The toaster that cooks by colour, not time – Breville Eye Q

You clicked, so your curiosity is piqued – that was what drew me to Breville’s HQ a few weeks ago to look at a Toaster. I travel the world looking at the latest gadgets and gizmos and here I am driving to the city to look at a toaster – what has happened to me. Turns out, the Breville Eye Q Auto Toaster is a high tech marvel.

Ten years in the making – you heard that right, Breville engineers have been working on this for ten years. This all began with some high-tech optical sensors and the idea that time wasn’t the best measurement for toasting.

Place your bread in the top, select your cook level (there are 7 settings) then press start.

Your bread lowers gently, elegantly even, and then the Eye Q Optic Sensors kick in to monitor the colour change up to ten times per second using dual wavelength green and infrared LEDs.

If there’s no bread there and you press start, the Toaster will detect that and will just rise again and won’t waste the time or energy on cooking.

But if you’ve thrown a Tip Top Wonderwhite in then the toasting will begin.

Here’s the thing, your chosen cook level, of the seven, will work no matter what toast you put in, or what state it was in before you started.

For example. Put a frozen slice of white in and it will come out exactly the same as if you put a fresh slice in. It will simply take longer because the toasting will happen until the desired colour is reached.

In my testing on white bread there’s such a small difference between each level that it really is marginal which you might pick – but there’s no doubting it’s consistency when you find that sweet spot you love.

Throw some raisin bread in and with a traditional toaster, using the same setting as your white bread will mean the raisin bread comes out burnt – not with the Breville Eye Q Auto Toaster. Perfect every time.

And what you probably don’t realise is that if someone else just toasted before you, the hot toaster will affect how long the toast takes to get to your desired colour – that’s why your toast seems over-cooked some times.

Love sourdough? Worry not – throw it into sourdough mode and your Eye Q sensors are recalibrated to account for that thicker crust and denser bread.

All that is amazing, but what impressed me most was the cleaning. Wipe down the ceramic top – no drama, and slide out the tray for crumbs. “All toasters have that tray” you say – well, slide out your toaster tray and take a look inside it – there’s a bottom structure to the toaster that captures some crumbs still, this is to prevent anyone poking their hands up from the bottom of the toaster. Breville Eye Q has a clear toaster area because the toaster can detect the crumb tray and if it’s not fully inserted, the toaster won’t work.

Absolutely awesome – with just one issue. The price. The two slice model is $469, the four slice is $629. Ouch.

Hard to justify, but worth the stretch.