color rather than time, it won’t burn or overcook the second (or third or fourth) batch of slices you put into the Eye Q. This can happen in standard toasters because the elements are already heated and toasting begins as soon as the slices are lowered into the slots.
There are seven settings shades to choose from, but you can also opt for a “bit more” color if you aren’t happy with the result (a feature already available on Breville’s existing toasters). The brand says you might need to experiment a little initially to find what your perfect preference might be, but the promise is that your toast – whether that’s white, multigrain, sourdough, raisin, rye or a bagel, crumpet or other non-standard type of bread – will never burn.
Keep an eye on that expensive toast
Breville told me it took the company’s engineers 10 years to make this toaster and they nearly gave up about five years ago due to the high cost of the tech at the time. The embedded optical sensors still make this a premium product – at $299.95 / £249.95 / AU$399.95 for the two-slice and $399.95 / £349.95 / AU$599.95 for the four-slice model – it’s undeniably priced for toast connoisseurs… if such people exist.
However, the use of an optical sensor in a toaster is certainly revolutionary and, interestingly, the Eye Q uses just a single pair set into one side of the two-slice toaster, not both as I’d expected. This is because Breville says their research shows most users will be toasting the same kind of bread in both slots, so the sensor only needs to monitor one slice as the rest of the tech ensures even heating throughout. You can see the green sensor light blinking in the video clip below.
Moreover, Breville says that if both walls had sensors, the toaster’s footprint would increase, and single-wall design allows the Eye Q to be barely bigger than most other standard two- or four-slice models.
If you want to toast a single slice, Breville has thoughtfully marked the slot where you need to place it. If you make the mistake of using the other one, you won’t get the results you want and the toast will likely be slightly underdone.
For artisanal breads, the Eye Q sensor has also been programmed to feature a special Sourdough Mode. This takes into account the thicker slices, crustier crusts and denser bread of such loaves, and automatically increases the browning time. To make sure the outside of the toaster has a clean, minimalist look, this functionality is available via a long press of the main control button.
The traditional defrost/reheat button has been replaced by a Time Mode – switched on by double pressing the main button – that allows users to set a time to warm up foods like pies and pastries.
A life-saving feature
If you’ve ever danced with death by sticking a knife or other utensil into your toaster to free a stuck slice (there are an estimated 700 toaster-related deaths every year), Breville has fixed that with the Eye Q too. Not only are the slots slightly wider than the standard toaster, but the bread guides automatically (and smoothly) slide down on the press of the main control button. When your toast is ready, they rise at the same speed and seem to be placed higher within the machine, so even shorter artisanal slices can still be plucked out easily.
Cleaning it has also been made easy. The top of the toaster is a non-stick ceramic-coated material that angles towards the interior, so you just brush crumbs into the slots where they get collected into the Eye Q’s Catch-All Crumb Tray. Unlike other crumb trays in standard toasters, which only cover a narrow section along the bottom of the appliance, the Catch-All offers full coverage, so practically all bits and pieces fall onto it for cleaning out.
No more burnt toast
So how does it stack up in real world testing? Well, full disclaimer first: I’m pretty much the perfect market for the Eye Q, as I stopped using my toaster a long time ago. I got tired of having to keep an eye on the bread as the slices would invariably come out overdone for me. And if I stepped away, chances were my smoke alarm would go off. So my old toaster generally just sits on a shelf and gets used perhaps once a year when I treat myself to a crumpet.
I’m not going to say the Eye Q is the next best invention after sliced bread, but I now want to have toast every morning – mostly because I can’t stop watching the slices drop down into the toaster and rise up again (see the video clip below). I’ve used it for seven days at the time of writing and my first time using it was experimentation with sourdough.
I like it very lightly toasted, but even at the second setting, the crust was overdone. The subsequent slices were perfect at the first setting for me. Plain white bread toasts beautifully for me at the third setting. Raisin toast wasn’t burnt at all. I’m a toast convert now!
As fantastic as the toaster is, its high price will likely keep it out of reach for all but the most devoted of toast lovers. The Eye Q is available to buy right now in Australia in four colorways – Black Truffle, Sea Salt, Stainless Steel and Noir (which replaces a white strip on the bottom of the Black Truffle to dark grey) – directly from Breville and authorized retailers. US and UK availability of the Eye Q is still to be confirmed, although Breville says it will be on shelves “before the end of the year”.
