Dualit toasters…are they all that?

We’re moving house so obviously this means (according to my wife) that we need a new toaster and kettle (matching of course 🙄 ). I think I may have persuaded her that a Dualit toaster is the way to go, but are they really worth the big money? Whaddya reckon?

My toaster makes toast

It cost £3 from a boot fair 5 years ago.

Save your money.

We went through 3 mid price toasters in a little over a year before buying a dualit. 12 years later it’s still working fine. Taken over their lifespan they seems pretty good value. If something does break/wear out it should be serviceable.

bit like muppet.
Went through 3 toasters around the £25 mark before getting fed up throwing away whitegoods. So got a dualit. Works well, nice size (4x) does bagels and fat slices. And peering into it and at all the fixings/screws, it looks like I can service/fix it if anything were to go wrong unlike most of the pressfit piles of crap that you usually have that can only be thrown away.

I HATE throwing away electrical goods.

Yeah they are great I have dualit toaster, kettle, coffee machine and all that and they are all really well built. Buy cheap buy twice (or more)

They look nice and are durable but the one I’ve used really annoys me.

The swivelling plate design to ‘pop up’ the toast is not best suited to slices of fruit loaf, tea cakes or anything slightly soft. Instead of popping it up, it tends to just crimp it against the side wall of the toaster and fold it over. Very durable but a case of style over function in my experience.

you can service them but the bits (elements that usualy go on a reguar basis) are serious money.

they are nice objexts but no better (but possibly worse)than a russel hobs or morhy richards (as an ex toaster sales person the only brands I’d let the wife buy!)

Overpriced for the image and reputation, but the fact that you can service it makes it worthwhile in the long run. A lot like bike parts!

I’d be slipping my slices into one if I had the funds to do so, Russell is dealing with my loaf-life at the moment.

We went through 3 mid price toasters in a little over a year before buying a dualit.

Went through 3 toasters around the £25 mark before getting fed up throwing away whitegoods.

What the chuff are you people doing to your toasters???

Our old toaster was a crappy plastic ASDA own-brand job that we paid a fiver for about 4 years ago.

We only got rid of it this week because it didn’t go with the decor, still working fine though.

We had a four slice Dualit at work and it survived five years or so of pretty much constant toast making through every working day. All that went wrong with it was one of the elements went, but that’s a user serviceable part.

That sort of reliability is why I got one for home.

elements that usualy go on a reguar basis are serious money

Last time I looked for my in-laws the price of replacement elements (on eBay) looked pretty reasonable (against the cost of a new dualit if not against the cost of a bargain Tesco toaster)

That said we went for one of these last time and it’s lasting well. Pops up and takes thick slices of bread.

I have one, it’s lasted 3 years but now it sporadically pops the toast whenever it feels like it.

only a 2 slice not the beasty 4 slice version.

Yeha my dualit is a 2004 model 4 slice. Never failed.

What the chuff are you people doing to your toasters???

1 just stopped toasting, timer went around but no toasting took place.

2nd and 3rd ones suffered from broken popup mechanisms. The 3rd one went back in for repair under warranty. Then did exactly the same thing a few months later. Can’t remember what make the first one was but 2 and 3 were morphy richards.

Gravity-Slave does have a point about the soft stuff in the dualit though. We don’t really use it for much other than bread and for anything especially tricky it came with one of these bad boys:

but I don’t think i’ve used it more than a couple of times.

My £10 nameless wonder lasted 8 years IIRC, I went for one of the cheaper Dualits cos it looks nice.

I coldn’t face the £150 one, my poncy sister has one, it broke, she was delighted as it could be repaired…for another £100 🙄

I’ve just had a quick google. Replacement elements are about £10.

I’m a shameless brand snob, only dualit and SMEG in my kitchen (that I don’t even use) darling 🙂

I went through loads at one point, got a Dualit, and even that broke.

Ended up with a 4 slice no-brand one from Asda at £15, and it’s lasted 2 years.

cheers all. It’s available in cream, so that seals the deal as far as my wife is concerned. Now to find a cream microwave that isn’t crap…

I inherited a dualit 4 slice toaster – it’s light years ahead of the pack. It toasts evenly which is my biggest bugbear with cheap toasters, it looks kinda functional but solid, but it’s fully serviceable and well made which are big positives in my mind. Used cheap £10 toasters loads and never liked them.

