Breville Eye Q Toaster review: A toaster with a vision

The world’s first toaster that works on color instead of time is great. But is it $300 great?

The classic pop-up toaster is arguably one of the simplest kitchen appliances you can own. It's just a box with resistive coils inside, a timer and spring-loaded slots to eject your bread when it's done. It's a well-tested formula that has worked for more than 100 years , and as the old adage goes: If it ain't broke, don't fix it. But what if there was a world in which the pop-up toaster had never been invented and someone tried to make one with today's technology? The result would probably look a lot like Breville's new $300 Eye Q Toaster , which is the first of its kind to crisp up bread based on color instead of time.

There's only so much you can do to spruce up a toaster, but Breville still managed to give the Eye Q a decidedly futuristic appearance. It features rounded edges and a minimalist design that seems like it would fit in better on a spaceship than a typical mid-century modern home. On top, there's a non-stick ceramic coating that does a great job of keeping the toaster clean while also allowing crumbs to neatly fall down into its removable tray. There's also a handful of rather intuitive buttons for adjusting how light or dark you want your bread to get.

When the light is in the middle, you get a really nice golden brown. If you want a blonder roast you can simply press the minus button on the left, or tap the button on the right for a deeper toast. There's also a dedicated button for bagels and an "A bit more" button in case your bread needs just a little extra tan. And of course, instead of a spring-loaded lever, there's a big button in the middle that tells the toaster when it's time to get to work.

As soon as you press the start button, the Eye Q uses its built-in motors to clamp down on your bread and slowly lower it inside. The whole process definitely feels more sophisticated than slamming down on some springs, but in practice, it doesn't really change much. The big difference is what happens when the coils inside heat up.

In a traditional toaster, there's a timer you can set that tells the toaster how long to cook your bread. When it's done, you get that classic ding, the toast pops up and you get what you get. The issue is that depending on how hot the coils are and what kind of bread you're toasting, achieving the perfect golden brown nirvana often feels very hit or miss. And that goes double when you're using a toaster that you aren't familiar with.

That's where the Eye Q changes things. Instead of a timer, it has a handful of optical sensors inside that tracks the color of the toast 10 times per second. When it hits your desired shade, alongside a helpful beep, your bread smoothly rises up to let you know that it's done. No need to guess if a minute, a minute and a half or two minutes is what you need to properly sear the surface of your bread or bagel. Your toast is ready when its color is right, not when it's been singed for an arbitrary length of time.

In order to put the Eye Q through its paces, the first thing I did was buy a fresh loaf of whole wheat and then toasted a slice on each one of Breville's seven color options. The result was a surprisingly smooth gradient from light to dark that would make the paint section of your local home improvement store proud. The lightest setting was so faint that it was more like merely crisping up the crumb of the bread without really changing its color, while the darkest slice was a deep brown that critically stopped short of being burnt — aside from the very edges of the crust. And in the middle, the Eye Q produced a perfect golden slice of toast that practically anyone would be happy to eat. In fact, the standard middle option was so on point that I just left it there for nearly all of my regular toast needs after that. (Note: In the picture above, the slice in the top left is an untoasted control, followed by seven progressively darker pieces of toast made by the Eye Q.)