Hot consumer reports

Two kettles, both alike in efficacy,
In fair Na Déise, where we lay our scene,
Old kettles have sprung leaks and scalded hands,
And so have been replaced for price not mean.

I've had occasion in the past to laugh at the pretensions of stuff shops like Hardly Normal. They are happy to retail products whose utility has been blizzarded by additional bells and whistles which jack up the price and are a breakable hostage to fortune. It's not as if, when it inevitably breaks, anyone can fix the little engine which raises a toasted slice of bread with the stately majesty of Botticelli's Venus rising from the waves . . . instead of s p r o i i n n g the slice up and onto the floor like normal toasters.

The Shagsperian parody above is to say that we recently stopped using our old kettle when it habitually left a puddle on the counter and bought a new Bosch kettle. Not to be outdone, Pat the Salt's gaff subsequently purchased a new RussellHobbs kettle . . . about which I immediately made disparaging remarks. Blackening their pot kettle without looking critically at our own choice. The most obvious who needs this? complication is that Pat's kettle requires the user to punch 3 buttons in a particular order in order to start the device. ffs, a PIN code for your kettle? But what you're doing is 1) readying the system 2) steady: setting the desired final temp 3) GO. As if people have been crying out for a kettle which will switch off at 80°C. 

Now I have for sure used a kettle to warm some water - prior to adding sourdough starter and flour, for example, but I've gauged the temp with my pinkie [the cleanest of my fingers]. In fairness, I have proposed that different hot bevvies infuse best at different temperatures: maté = 80°C, coffee = 90°C and tea > 95°C . But most users most of the time just want water as hot as poss as quick as poss. Our kettle draws a frightening 3kW of power so it raises ½ lt of water from RT°C to 100°C in 90s. Which makes it about 60% efficient.

Both kettles have incorporated a silly window in the side-wall. Did I say our last kettle leaked? This was the point of failure. It is too murky to easily read the water level for those with aged eyes who may wish to minimize the amount of water boiled to save the planet or their pocket. So XX for both brands on that.

Russell Hobbs has a metal spout which heats higher than 100°C so that the water spits because super-heated when poured out so X.  Bosch makes the spout out of plastic whc steps round this problem so ✓ unless I'm told that the plastic is leaching BPA into my tea, in which case X.

Lid is Massive Fail for Bosch.  You can't open it without pressing a spring-loaded bound-to-fail-sometime button in the handle X. You open the Russell Hobbs lid by opening it with one finger (or three) hoiked under the lid-lip, so ✓. Thing is that designers design on the assumption that engineers will conjure up solutions which are robust; whereas the finance department wants engineers to be cheap. And there you have your thumb on scale of the effects / consequences of capitalism.