When I was a kid, I loved my grandmother's toast. It would be nice and buttery in the middle and she'd cook it in the toaster over the broiler. I'd spread some jelly on top and chow down, along with a nice helping of some sausage and grits. Fast forward a decade and some years later, and I still like toast, but I'm too lazy to cook it in a toaster oven. So I went in search of a counter top toaster that fit my budget on Amazon. I found the Proctor Silex Cool-Wall touch Toaster 22605.
For right around $10, I've got a toaster that can brown regular and Texas toast sized bread, English muffins, bagels, and frozen waffles and pastries. The toaster comes with several settings - Light, Medium Light, Medium, Medium Dark, Dark - and has an instruction manual on which setting (or range of settings) best fit whichever type of food you want to brown.
I've toasted regular wheat bread many times on the medium setting, and each time the bread has come out nicely toasted on both sides. And I can pick them up by hand almost immediately and transfer them to a nearby plate or paper towel without burning my fingers off. I've also toasted a couple of English muffins in the Proctor Silex once using the medium dark setting and they came out wonderfully.
The only thing you shouldn't do with it is toast something like Pop Tarts or other toaster pastries, because it's not really designed for that. But if I really wanted to, I can put in a non-cracked, non-broken, or non-warped Pop Tart in, put on the lowest setting and don't let those babies out of my sight until they pop back up and are done.
One of the coolest features, quite literally, and one of the biggest reasons I decided to buy the Proctor Silex 22605 was because of the cool wall touch feature. While your bread is toasting, you can touch the sides (walls) of the toaster without getting burned. (This isn't true for the top or the front and back, so be careful there). The cool touch toaster also comes with a swing open tray at the bottom that you can easily open/remove and clean the crumbs off. (This is just a little something else I do to cut down on cleaning: I use one of the cardboard covers that comes with the cool touch toaster and place it over the top of the slots. I do this to try and cut down on the dust that collects inside).
All in all, I'm very happy with the Proctor Silex 22605 and hope to be using it many times for years to come.