These days if you can plug something in, chances are it comes with an app, connects to Alexa, or sends you push notifications. That includes your kitchen appliances. Whether it's smart ovens or smart tea kettles (seriously), everything seems to be getting a tech upgrade, and it was only a matter of time before the humble toaster got swept up in the trend. Do I need an app to tell me when my toast is done? Probably not, but here we are.

Instead of using buttons or dials, smart toasters are controlled by smart sensors and touchscreens—some models are even equipped with bluetooth or Wi-Fi so you can control the toaster without even laying a finger on it. The idea is to completely take the guesswork out of toasting bread and make the process as convenient as possible.

Unlike most traditional toasters, which ask you to pick a setting, push a lever down, and hope for the best, smart toasters let you select what kind of bread you’re toasting, along with your preferred color after toasting. This automatically configures the ideal temperature and time. While you may not technically need all those extra features, smart toasters are great at giving you exactly what you want from a piece of toast.

Initially, it may seem like a no-brainer to go with the smarter, sleeker option, but traditional toasters still have a strong hold on consumers. Well-known kitchen appliance brands like Cuisinart, KitchenAid, and Hamilton Beach have earned consumer trust with traditional toasters that are durable and dependable. Given how effective traditional toaster models already are, this raises the question of whether the added convenience of a smart toaster is really worth the higher price tag for a task as simple as toasting bread.

To get to the bottom of it, we researched some of the best toasters—both traditional and smart—before settling on two of the most promising models to compare: the Kalorik Vivid Touch Smart Toaster and the Cuisinart CPT-520 Motorized Digital Toaster. We evaluated both toasters based on their customizability, ease of use, and consistency to ultimately see if one outperformed the other, and in which areas. Our breakdown ahead should help you decide whether a smart toaster is actually a worthy upgrade for you, or more of a novelty.

Key Differences Between Smart Toasters and Normal Toasters

The Kalorik Vivid Touch Smart Toaster and the Cuisinart CPT-520 Motorized Digital Toaster both cater to people who want more control over toasting. Both models offer a variety of customization options, including settings for different bread types and specific levels of doneness. The designs are similar too, both featuring a stainless steel exterior and extra-wide bread slots. Both of these appliances aim to make toasting easier and more customizable, but the tech is completely different.

Smart and traditional toasters have different interfaces.

Perhaps the most obvious difference between any smart and traditional toaster is the interface. The Kalorik smart toaster displays toasting information on a TFT (thin film transistor) screen, a type of LCD screen that displays graphics in high definition and full color—the same type commonly found on laptops and smartphones. Spanning almost the entire front of the toaster, this screen shows all of the available settings, a preview of what your toast will look like when it’s done, plus a countdown timer so you know exactly when the toast will pop up.

The Cuisinart model, on the other hand, uses a small LED monitor that only displays numbers one through seven corresponding to the toast level of the bread. There’s also a small panel that lights up to indicate which bread type you selected.

Cuisinart doesn’t offer any image-based visuals such as a toast preview or a countdown (as it doesn’t have a screen). However, it does include a QuickView button that lets you check on your toast mid-cycle (up to three times) without canceling the process, and it relies on an alert sound to let you know when your toast is ready.

Automated and manual controls set these two toasters apart.

kalorik smart toaster

The Kalorik Vivid Touch toaster relies almost entirely on touchscreen controls and automation. When you power up the toaster, it automatically displays a home screen with the current time. Tapping on this screen then brings you to a main menu that you can navigate by swiping or tapping.

The main menu shows a carousel of different breads—with the names below each one—that you can swipe through. On the same menu below the bread types, there are three on-screen buttons for fresh, frozen, or reheat modes. These modes set the starting temperature of the bread for more accurate toasting. For example, frozen mode compensates for colder slices or frozen waffles, taking a longer time to brown.

After making these selections, you can drag a slider to set your preferred toast color. Based on your choices, the software built into the toaster sets the appropriate heat and time to match your preferences. Once you’ve finalized your settings, simply press the lever down to lower your bread into the toaster, and you’re set.

Toaster displaying settings with toast in the slots

Traditional toasters like the Cuisinart CPT-520 aren’t software-driven, but instead use motorized controls and electrical wiring. This means you have to press physical buttons that correspond to each setting or mode, and it’s up to you to adjust them according to what you’re toasting.

