Those numbers on your toaster don’t mean what you think

You might assume that the numbers on your toaster correlate to minutes of toasting, but that’s not actually the case. While a higher setting produces darker toast, the numbers aren’t standardized, and a “3” on one toaster can produce very different results than a “3” on another.

I'm a contributing product analyst in the Good Housekeeping Institute Kitchen & Cooking Lab, where my colleagues and I have tested over 80 toasters in the past decade. After toasting thousands of slices of bread, we've learned exactly what those dials control.

How we test toasters

In the Lab, we evaluate every toaster’s performance using the same series of tests. We:

• Compare browning levels across five heat settings
• Measure how long toasting takes
• Assess the evenness of toast color from top to bottom and front to back
• Test the consistency of toasting across five consecutive batches

Each level is connected to a timer or heat sensor.

Most toasters have five to seven browning levels. Each is connected to an internal timer or heat sensor that determines how long the heating element stays on. There’s no standard for toasters, so cooking times and temperatures differ across brands and models.

That’s why, in the Lab, we always compare five levels on each toaster: low, medium-low, medium, medium-high, and high. These slices of toast give us a visual representation of how the levels differ and the range of colors each toaster can produce.

Every toaster heats differently.

But time isn’t the only factor here; the strength of the heat source varies between models, too. During our most recent round of toaster testing, one of the slower models took more than two minutes on medium and barely colored the bread. In another toaster, two minutes produced perfectly golden toast. The difference comes down to the heating element’s strength and how close the bread sits to the heating elements.

Some toasters, including our top-tested models, automatically shorten cooking time as they heat up to prevent burnt toast. During our color consistency test, we toast two slices of bread (or four, in a four-slice toaster) five times in a row on the same setting with no more than 30 seconds between each. We're looking for consistent color or browning as the machine gets hotter, which means the toaster should automatically reduce the cooking time to prevent later batches from over-browning. A top-performing toaster in this test, the Lotus Two-Slice, took 2:19 for the first slice and 1:55 for the fifth, which was the same golden-brown color.

So, while a higher level on your toaster produces darker toast, the settings don’t directly translate to how long you’ll have to wait for breakfast. If you're using a toaster for the first time, I recommend starting on medium-low and adjusting from there to find your perfect shade.

Why trust Good Housekeeping?

Lizzy Briskin is a contributing product analyst and writer in the Good Housekeeping Institute Kitchen & Cooking Lab, where she recently led our latest toaster testing. As someone who uses her toaster every day, she won't settle for one that can't evenly brown a thick slice of sourdough.