12 best toastie makers and sandwich toasters for perfect toasties

Score: 93/100

A deep-filled sandwich oozing with cheese is the ultimate toastie goal and this health grill delivered just that. The lid adjusted to suit the thickness of your toastie, which means there’s always room for you to stack up the fillings.

Within five minutes of preheating, their toastie was well-cooked, nicely browned, and had the perfect balance of soft, melted cheese and crispy toast. Note this one doesn’t cut and seal your sandwiches, so some filling may ooze out. The non-removable plates make it tricky to clean too. That said, they're non-stick, so food slid right off on test.

Score: 90/100

For ultimate toastie goodness, look no further. This compact, affordable sandwich toaster comes with clear instructions, heats up in just over two minutes and is easy to clean. Our sandwiches were a resounding success, cooking evenly with a golden exterior and oozing centre in around five minutes, while paninis took just two minutes with equally scrumptious results.

There’s room for generously filled toasties, but our edges didn’t always seal completely, so watch out for escaping filling. Note also that, somewhat counterintuitively, when the green light turns off, this means it’s ready to toast. That minor niggle aside, this is a robust machine that will get a lot of use.

Score: 89/100

If you like having options, then this versatile grill-meets-toaster is a no-brainer. Two sets of cooking plates mean you can alternate according to what’s on your menu. The sandwich plates accommodate medium slices of bread, and their depth allows you to pack your sarnies full of all the good stuff. Ours emerged evenly toasted, with perfectly melted cheese (both dairy and vegan) and no runaway filling to mop up.

It cooked paninis well but was a tad too small for them, pushing some of the bread out of the machine. It's quite bulky, too, but it has a premium feel and cleaned easily, so if you’ve got the cupboard space, it’s an excellent multi-tasking investment.

Score: 89/100

Cook up a toastie in less than 10 minutes with this steal of a runner-up. Heating in just over two minutes, turn it on while you prepare your filling and then wait just four-and-a-half minutes to cook your sarnie to a crisp finish.

Nothing oozed out of the compact design, thanks to its reliable seal, but it didn’t brown or heat up as evenly as we’d expect, leaving one side of the sandwich slightly hotter than the other. That said, it was easy to clean and store, making it a snack time game-changer for busy kitchens.

Score: 88/100

Making a toastie doesn’t get much easier than this. After just one minute 43 seconds, the green indicator light turned on to tell us the sandwich maker was ready for cooking. Then five minutes later a well-sealed toastie was ready for our testers to tuck into. Non-stick plates (which wipe clean) meant our toastie came out easily, and our testers praised the crisp results and well-melted cheese – even with our vegan toastie.

Its sleek design makes it easy to tuck away in the cupboard. But the outer casing wasn’t cool to the touch during cooking, so take care to always use the handle, watch for any steam on opening and leave time for it to cool down.

Score: 84/100

Students, this one’s for you. Simple, easy to use, and one of the cheapest toastie makers we tested, it’s a steal that speedily turns out crisp toasties, which are cooked evenly throughout. They were invitingly golden too, with oozing melted cheese.

During testing, the top plates pushed some of the sandwich edges out a tad, resulting in undercooked crusts, but we can forgive this small niggle. This simple toastie maker would make a great go-to for easy meals and snacks, whatever the time of day.

Score: 82/100

A real family-feeder, this will cook four sandwiches at once. Our toasties proved easy to make, thanks to instructive diagrams in the otherwise slightly vague instructions. They also came out golden and well-sealed, losing none of their filling.

The non-stick coating came good, making cleaning a breeze, and built-in storage means the cord packs away neatly. Its non-slip feet lack grip and its ready light is slightly confusing – like our winner, it turns off when the machine is hot enough to toast. That said, the delicious results make these qualms easy to set aside, especially if you’ve got a lot of hungry mouths to feed.

Score: 82/100

Breville claims the plates on this machine are the deepest in its sandwich toaster range, meaning you can cram as much filling into your toastie as you’d like. It delivered for us, producing perfectly golden sandwiches with beautifully melted cheese and no leaky filling.

The slick design is compact and easy to clean, thanks to dishwasher-safe, removable cooking plates. The first time you use it, it has a slightly plastic smell, but the instructions warn of this and by the end of our first batch of toasties, it had gone. We also found that the casing reached over 80C during cooking, so be careful.

Score: 80/100

This toastie maker is sleek and compact, but it’s still got room for serious amounts of ham and cheese. It heated up quickly without the exterior getting too hot, but one of our sandwiches was a scorching 99C when we took it out, so make sure you let them cool down before eating!

The sandwiches browned and crisped up well and the bread fitted nicely within the plate. The cut and seal function didn’t quite close all the edges, leading to some spilt filling, but this is a sturdy toastie maker that gets the job done without taking up too much precious kitchen space.

Score: 80/100

If you want to make a statement in your kitchen, then this handbag-inspired design complete with rose gold accents will do just that. It won’t be a look for everyone, but what will be universally popular is its speed – it heated up in under two minutes and cooked sandwiches in less than six.

It’s compact, but with ample room for two sandwiches, and it closed easily in testing. It left no edges sticking out from the plates when shut, but it didn’t brown evenly, leaving different shades on the top and bottom slices. On the plus side, it’s easy to clean and its unique aesthetic makes for a fun talking point over lunch!

Score: 78/100

This toastie maker turns out sandwiches dreams are made of – evenly cooked, consistently golden and stuffed with plenty of filling thanks to its deep plates.

It got very hot by the handle, so don’t accidentally touch it during cooking, and we found that the cooking was longer than advertised – seven-and-a-half minutes as opposed to between two and four. The instructions also lack detail, but it seals the sandwiches excellently and generally performed well.

Score: 72/100

This heats up in three-and-a-half minutes, leaving you just enough time to slice your cheese and arrange your filling.

We’d have liked the cooking time to be slightly shorter (it took six and a half minutes), but the tops were well-browned, crispy and the cheese nicely melted. They weren’t very well sealed, so some filling leaked but the removable plates easily slid out, and testers found them easy to wipe clean with a cloth.

Note, the external casing reached 72-degrees so make sure to let the toastie maker cool before storing away.