As much as I love my makeshift smart home, the idea of a house where everything is internet-connected sometimes borders on the absurd. In today’s age, we have smart everything: smart fridges, smart ovens, smart vacuums, smart microwaves, smart coffee makers, and, of course, the venerable smart toaster. It’s tales of this last one that I’m going to regale you with today, since I know you’re simply burning up inside (pun intended), not knowing whether you should throw your tried-and-true toasting machine of choice in the trash and take one giant, crumb-laden step into the future.
To help us explore said future, we have before us Revolution’s R180 Connect Plus Smart Toaster. Like any smart gadget worth mentioning, the R180 centers around a giant touchscreen slapped on the front of the toaster. This is where the smarts come in. Here you’ll find all sorts of options for toasting that include an eye-watering 38 bread types, all with seven levels of doneness displayed in varying shades of brown. To be honest, I didn’t even realize how many different things there were to toast until I started tapping through the pages on the R180. There’s an option for white bread, of course, but also waffles, hamburger buns, English muffins, bagels, and (my favorite) LARGE bagels. There’s even an option for pancakes, which I’m told can be bought frozen at the store, a fact I did not know. And speaking of frozen stuff, there are options when you’re getting toasty to cook something that’s fresh, frozen, or to reheat.
Revolution R180 Connect Plus Smart Toaster You don't need a smart toaster. No one does. See at Amazon Pros It toasts bread!
It toasts bread! Lots of settings
Lots of settings No more jump scares with toast Cons It's $400!
It's $400! Some smart features don't pertain to toast
It’s hard to say what separates all of these options from one another, but it’s clear that Revolution did actually focus on the heating element of the R180 and not just the flashy screen stuff. That’s evidenced by the fact that this toaster has a copyrighted heating tech called InstaGLO, which Revolution claims “heats in seconds” and sears bread rather than roasting the life out of it. The subtlety of the R180’s heating coils is meant to toast the outside of the bread without drying it out, according to Revolution, and I will say, at first glance, the coils do look different than your run-of-the-mill toaster. Namely, they’re more slight and spindly, which may be how they get so hot so fast. And as to the claim that it toasts bread without drying it out, I think it does a decent job, though not all the time.
For your bread-and-butter white toast (I’ll see myself out for that double entendre), it does a good job. The brioche I cooked with the “white bread” setting was nice and browned on the outside using the default doneness setting, but was actually a little steamy on the inside. When I switched that setting to “gluten-free,” however, it kind of burned the crap out of the bread, though maybe that’s more to do with the bread than the toaster. It did an okay job with Pop-Tarts, but let’s be honest, that’s pretty hard to mess up. Unrelated to the toasting process, I did wind up with a tummy ache, but I think that’s what’s supposed to happen when you put that many preservatives in your body. This level of variability between toast outcomes, while not ideal if you don’t choose the right setting, is kind of a sign that the toaster is working. There are differences in the preset toast settings, and they have a demonstrable difference on the final product. I’ll give you an example.
See R180 Connect Plus Smart Toaster at Amazon
For shits and giggles, I decided to try and toast a piece of the brioche bread under the artisan bread setting. I mean, what is “artisan,” anyway? How do I know who made this bread? Maybe it came from a family of bakers in Brooklyn. Maybe there’s an independent bread seller going door-to-door trying to grow their gluten empire. Whatever. Maybe I was bending the rules. The important part is I tried it, and the results were… smokey. Trying to toast the brioche under the artisan bread setting was not a good idea, since it started to burn the toast to the point that I cancelled the function early for fear that I would smoke my office kitchen out. On one hand, yikes, but on the other, there’s clearly a major difference in heat and timing between settings that makes presets more tailored to certain things. And that’s the whole damn point.
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