I was reluctant to spend thirty bucks on a toaster. My old toaster is a 13 year old basic Proctor Silex model. on The old toaster the inner side heating elements never toasted well leaving one side toasted and the other not toasted very well. It was also inconsistent in popping up meaning it could eiher undertoast or burn a piece of toast at amy moment. I have ben eating frozen waffles a lot recently and after several months of morning with either waffles burnt and one side and ok on the other side or toasted alright on one side and completely cold on the other (for that matter having to watch the toaster and manually pop it up as necessary at all times when I toasted anything), I had had enough. I decide to stay away from a basic toaster as I figured that a toaster with a frozen mode may cook a frozen waffle a little better than those basic models and the idea of a bagel mode was appealing even if I don't eat bagels that often.After looking at several toasters in the store, both my wife and I decided that most of the plastic shell models just looked cheap and many of them looked odd and ugly. My wife didn't like the look of the plastic shell cuisinart at all for instance. Therefore, I started looking at stainless steel toasters and I eventually settled on this one as it passed the appearance test with my wife and the price wasn't too exorbitant for a toaster even though it was more than I would normally expect to pay for a toaster.The toaster itself is well built and seems much more solid than those plastic sided toasters. I did look at the proctor silex toasters and examined the inside a little and it does appear that the inside material is a little more substantial on this Black & Decker. While the lift lever feels solid to push down and the buttons are ok, the darkness adjustment knob feels disappointingly cheap, however, I found this to be a problem with many of the toasters I looked at in stores. Careful examination of the outside does show a few flaws in the stainless steel so definitely there are some quality control issues but that is not unexpected in this price range. It does toast evenly on both sides and the frozen mode on waffles was very good at toasting a frozen waffle. However, on taller items, as another reviewer mentioned, it will leave the very tops inadequately toasted. It didn't bother me that much while actually consuming the toast so it may not be that big of problem. I watched the toaster as it was cooking and it appears that the toast lifting mechanism does not have full travel to the bottom of the toaster although you can see that there is space for more travel in the basic design. It is unclear whether this again is a result of poor quality control and that only some toasters have this issue or whether there is a design flaw in the mechanics of the lift lever. The footprint of the toaster I feel is about average for a two slice toaster. Its larger than my old Proctor Silex and some of the other cheapo basic toasters out there but its about the same size as the stainless steel 2-slice cuisinart model which any size difference between that and the plastic cuisinart billed as "compact" is virtually unnoticeable. I have only had the toaster a short time so I cannot comment on long term durability now, but I will try to update this review should it break sometime within the next two years.