A toroidal electrostatic analyzer of a design suitable for space plasma instrumentation has been constructed and tested. Experimental results are compared with second‐order ion optical theory and are in good agreement. Verifying the ion optics of the toroid was simplified by use of a position‐sensing microchannel‐plate detector mounted on a positioning system with three translational degrees of freedom located at the toroid exit. The toroidal analyzer described here is the first optical element in a fully toroidal mass spectrograph intended for analysis of kilovolt magnetospheric plasmas.