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Magimix Vision - See Through Toaster
Close to a year ago I reviewed a toaster from Tefal that also had a fitting on the end to poach – or boil – eggs. Here this is more traditional – in that it only toasts – but the conventional two slices in parallel is gone replaced by the ability to place two full sized pieces of bread side by side in the only slot, but it will also do far thicker things like bagels and crumpets even traditional muffins and even refresh French sticks I tried them all.
It is made of stainless steel with double insulated glass sides. The only part that gets vaguely warm is the top near the entry point for the toast. Both the clear see through sides and the rest of the toaster remain cool even when you have made several pieces of toast. Totally different from my own toaster whose top could – and indeed has – burnt me.
The dimensions are 38x16x23cm with the opening on the top taking bread etc up to 26x4cm easily big enough for two slices of normal 800gram sliced bread. This can even be long side horizontal rather than vertical.
Peering into the top of a normal toaster has the chance of you losing some hair or perhaps eyebrows as well as the chance of skin burns. Looking at the side as you toast browns has no such dangers. There are a total of five buttons along the front side. Four push buttons with a twist knob in the middle to determine the darkness 1- 8 of the item you are toasting. The centre of this knob can be pushed to eject the toast at any time should it reach the desired colour without ejecting.
Instead of the normal filament up each side (which of course would make viewing the toast while cooking impossible) you have a cased filament at the bottom and top on each side making a total of four tubed filaments.
I was impressed how evenly the toast always cooked thin or thick and even the specialised items such as crumpets muffins and bagels all toasted evenly. Of course the first time you toast something like these you need to keep a close eye on them to find the correct setting but after you have you can leave them to toast alone.
Using my own toaster – around two years old – as a benchmark I found that to get the same degree of darkness on the toast took around 20 seconds less with the Magimix unit than mine and of course to chance of getting burnt.
The instruction booklet (14 sides) is a fold out laminated A5 strip in four languages (two per side) however this gives all the information you need to operate and – should there be any – cover any minor problems with the unit.
The slide to insert the bread travels further than with a conventional toaster so no need to ferret inside the unit to retrieve crumpets etc. As all you do is raise it a little more to get these smaller items out of the Magimix.
The five buttons on the front are explained if the illustrations on the buttons are not enough, the first normal toast, the second button - a novel idea – allows you to toast only one side, ideal for French bread, the third is the darkness control and stop button, the forth is a reheat button ideal for toast that has gone cold and finally the fifth is defrost control for frozen bread. When you next use the unit whichever button you last pressed will still be chosen so press the one you want to get the control to do the job you require.
The Magimix Vision is available currently for £160 from John Lewis on the following link:
http://www.johnlewis.com/230670825/Product.aspx?source=46387
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