| Our verdict at a glance Sage the Toast Select Luxe – around £200. Rating: 8.6/10 One-line verdict: the most capable toaster on the UK market, with a motorised carriage, per-slot control and a progress display that turns browning from guesswork into something repeatable. Buy it if you toast several different things for several different people, want consistent results from the first round to the fourth, and value convenience over repairability. Skip it if you want something you can service yourself, dislike electronic controls in a simple appliance, or would be equally happy with a £60 toaster and a bit of guesswork. |
There is a reasonable argument that a toaster does not need a motor, a microprocessor and an LED progress bar, and that argument has kept the Dualit Classic in production for seventy years. The Sage Toast Select Luxe is the opposite proposition: a toaster designed on the assumption that every part of the process can be improved with a little engineering, and priced at around £200 accordingly.
Weighing up the options? See our round-up of the best toasters in the UK.
What makes it interesting is that most of the additions turn out to be useful rather than decorative. The motorised carriage, the per-slot browning control and the visual progress indicator each solve a specific, real annoyance, and together they make it the most genuinely convenient toaster you can buy. Whether that convenience is worth £200 is the question, and the best toasters UK 2026 guide has the alternatives if the answer is no.
How the Toast Select Luxe compares to the alternatives
In the £150 to £200 bracket, the Sage’s rivals are the Smeg TSF01, which is a conventional toaster in an exceptional body, and the Dualit Classic, which is a deliberately manual machine built to be repaired forever. The Sage is the only one of the three that tries to make the act of toasting better rather than just more attractive or more durable.
Against cheaper toasters, the functional gap is wider here than it usually is at this price. A £60 four-slice toaster will brown bread perfectly adequately, but it will not let you run two slots at a different setting from the other two, it will not lower and raise the bread for you, and it will not show you how far through the cycle you are. Those are the things you are paying for.
It is worth noting that the same machine is sold as a Breville toaster in some markets – Sage is the UK trading name for Breville’s premium range – so reviews and parts listings under either name refer to the same product.
The motorised carriage and lift-and-look
The carriage does not have a lever. Instead, you place the bread in the slots and press the start button, and a motor lowers the bread smoothly into the chamber. At the end of the cycle it raises it back up just as smoothly, and holds it high enough that a crumpet or a small slice can be lifted out without fishing.
The immediate benefit is that nothing is thrown. Conventional spring carriages fire the toast upward with enough force that a thin slice can land on the worktop, and they slam down hard enough that a soft crumpet can compress. The motorised version handles both gently, and it is one of those refinements that is invisible until you go back to a spring toaster and notice how crude it feels.
The lift-and-look button raises the bread mid-cycle so you can check the colour, then returns it and resumes exactly where it left off rather than restarting the timer. On a conventional toaster, checking the toast means cancelling the cycle. This is a small thing that removes a genuine daily irritation.
A Bit More, and the progress display
‘A Bit More’ is the feature people quote, and it earns the attention. If the toast comes out paler than you wanted, one press adds a short, calibrated extra burst rather than a full second cycle. Anyone who has ever put pale toast back in on setting two and pulled out charcoal will recognise the problem it solves.
The progress display is the less obvious innovation and possibly the more useful one. A row of LEDs shows how far through the browning cycle the bread is, so you can see at a glance whether you have thirty seconds or two minutes. In a busy kitchen that changes how you sequence breakfast – you know whether there is time to fry an egg or not. It also means the browning dial finally corresponds to something visible rather than being an abstract number.
There is also a full set of conventional functions: defrost, which pre-warms frozen bread rather than simply toasting longer; bagel, which runs the inner elements hot and the outer ones low; and reheat, which warms cold toast without browning it further. Nothing is missing.
Per-slot control and the four-slice layout
The Luxe is a four-slice toaster with two independent pairs of slots, and each pair has its own browning setting and its own start button. That is the feature that quietly justifies the price in a household where people want different things. One side can run a frozen bagel on defrost-plus-bagel while the other does two slices of white bread on setting three, finishing at different times without either being compromised.
It also means you are not heating four slots to toast one slice, which is both faster and cheaper to run. Most four-slice toasters do offer a single-side option; few offer genuinely independent settings on each side.
