De’Longhi Icona Vintage Toaster review

In terms of looks the De’Longhi Icona scored highly with us, we liked its curved lines and our ‘Vintage’ model comes in numerous colours with brown controls. It was remarkably fingerprint resistant too and cool to the touch after toasting. Standard and Vintage models total six colours, so you should find something you like, though internally they’re all identical. From £45 they’re not expensive either, though our model costs around £65. Unsurprisingly, there’s a matching coffee machine from the Italian manufacturer.

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The pleasing exterior is matched by a full range of controls. There are twin browning controls, with round knobs, which are stiff enough that they shouldn’t be knocked accidentally. The indicator dials (curiously marked as Toast Colour) are tucked behind little windows, we think this is to match the pressure and temperature dials on the company’s coffee machines. As well as the usual cancel, defrost and reheat controls, the Icona has a bagel mode – so you can just toast the insides, leaving the tops appropriately doughy. All the buttons have simple indicator lights next to them.

The slots are long at 140mm, easily swallowing typical sliced bread sidewise and so toasting the whole slice without it poking from the top. They’re not very deep, just 107mm from the bottom to where the filaments stop, but that’s not an issue as long as you can lie the bread down. It can be tricky to get out bread toasted this way, or other smaller items, as there’s quite a lip between the top of the filaments and the actual top. The levers provide a rather pitiful extra 10mm of lift, which means that muffins, crumpets and bagels can be hard to retrieve.

At two minutes and 21 seconds this is a pretty typical toaster, while its power use of 0.33 is just above average given the speed (faster toasters tend to use more power). The toast is good, nicely balanced from side-to-side and it has attractive stripes. we did find the very ends were a little under toasted (we lay our bread down to get the best effect) but it’s still a good overall result.

The De’Longhi Icona isn’t very quick and it’s not great for smaller items. However, it looks great, is well priced in its non-Vintage form, has a bagel mode, is cool-to-touch and produces fairly consistent toast. It’s a good buy if you want something more stylish than the practical-looking Philips Toaster, though that device has the edge when it comes to even toasting.  Buy Now from Amazon