OXO Adjustable Temperature Electric Kettle, Clear

Update July 2023: this thing finally broke and it was all my fault. In a heated moment, the kettle got slammed down on its base too hard (I mean stupid hard) and it wouldn’t make regular electrical contact. After repairing it myself (bad idea, but like I said before, I love this thing and I’m a tinkerer at heart) and recognizing my repair was slowly becoming a fire risk (totally my fault for an unauthorized sketchy and desperate homebrew repair), I replaced it with the same model in January 2021 without a second thought. No regrets – It’s been going strong for the 2.5 years since! I still use it daily to boil probably a cumulative 2 gallons for tea and other things like speed-starting pasta and oatmeal with already-boiling water since this thing is so fast.

At work for about 4 years we have had another popular temperature controlled tea kettle (brand name begins with C and ends in art) with push buttons for different temperatures and the print on the buttons has eroded. It’s annoying because it beeps at you all the time. The C-art kettle broke this week (for the curious: the heating element somehow burned out according to a DMM) and it reminded me how much I love this kettle, so I’ll probably be buying a third one of these to replace the work kettle.

Original review:
Use: I bought this kettle in June 2019, and have used it many times daily excepting only vacations.

Me: Daily tea drinker – oolongs, green, white, Earl grey, you name it. All these teas require very different temperatures to brew in a tasty fashion. If the temperature is off, my expensive and usually tasty tea tastes like donkey doodoo and I’m grumpy and that sucks. I’ve put this kettle through its paces in 9 months.

Pros:
– heats water to 1°F increments over 170°-212° range (do your own Celsius conversions, I drink my tea in Imperial units). I don’t have a calibrated thermometer, but it must be accurate enough for my tea because it’s always tasty.
– looks awesome: smooth surfaces and minimal design mean it’s stupid easy to keep clean. And I’m a slob, so that’s a miracle.
– durable: I’m not gentle to devices. I don’t take caution about using warm water in the kettle to avoid thermal shock on the glass and it hasn’t cracked or even creaked for that matter. Cold water in hot kettle? You bet, all the time.
– Fast: most of the time I start the kettle and run off to do another task – and when I’m done brushing my teeth it’s done making my water hot. Awesome.

Cons:
– bottom temperature is only 170°F: doesn’t really matter for most kettle purposes but there’s been a time I wanted to have “warm” water to shortcut some baking recipes. This is only a very mild disappointment.
– like someone else mentioned in their review, there was a silicone smell/taste at first. I got real nervous about having silicone flavored water coming out of my most expensive hot water maker to date, but it went away after a week or two of daily use. Haven’t had it since, water tastes only like water.

Summary: this kettle is totally worth the cash if you use a device like this all the time. I beat myself up with guilt for a couple weeks for covering such an expensive appliance that does such a basic thing, but if your water temperature matters then this kettle is awesome. And it classes-up my countertop with it’s excellent design. If this one breaks I’ll just buy another one like it, but it’s still going strong after 9ish months of daily beatings. My work has one of those fancy Cuisinart temperature-select push button water kettles at work and this one is way better in both performance, reliability, and design. I basically hate Amazon but after using my kettle this morning for the thirteenthousand time, figured it had earned a positive review on this awful platform anyway. Hope that helps someone!