As a result, toasting bread in this Cuisinart toaster isn’t as intuitive as navigating a smart toaster’s touchscreen. For example, pressing certain buttons just once will activate them, while others such as the “Bread Type” and “Favorite” buttons require a series of presses to cycle through options. This particular model also replaces the traditional lever with a switch that flips up or down to start or cancel toasting.

How We Selected

toast coming out of a toaster

To identify the best two toasters to put head to head, I considered a variety of factors such as customer reviews, ratings, and features. I began my search with the smart toaster, looking at the most popular models on social media and Amazon, then reading reviews to see why people liked or didn’t like them.

The most raved about features across multiple toaster brands include the ability to choose a wide range of bread types, save favorite settings, and the toaster’s overall appearance. Negative and neutral reviews reflect that people don’t find Wi-Fi that useful in a toaster, generally consider anything over $200 too expensive for toasting bread, and overall feel that too many bells and whistles can actually overcomplicate operation. With this feedback in mind, I looked for smart toasters that didn’t fall too hard into these critiques, and landed on the Kalorik.

After picking the Kalorik, I set off to find a solid basic model to compete against it. To make the comparison more fair, I filtered out basic models that had only a lever and a number dial, as that wouldn’t be a fair comparison. I went with the Cuisinart pick because it advertises many of the same promises of the Kalorik model, and has been well-received by customers for similar reasons despite the fact that it doesn’t use smart technology.

Since both the Cuisinart and Kalorik toasters are an upgrade of a basic toaster, but take slightly different approaches, I found them to be the most reasonable products to compare. They’re also not too far off in price.

slices of bread toasted by different toasters being compared

To test these toasters, I used slices from the same loaf of white sandwich bread and used both toasters consecutively so I could compare the results side by side. This made it easier to evaluate the performance, especially in terms of evenness of browning and the speed. I also assessed ease of use, paying attention to how design elements like the touchscreen impacted convenience and performance, how simple it was to save presets, and how accurate the bread type buttons were. Ultimately this helped me determine if the smart toaster was truly worth the upgrade over a traditional model.

Both toasters offer bread type and shade-specific customization.

smart toaster screen interface

Being able to customize the bread type on a toaster is helpful because the thickness, density, and moisture of different types of bread affects how it toasts. The Kalorik model has 10 different breads to choose from: white, wheat, multigrain, gluten free, bagel, waffle, pastry, English muffin, brioche, and pita. Cuisinart meanwhile offers six: white, whole wheat, pastry, bagel, English muffin, and waffle.

This function isn’t exclusive to smart toasters—it’s basically a temperature preset that’s preprogrammed to apply a specific temperature for a specific bread type. The main difference is that smart toasters typically offer a wider variety of presets, while traditional toasters often stick to a single default temperature for all bread types (or six in Cuisinart’s case).

When it comes to customizing how toasted your bread will get, smart and traditional toasters take slightly different approaches. Kalorik does it by color, giving you six shade options to choose from, while Cuisinart uses a numbered system, letting you select one through seven.

Note that these numbers don’t correspond to minutes. For example, level three is always one minute and 25 seconds regardless of the bread type, whereas on the smart toaster, the toasting time can vary depending on the bread and color.

For further customization, both toasters have a defrost mode option designed for products like frozen waffles. The Kalorik toaster also has a reheat mode for previously toasted slices or bread that you only want to warm up. On the other hand, the Cuisinart toaster has a setting for toasting single slices of bread, while the Kalorik does not.

Both picks delivered comparable performance, but Cuisinart is faster.

Despite the different tech, the toasting performance is very similar. During testing, both models produced relatively even browning across the entire piece of toast, with slightly more streakiness at the top from the Cuisinart toaster. When toasting frozen slices of bread on the defrost mode, the results are just as similar, though the Cuisinart tended to produce a bit more blotchiness.

In terms of speed, the Kalorik was slightly slower, but not by much. Toasting bread in the Cuisinart toaster on white bread level three took 10 seconds less than white bread color three on the smart toaster. This could’ve also had something to do with the fact that the Kalorik toaster has a slightly lower wattage—1,000, to be exact—compared to the Cuisinart’s 1,300 watts.

Throughout testing, both toasters produced consistent results every time. There was never an unexpected burnt or under-toasted slice from either toaster, likely due to the range of customization options that allowed for more control over the toasting process.

With the Kalorik toaster, there was noticeably less guesswork due to the automatically configured settings, and the color picker also proved to be accurate. However, this wasn’t quite the case with the Cuisinart toaster, as you have to adjust everything manually. In a few cases, the bread needed a little extra time, so the "add 30 seconds" button came in handy.

