I’ve had Balmuda’s toaster oven on my radar ever since the design-driven appliance maker from Japan surprised the consumer tech world by launching an impossibly compact Android phone in late 2021. So when I got the opportunity to test the brand’s popular toaster oven, I jumped at the opportunity.

The small appliance is highly rated by consumers and testers and quite  — a tell-tale sign of a product’s hype in this day and age. After years of living with a cheap and barely satisfactory run-of-the-mill toaster,