Dualit Domus Four-Slice Toaster Review
A fantastic toaster
Verdict
The Dualit Domus Four-Slice Toaster has about the biggest slots you’ll find, and it produces some of the best toast. While its looks aren’t to everyone’s taste, it’s built like a tank, and feels great to use.
Pros
- Excellent toast
- Huge slots
- Toast two or four slices at once
Cons
- No reheat mode
- No single-slice setting
Availability
- UKRRP: £125
- USAunavailable
- Europeunavailable
- Canadaunavailable
- Australiaunavailable
Key Features
- ToastingThis big, heavy toaster has four massive slots
- SettingsBrowning, defrost and bagel settings (per two slots)
Introduction
If you’ve ever cursed your toaster’s tiny slots, Dualit’s Domus Four-Slice Toaster could be the answer. It’s built with four huge slots, capable of swallowing up almost any bread you care to throw at it. It’s a big and heavy appliance, and perhaps not the most fetching, but it feels utterly bulletproof.
Design and features
- This is a big toaster
- Feels beautifully made
- Very big slots
There’s not much wrong with the way this toaster looks, but you couldn’t exactly call it a classic. Its bulbous metal panels are painted a sombre grey, and everything looks a little structural. It’s big, too – even when compared to other four-slot devices.
It feels absolutely great to use, though. Its twin browning controls click smoothly through their nine available settings, while the baskets’ levers latch down with a lovely precision. There’s attention to detail, too: you can lift either lever to ‘peek’ at toast without cancelling it – a great way to check if it’s done yet.
Dualit says that the Domus Four-Slice Toaster adjusts toasting time according to the background temperature to avoid over-cooking bread. There’s no damping on the slots, but they don’t make too much racket when released – you might not hear them unless you’re reasonably nearby.
Like other four-slice toasters, the Domus offers two sets of controls. There are frozen and bagel settings, along with a cancel button, but there’s no reheat mode – which means you can’t reheat toast without the risk of browning it further. Neither side has a single-slot button, meaning that if you’re making one or three slices, you’ll have to heat up an empty slot.
Dualit says this toaster is designed for ‘toastie’ style loaves. I’m not sure what they are, but it certainly has some of the biggest slots I’ve seen. At 140mm long, they’ll accommodate even big home-baked bread slices laid on their edge. They’re also deep enough that you don’t need to lay standard, supermarket sliced bread on its side.
Although the Domus has 35mm thick slots, I did find that the toast guides tend to close in on bread a little early as you lower the lever. This sometimes leaves thicker slices sticking up a bit, and needing a gentle tap to get them to fall into place.
This toaster’s elements go right up to the edge of its slots, so it toasts bread evenly across its width. However, these big elements are slightly more power-hungry than the norm. This toaster uses up to 2.2 kilowatts (kW) with both sides in use – around 10% more than typical.
Performance
- Near-perfect toasting
- Doesn’t get too hot
The Dualit Domus Four-Slice Toaster produced some of the best toast I’ve eaten. Its huge slots ensure that regular sliced breads are toasted all the way to the edge, but they also coped nicely with my roughly hewn homemade loaves.
Supermarket sliced bread was also very evenly toasted…
…while bagels were about as even as they get.
Despite its metal body, this toaster doesn’t get too hot in operation. You need to keep away from the top of its slots, but its sides typically don’t go above warm, reducing the chance of small or clumsy hands getting burnt.
Like all toasters, the Dualit Domus Four Slice Toaster uses quite a bit of power – about 1.1kW per side – but not for long. I measured 0.05 kilowatt hours (kWh) to toast two slices of thick-cut white, and 0.04kWh for a bagel.
That’s slightly more than some toasters with smaller slots, but the difference is pretty negligible. If you’re on the current 34p per kWh price cap and you used this toaster to make one bagel and one round of toast every day, you’d pay about £10 over the course of a year – perhaps £1 more than a toaster with smaller slots.
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Should you buy it?
If you like big bread and even toast, this toaster is for you. It feels indestructible, too
If you’re not too worried about toasting right up to the edge, you could save a little money by opting for a smaller toaster
Final Thoughts
The Dualit Domus Four-Slice Toaster is fantastic. While it doesn’t look as sexy as some other quality toasters, it turns almost any bread, however badly cut, into brilliant, even toast. This isn’t a small toaster even by four-slot standards, but if you’ve got a roomy kitchen and often toast home-baked bread, bagels, baguettes or other large slices, it’s perfect. If you’re after something different, read our guide to the best toasters.
How we test
Unlike other sites, we test every toaster we review thoroughly over an extended period of time. We use standard tests to compare features properly. We’ll always tell you what we find. We never, ever, accept money to review a product.
Find out more about how we test in our ethics policy.
Used as our main toaster for the review period
We test with different sized bread, and see how well the toaster toasts one bit of bread. We follow up with a second slice immediately after to see if the toaster burns the second slice.
We test other cooking features where available: sandwich presses, grilling, etc.
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FAQs
Yes, but not much. It’s rated at 2,250 watts, which is about 10% more than a typical four-slot toaster. My measurements back this up, but toasters aren’t especially expensive to run. Even at today’s prices, it would only cost around £10 a year to make a couple of rounds of toast a day.
Full specs
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Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
Editorial independence
Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