The slots are wide and self-centring, taking thick hand-cut bread, bagels, crumpets and muffins without the uneven browning that catches out narrower toasters. Browning consistency across the face of the slice is very good, and – crucially – consistent between the first round and the fourth, because the electronics compensate for the warm chamber rather than ignoring it.
Build, materials and living with it
The body is die-cast metal with a brushed stainless finish, heavy enough to sit still and finished well enough to belong on a worktop. It is a large object – four slices plus the motor assembly – and needs proper clearance, so measure before committing to a small kitchen.
Two crumb trays slide out from the base, one per slot pair, which is more practical than a single long tray on a machine this size. The brushed steel does show fingerprints, which is the usual trade for the finish, and it needs a wipe more often than the Smeg’s enamel.
The one genuine reservation is repairability. This is an electronically controlled appliance with a motor, and while Sage’s build quality is good and the warranty is reasonable, a failure outside warranty is very unlikely to be economic to repair. That is the exact inverse of the Dualit proposition, and it is the strongest argument against spending £200 here rather than there.
Is the Sage Toast Select Luxe worth it?
The case for is straightforward: it does everything a toaster can do, does it consistently, and removes several small daily frictions that most people have simply accepted for decades. In a household of three or four people with different tastes and different bread, the per-slot control and the progress display genuinely change the morning.
The case against is equally straightforward. A £70 four-slice toaster will make perfectly good toast, and the £130 difference is buying convenience rather than a better slice. And unlike the Dualit, this is not an appliance you will still be using in twenty years – electronics and motors do not age the way steel and mica do.
The 8.6 rating reflects a machine that is the best in its category at what it sets out to do, held back only by the long-term durability question that comes with any electronically controlled appliance at this price.
- Ultra-Durable Design: Built to withstand regular use with a hard-wearing knock bar. Dimensions: 190 x 190 x 190 mm
- Removable Knock Bar: Easily removable for quick and convenient cleaning
- Stainless Steel Outer: Offers a sleek, stylish appearance while ensuring durability
- Compact Size: Perfect for any kitchen setup, providing an efficient way to dispose of coffee grounds
- Elegant and Handy: Combines functionality with a refined look, making it a great addition to your coffee accessories
FAQ
What does ‘A Bit More’ actually do?
It adds a short, pre-calibrated extra toasting burst – roughly a fifth of a full cycle – rather than restarting the browning programme. That is the difference between rescuing pale toast and burning it, which is what happens when you put bread back into a conventional toaster on a low setting and it runs a whole second cycle in an already-hot chamber.
Is the Sage Toast Select Luxe the same as a Breville toaster?
Yes. Sage is the brand name used in the UK and Europe for the premium range that Breville sells under its own name in Australia and North America. The machines are identical, so US or Australian reviews of the Breville Die-Cast Toaster or Toast Select Luxe describe the same product.
Can you toast four slices at different settings?
Yes, in two pairs. The Luxe has independent controls for each pair of slots, so one side can run a frozen bagel on a dark setting while the other toasts two slices of white bread lighter, each starting and finishing separately. You cannot set all four slots individually.
Does the motorised carriage make it less reliable?
It adds a mechanism that a spring carriage does not have, so in principle there is more to fail. In practice the motor is lightly loaded and Sage’s build quality in this range is good. The more meaningful reliability point is that the whole machine is electronically controlled and not designed for owner repair, so any significant fault outside warranty is likely to mean replacement.
Is it worth paying more than £100 for a toaster?
Only for specific reasons. Above about £100 you stop buying better toast and start buying either durability, as with the Dualit Classic, design and materials, as with the Smeg, or convenience and control, as here. All three are legitimate, but a £60 toaster from a mainstream brand already browns bread well, and it is worth being clear which of the three you are actually paying for.
The final word
The Toast Select Luxe is the toaster to buy if you want the process handled properly: consistent browning from the first round to the last, independent control for two sets of slots, a display that tells you where you are, and a carriage that treats the bread gently at both ends. Nothing else on the UK market does all of that.
What it will not do is last a lifetime or be repaired on a kitchen table, and at £200 that is a fair thing to weigh. For a busy household feeding several people different things every morning, the convenience is worth the money. For one or two people who eat the same bread every day, a considerably cheaper toaster will do the job with very little lost.