Russel Hobbs – £20 from ASDA
Has Defrost and Bagel buttons. With matching kettle. That’ll do me 😀

No idea where you’ll find a nice looking cream microwave though. We settled on a microwave that matched the hob (brushed alu).

You can quite often pick up reconditioned dualit toasters for about half the cost of a new one from various places.

Not sure where you’re based but I know that Steamer trading (Sussex based) do them.

toast is illegal

We’ve had one for 20+ years.

Looks nice . . . but I must have spent £150 on elements and a new timer in all that time. Simple enough job to replace them yourself, but I’d guess an electrical repair shop would charge about £45?

Would I buy another? NO WAY!

Toast is average btw.
Hth
Marko

middleclassworld has spoken. 😀

Had one (4 slice) for about 10 years, got 3 elements gone. We’re not using it at the moment. Cheaper to buy whatever’s cheapest at Tesco for about a fiver, and replace it if it breaks.

middleclassworld has spoken.

Toast = middle class. Fact!

Want 🙂

My Dualit is 15 years young. Element failed last year – a tenner for a new one which took 10 minutes to fit myself. Love the fact that the instructions said it was compatible withmost Dualit toasters made in the last 50 years…

I know they cost a lot, but for the ability not to send yet more whitegoods to landfill (like my expensive 4 year old washing machine…) and the fact that they are designed to last I’m happy to go with it. I expect it will still be making toast for someone long after I am pushing up daisies…

didn’t find it deep enough for sliced bread, certainly not amazed by it and now it’s gone I will not buy another

Your wife is right in this instance, shut up and order those Chris King hub for your bike. It’s the same arguement.

Those Tefal toast’n’egg ones are genius, although mine’s be gathering dust (apart from the odd boiled egg) since I loosely started following iDave’s diet 🙁

+1 for the Dualit.
Bought one the last time we were in the UK (as they are 2x more in Australia) and rellies thought we were mad! Have replaced 1 element in 10 years. Just taken the clockwork apart to oil as it was sticky – all good again. I also fix my bikes!
Looks good and makes great toast – I too like the comment re the elements fitting all toasters made after 1960’s! Very reassuring in a world of throw away electrical goods. Lovely inside too – all secured by little brass nuts and bolts. Makes my heart glad 🙂

If you want “Pro” kit, get LinCat.

do they make a matching breadmaker as well?

been using them for the last 30 year,elements sometimes go, 10 minute job to change em, pop up bit sometimes busts, but its all nuts and bolts in there,dead easy to maintain. nowt like em for churning out toast!

We have a dualit toaster which looks nice and is all shiny and says ” I am expensive”… Does it do toast very well ?…..not particularly no. It tends to cook one side of bread faster than the other and always has done.

MiddleClassTrackWorld….

🙂

Eggbox – Member
We have a dualit toaster which looks nice and is all shiny and says ” I am expensive”… Does it do toast very well ?…..not particularly no. It tends to cook one side of bread faster than the other and always has done.

I’ve seen similar comments by a few people during my “toaster research”, but are you sure yours isn’t a bun toaster? They’re designed to heat more on one side than the other, but seem to look dangerously similar to their regular toaster!

Seems to be the standard NHS toater in my umpteen wards experience. The timer is a bit unreliable and you have to remember to put timer on a bit less for each subsequent round when you are making toast for 30! You need to watch it if you are at all fussy about the brown-ness of your toast, which put me off as I like to put the toaster on and have a wander.

One of my pet hate mis-spendings of public money. They don’t get fixed by hospitals so much as the internal marketisation nhs trusts means it is often cheaper to buy a new one than to pay full rrp and then some for the spares, and pay estates department to fix it. And lord knows how much a fire callout costs: seen a good couple of dozen unnecessary fire alarms at work from dualit toasters over my 13 NHS years, which at our local general hospital was 3 appliances and a ladder platform thingy every time!

They are pretty to look at and easy to keep clean and shiny though.