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Philips Eco Conscious Edition 5000 Series toaster review
Published: February 7, 2022 at 4:55 PM
4.0
A star rating of 4.0 out of 5.
100% bio-based plastic toaster perfect for a compact kitchen. Read our full review of the Philips Eco Conscious Edition 5000 Series toaster.
Pros
- Ideal for the eco-conscious, compact, quick, warming rack
Cons
- Not great for long slices, sometimes burnt with defrost button
Philips Eco Conscious Edition 5000 Series toaster
As a toaster billed with green credentials, this comes, as you’d expect, with minimal packaging – and 90% of that is recycled. Inside the box, the protective inserts are made from cardboard. At first glance, there’s a plastic bag covering the toaster inside the box but remove it and it says at the bottom “I’m recycled, please keep on recycling me!” The instruction book is made from recycled paper, too. The book itself is full of diagrams, with safety warnings and “before first use” instructions written in several languages.
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The toaster is made from bio-based plastics, which come from biological and renewable resources like sunflower oil. It’s matte with a shiny silver strip and, uniquely, a little wooden lid (with a cautionary sticker warning you not to use it when the toaster is on or hot). This keeps the toaster looking neat, as well as keeping out dust.
The toaster is smaller than average so is ideal for the more compact kitchen.
Read our review of the best toasters to buy.
How well does the Philips Eco toaster work?
The defrost and reheat buttons are part of the main browning dial with only the cancel button (helpfully marked “stop”) being separate. So if you want to toast a slice from frozen, you twist the dial to the frozen icon, which is between settings 6 and 7. This does mean you can’t choose the level of brownness for this function.
There are eight browning levels and one bonus feature is the warming rack, designed for pastries, buns etc. There’s a button on the opposite side to the rest of the controls to lift this.
Results
With a lower-than-average wattage, we thought this might be slow, but that certainly wasn’t the case. Settings 4 and 5 both took around 2 minutes for an average slice, but closer to 2 mins 30 for our thick artisan loaf.
The compact nature of the toaster means the slots are not particularly deep so bigger pieces didn't toast right to the top. However, it coped well with thicker slices including chunky home-made bread and a bagel.
We tested the defrost function several times as results were inconsistent. On the first and third goes, it was fine on one side but burnt on the other. On the second attempt, the toast emerged brown but not burnt on both sides.
Reheat functionality was quick and effective. We were also pleased with the results of the warming rack as a croissant heated nicely.
Conclusion
It’s great to see manufacturers working to make even non-throwaway items more eco-friendly. But this toaster is more than a one-trick pony and it’s of decent quality, too. We particularly liked the bun warmer and the lid. This one worked well for thick slices but less so for taller ones.
Full product specifications:
Wattage: 830w
Weight: 1.23k
Size: 162 x 285 x 199 mm
Key features:
Bagel function: no
Defrost function: yes
Cancel button: yes
Manufacturer warranty: 2 years
Removable crumb tray: yes
Wide slots: yes
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