Cuisinart keeps it simple, while Kalorike leans into intuitive tech.

smart toaster and standard toaster

Both the Kalorik and Cuisinart toasters are user-friendly enough that you could operate them without reading the manual. That said, the Kalorik toaster delivers a more streamlined experience for everyday use, which is to be expected given its touchscreen controls.

On the Kalorik, there’s a whole settings menu where you can change the language to English, Spanish, French, or Mandarin, and you can adjust the temperature units to Fahrenheit or Celsius. In the same menu, you can also swap the screensaver to different clock designs if you prefer the countdown as an analog or digital clock.

Both models allow you to save your favorite toasting settings, but Kalorik makes it a bit simpler. Tapping the heart icon next to your preferred toast style adds it to a folder where you can store up to six presets. You can later access it by clicking the folder icon on the screen.

The Cuisinart toaster also offers memory presets (up to four), but saving one is a more involved process. To do this, first you have to press and hold the Memory button, assign a preset number with additional presses, and then hold the button again to lock it in. It’s not difficult, but it’s less intuitive than the Kalorik toaster’s tap-and-save method.

Beyond the ability to save favorites, Cuisinart doesn’t offer any other features specifically designed to improve ease of use. Still, its simplicity works in favor of those who want to toast something quickly without having to navigate any menus. Overall, the LED display is bright and easy to read, and the buttons are clearly labeled to make operation as straightforward as possible. That alone may be user-friendly enough for some people, but Cuisinart’s convenience-focused features are definitely more limited compared to the Kalorik.

Even high end traditional toasters cost less than smart models.

The majority of traditional toasters cost less than smart toasters because they use simpler tech. Very basic ones fall in the $15 to $20 range, and more high end models don’t exceed $100 unless they are commercial grade ones with four bread slots. It’s very hard to find smart toasters under $50, and some even cost over $300 depending on the brand.

Even with their very similar performance and features, the Cuisinart CPT-520 still comes out cheaper than the Kalorik Vivid Touch. Regardless of the retailer, you simply pay more for the touchscreen controls and automation, and the added convenience features. It’s worth mentioning, however, that the Cuisinart toaster is on the pricier end for a traditional style toaster, while the Kalorik toaster is mid-range.

If you want a truly “smart” experience, upgrading to a $300 model offers even more customization, such as the ability to program different settings for each slot, or picking from a larger selection of bread types. High-end smart toasters also connect to Wi-Fi or your phone via bluetooth, allowing them to display local weather, show personal photos, and send notifications to your device. That being said, if you’re all about just toasting bread, these features are likely not worth the cost.

Final Verdict

After testing out all the features on both toasters, it’s clear, at least to me, that a toaster doesn’t need to be smart. The Cuisinart and the Kalorik toasters produced toast with nearly identical results, and many of the same functions—such as being able to select a bread type, defrost bread, and create your own presets—performed well without the smart technology. This smart tech also didn’t make the process that much faster, especially since it has a slightly lower wattage.

A smart toaster isn’t entirely useless, though. For example, if you have very specific toasting preferences or toast a lot of different types of bread on hand, you’ll enjoy the variety of settings. Those who use a toaster every single day also find the smart version more convenient since it takes out all the guesswork and has a user-friendly touchscreen.

But other than the added convenience, toasting bread is such a straightforward task that smart features may not justify the bigger investment. Technically, the same could be said of any traditional toaster with as many bells and whistles as the Cuisinart model—you still end up paying a premium for the level of customizability no matter the tech. However, I still found that the Cuisinart offered more value simply because it offers comparable features at a lower cost.

If all you need is a good, old-fashioned toast from a simple toaster, the truth is that neither of these picks are ideal because they're both more expensive and more customizable than truly necessary. But while a traditional knob-and-lever toaster can do the job, there's still something to be said about any toaster that can basically guarantee perfect toast because of how precise the settings are.

It’s definitely impressive that the Cuisinart's functionality is enough to rival a smart toaster like the Kalorik without relying on any smart technology, but I also won't fault anyone for wanting the full "smart" experience, either. After all, it was pretty satisfying to see a preview of what color my toast would be and scroll through different bread types on a glossy touchscreen. My suggestion: Stick with your knob and lever if you’re fine with basic toast, but if you want to have different customization options (waffles, bagels, etc.) without having to pay the premium price of a smart toaster, consider upgrading to a more souped up traditional toaster like the Cuisinart.