I bought a bag of bagels to toast! I toasted the first one, and I noticed that the lever to push the bagel down was a little flimsy. But it toasted quite well. I had it pretty dark on the first one. The second one I tried, I turned the knob lighter. It was still a bit dark. As I took it out of the toaster, my smoke detector went off! Guess I didn't turn it down enough! LOL It was easy to clean the crumb tray. That's important to me, because I clean it every time I toast.