Great toast!

I love this toaster on many fronts.

*The levers are much easier to push than my old model.
*The levers actually stay down the first time I press them-another improvement over my older toaster.
*I like the way the toast turns out: crisp but not too dry which is much better than the model I'm replacing. No wheat briquettes.
*When you set the two dials to the same number, both sets of toast turn out pretty much the same. With my old toaster, the darkness settings were not created equal and a five on one meant dry white bread, and on the other it meant dark brown. As for the individual slices, sure, I noticed a slight difference, top versus flip side but it was not something that would actually impact the taste of the toast, and not something with which I was concerned. Plus I think this has more to do with the positioning of the toast than the toaster itself.
* The bottom opening for cleaning is a tray rather than a trap door, so it can be removed, and it's flat so it's easy to clean. My old unit had a trap door, so in order to wipe it off you had to hold the entire toaster over the sink with one hand and try to wipe the flappy, sharp-edged, crevice-laden door with the other. Major pain in the kiester. Not only that, but we had a mouse who apparently liked bread crumbs, and he managed to get through the bottom door, which was the reason we trashed the toaster. But with the tray system, there is no opening for the mouse to slip through, and no door latch to defeat. (Of course there are still the top openings, so we keep a heavy basket inverted over the new toaster should the mouse have any buddies that might visit for some early dawn treating.)

There were some issues I'd like to see addressed in any revisionary models:

* The cord for some reason is positioned near the front of the toaster rather than the back, so it greatly lessens the reach of the cord. I sure hope this was a factory mistake rather than a design issue, because I can't think of a good reason for it. My kitchen has a lot of wall space so this wasn't a big problem for me; I can keep the toaster against the wall by the outlet. But for people who have counters extending away from the wall so the space next to the outlet is limited, this may require some shuffling and repositioning of your appliances.
* The tray doesn't look ridiculously durable. The tray itself is metal, of course, but it's attached to the plastic slider in such a way that I have doubt as to how long it will hold. I think I'll make sure I hold the tray by the metal part when I clean it, rather than by the plastic slider, so as to limit the stress on the attachment.

An aside: I did notice a strong "new electronics" smell the first couple of times I used this toaster, which I suppose would be the case with any toaster, and it was temporary. No big deal.

All told, this toaster improves greatly on the one we had, so I'm glad we bought it. I really like it and I'm very happy with the purchase. Plus it was cheap compared to a lot of other similar toasters.