But this week, Breville is unveiling a finished product with the tech inside, and the Eye Q Auto toaster — in a two-slice model for $469 or a four-slice for $629 — really does watch your toast to tell when it’s done, while more or less still resembling a normal toaster.
One major change necessary for the tech to work is that only one slot out of a pair has sensors looking into it, through tiny slits between the heating elements. So if you’re only cooking one slice, you need to make sure you put it into that slot, or the toaster will just give it back.
The other change – which Groundes-Peace says is more for the sake of drama than practicality – is that there is no spring-loaded lever. Instead, the toast is raised and lowered with a motor; you press a light-up button to start the process, and hear a chime when it’s done.
There are seven settings to set your cooking preference, and in my testing, it all works exactly as described. The medium setting on my regular toaster goes for about two minutes; on the Eye Q, that’s also how long the default medium setting took to toast some store-bought grainy bread. But when I put in frozen grainy bread, it took nearly three minutes, and came out to the same level of toasting. It also took about three minutes to toast my (much denser) homemade white bread, and about 2½ for bagels.
Because the toaster looks at shade change, rather than overall colour, breads that start as different shades end up different too; if the bread’s naturally brown, it still gets a good toasting. As with other Breville toasters, there’s a button for crumpets (which toasts hotter on one side, also good for bagels) and a “bit more” button, which also uses the optical sensor to make the shade just a touch darker.
Even though the toaster did a good job on all the bread I threw at it, I still had a few questions about edge cases, and Groundes-Peace had answers for all of them.
The two-slice version of the Eye Q has a pair of optical sensors in one of the slots, while the four-slice has them in two slots.
What if you’re toasting fruit bread and the sensor is actually looking at a raisin that doesn’t change colour? The toaster actually has two separate sensors, and goes by whichever observes the most shade change.
What about sourdough bread or other types that risk burning or toughening the crust if you toast too much? There’s an extra careful mode you can activate by hitting the button twice, which will stop toasting a little earlier. What if you really just want to toast for a certain amount of time? There is a mode for that too, by holding the button.
The technology’s biggest challenge is that people are generally used to how toasters work, even if they have to keep an extra eye on them when toasting certain breads – so it could be difficult to convince them that the machine should be doing the watching for them.
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Groundes-Peace acknowledged that a more consistent toasting experience wasn’t necessarily the most blockbuster proposition, and wasn’t solving an issue that’s front of mind for most people, but said that it does iron out a lot of minor toast annoyances.
“There were cases where we just felt like there’s enough frustration out there for us to do something about it. And I know that this isn’t a toaster that’s priced for everybody, and I know the technology is a little bit beyond what people might think is necessary for a toaster, but we think there is a market for it,” he said.
“It’s not going to take over the entire toaster market right now. It’s really for those people that want to invest in their kitchens and choose the best. We think it’s got a home in those kitchens.”
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