Alessi SG68 Toaster review: High Italian style with a side of toast

There aren't many modern home appliances as humble as your ordinary kitchen toaster. But if ever there was a product that stood a chance of transcending basic bread-heating, it's the Alessi SG68. Priced at $230 this toast-maker doesn't come cheap, but with a metal body sculpted in high Italian industrial design it strives to reach the heady realm of luxury goods and premium fashion accessories.

6.4

Alessi SG68 Toaster

The Good

The Alessi SG68 has striking style, toasts swiftly, and comes with a snazzy bun and pastry warmer.

The Bad

Thick slices often get stuck in the Alessi SG68's slot and its unconventional design is tricky to use at first. It's also expensive and it browns bread a bit on the light side.

The Bottom Line

Those few who desire a striking toaster conversation piece, look to the Alessi SG68, but for everyone else, a practical toaster makes a great deal more sense.

Unfortunately, while this toaster is lovely to look at and makes toast quickly, it's not very intuitive to operate and thick slices often get stuck in its slot. If you must spend for an upper-end toaster, a much more affordable and easy-to-use alternative is the $100 Cuisinart CPT-440 .

Design, features and usability

Gazing upon the Alessi SG68 for the first time, chances are good you'll be at least intrigued by its gentle curves, polished metal frame and sleek lines. You may not even immediately recognize this machine's primary purpose - to toast your daily bread. That's because appliance maker Alessi tapped Italian designer Stefano Giovannoni to help bring this kitchen gadget to life. And with the SG68, Mr. Giovannoni and his Milan-based industrial design firm say they've created not just a functional object (a toaster) but something of inescapable desire.

Lofty aesthetic claims aside, looking something akin to an aircraft wing or abstract modern art, the Alessi SG68 looks like no other toaster I've ever used. It flaunts a very unconventional oval shape that's much wider than it is deep, spanning a full 16.25 inches across (when viewed from the front), yet it's just 4.5 inches from front to back. Also strange is how Alessi chose to split the toaster's controls into two regions, half on the left edge and half on the right. It may not sound like much of a distinction but all the toasters I've tested keep their dials, knobs, buttons and switches constrained to their front panel, and for good reason.

Unfortunately, having toaster controls in separate sections means you have to set it down on countertops long-ways forward. Otherwise you won't be able to reach half of the SG68's primary functions, let alone see them. And these side panels don't house superfluous toaster features, either.

The left edge contains a sliding lever that can set the degree of toasting (from light to dark) as well as kick the gadget into reheat mode. During the toasting process, pressing this lever down fully causes a light below it to turn on as the lever audibly clicks into place. Both actions communicate that reheating is under way.

Underneath the toast selection lever sits a small bagel mode button, which is easy to overlook, especially since it's labelled with a cryptic hieroglyph rather than actual text. I presume Alessi's use of symbols instead of written words here and across the entire toaster is an effort to keep the SG68 both geographically and linguistically neutral. In addition to the United States, the machine is sold across multiple countries in Europe and in the UK.

The toaster's right edge contains a conventional lift mechanism lever that you pull down all the way to fire up the SG68's heating elements. Underneath this paddle-ended slider sits a big cancel button that glows bright orange when the appliance is active and dispensing heat. Punching the key will abort toasting and trigger the spring-loaded lift lever to rise.

And what design-forward kitchen appliance would be complete without an interesting functional twist? In the case of the Alessi SG68 it's a unique bun-warming rack you place above the toaster's bread slot. Resting about an inch over the slots, the idea here is to warm more fragile treats such as croissants, cinnamon buns, scones and the like.

Once you get the hang of the SG68's odd controls, operating the unconventional machine isn't too tricky. The device essentially functions as typical toasters have for decades, albeit one that's a lot wider and squashed flat (it's only 7.5 inches tall). One caveat is that while Alessi says the device can handle slices of bread 3 cm (1.2 inches) thick, I found that claim dubious. In fact anything beyond 1 inch in the slot tended to jam inside the grilling cage.

In its defense, the Alessi SG68 is a snap to clean. Just slide out the flat crumb tray that rests near the toaster's underside beneath the machine's long bread slot. And unlike the KitchenAid 4-Slice Manual, the SG68's innards don't get overly littered with crumbs.

Performance

Set at medium power, on average the Alessi toaster produced evenly browned bread slices in a remarkably quick 2 minutes, 12 seconds. With the toasting level cranked up to maximum, the SG68 further demonstrated its sporty grilling abilities. It typically served up hot, well-crisped toast in just 2 minutes, 46 seconds. Bagels didn't faze this toaster either, browning in a tidy 2 minutes, 49 seconds.

These numbers make the Alessi SG68 the fastest toaster in our roundup. The next fastest was the Cuisinart CPT-440, which on medium power was only slightly slower (2 minutes, 40 seconds).

One quibble some may have with the Alessi SG68, though, is that it toasts its bread on the light side compared with other products we've put through their paces. Personally I prefer my toast on the beige-to-golden-brown part of the spectrum, so I can't complain. Still, if you crave a seriously charred plank, then this machine isn't for you -- unless you plan to pull the toaster lever a few extra times, all the time.

Conclusion

The $230 Alessi SG68 toaster is quite like other notable examples of luxurious Italian craftsmanship, with crisp Armani suits and swift Ferrari motorcars probably leaping first to mind. And as with these classic indulgences, the SG68 is built toward achieving extreme physical beauty but sports a steep price to match.

I'll concede it's one seriously fast toaster, not to mention an interesting machine to look at. That said, the bread the Alessi SG68 grills is a bit too light and often lodges within its innards if cut just a tad thick. Unless you're a slave to unconventional appliance design or toaster fashion, no amount of aesthetic ingenuity can offset the SG68's high price and quirky handling. For a much better toasting experience I suggest the $100 Cuisinart CPT-440 instead. It's almost as fast, but is a fraction of the Alessi's price, not to mention much easier to use.