By Kate Harvey
Content Manager | Pou Whakahaere Ihirangi
When we get ready to carry out a test, we make sure we include a range of products: from budget products like those offered by Kmart’s Anko and The Warehouse’s Living & Co brands, right up to top-of-the-line expensive products.
Often, we find the cheapies we’ve included do a great job – and sometimes they even earn our recommendation.
Here’s a comparison of how these two budget brands – Anko and Living & Co – fare against each other in some of our kitchen small appliance tests.
Toasters
Winner: Living & Co
We’ve tested three Anko toasters and one Living & Co toaster. The Anko ones all sit near the bottom of the test results, with an overall score of 52 or under out of 100. The $34 Living & Co toaster did slightly better, with an overall score of 57.
That’s still not great! You’d be better off checking out which toasters we recommend and seeing if you can get one on sale.
Once you find a toaster you’re interested in, you can easily link to Price Me and Price Spy from our website to see if it’s on special anywhere. For example, there’s a $70 Russell Hobbs toaster we recommend that you can get for $55 at the moment – only $6 more than a $50 Kmart one.
Kettles
Winner: Anko
Anko jugs do very well and, despite costing between just $10 and $72, beat some big-name expensive kettles. Both the Living & Co jugs we’ve tested are a bit further back in the results – the $29 one was let down by being very noisy. If you want a very cheap kettle, head to Kmart.
Food mixers
Winner: Living & Co
We included a Living & Co hand mixer ($20) and Anko bench mixer ($89) in our food mixers test, and the Living & Co one scored a few points higher. But we also found a lot not to like about both of them. If you just want something to help mix cake batter, the Living & Co one does a better job than the Anko, despite being so cheap and just a hand mixer.
Better yet, check out our test results for food mixers, because there’s a cheap one – under $50 at Farmers at the moment – from a different brand that we really rate.
Espresso machines
Winner: Living & Co
They’re both only $89 to buy, but the Living & Co espresso machine just beats the Anko one by 6 points. None of the cheap machines do very well in our test – you have to spend at least $300 to get one of our Consumer Recommended ones. The cheapest we recommend is a great little capsule machine.
Microwaves
Winner: Anko
We’re going to give Anko the win for microwaves, just because one of the five we’ve tested gets our Consumer Recommended tick among much more expensive models. There’s a few other Anko microwaves that just miss out on our recommendation by a few points. That’s not to say all Anko microwaves are great buys though – there's a $200 one that’s near the bottom of the results. Living & Co microwaves sit around the middle of the results.
Want to know how more Anko and Living & Co products perform in our tests? You might be surprised how cheap it is to become a Consumer NZ member or buy a digital pass.
Once you’re a member, you’ll be able to check out:
the Anko slow cooker that beats $200+ models
which Kmart Anko air fryer we like the best out of the four we’ve tested
what we think of cheap highchairs and a stroller from Kmart
which Kmart pots and pans we think you should buy or avoid
if you can save money and still get good results with an Anko iron.
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