Why doesn't capitalism produce good kettles? | Hacker News Reader

Why doesn't capitalism produce good kettles?

sahba-sanai.medium.com

92 points_donteven231 comments

I have never bought a bad kettle. Maybe I'm just less particular about my kettles, but as far as I can tell, even the cheap £5 ones from ASDA meet all of these requirements.

I have had a Bosch Village Collection kettle for the last 5 years, which I bought for £20. Still works fine and frankly if it broke tomorrow, I can't really complain. I bought it because it was the cheapest 3kW kettle they had.

Also my experience is the limescale filters don't work. If you want a nice cup of tea, you really need to pre-soften your water with a Brita jug and descale regularly. My water is 400ppm at the tap (London!) and the Brita jug takes it down to 150ppm. A monthly descale keeps the kettle nice and clean.

Do they have temperature control?

You have clearly never lived in North America, continent of pathetic kettles. It's hard enough to find one here that's electric in the first place, it seems people prefer to balance their kettles on the tops of stoves, like peasants. On the odd occasion you do find one that plugs into a wall, often it's like it was designed in the dark ages before they were cordless, and of course the cord is only about 6 inches long, so you have to unplug it to move it to the tap for a refill, then plug it in again. My current apartment's kettle doesn't even have a lid or a button, you have to fill it through the spout and it starts boiling immediately when you plug it in. After all that, it still takes about 27 minutes to make a cup of tea. Forget all these fancy lime scale filters and temperature controls, just finding a £5 one that actually worked would be a dream.

Rant aside, apparently a large part of the problem is because North America uses 110v at the wall. Quick explanation here[0]. As mentioned in the linked article, many houses here also have a separate high voltage line for washing machines. Perhaps they should have a high voltage kettle line.

[0] http://wordpress.mrreid.org/2012/04/16/why-kettles-boil-slow...

I’m sorry, but what? There are infinite electric kettles available. 27 minutes to boil water? Again, what?

Seriously, have you ever been in North America? Just go into literally any big box retailer and find the 50 foot long shelves full of electric kettles. Or go to an online retailer, say Amazon, and find hundreds and hundreds of them. Virtually every major brand makes electric kettles, they all seem to work just fine, and they don’t take 27 minutes to boil water.

> 27 minutes to boil water? Again, what?

They're exaggerating. But your typical North American electric kettle is—ballpark—twice as slow as a European kettle.

Your standard North American sockets provide half the voltage but not double the amperage, so they're half as powerful.

Not much we can do about that, I’m afraid. Most residential outlets are 15 amps, and to double them to 30 amps or convert them to 240V would require costly rewiring. And copper prices are sky-high these days.

I wonder if a kettle with a J1772 or Tesla port...

What about a kettle with a giant battery pack that charges when idle and boils at 10kW when you press the button.

At that point one might as well get an instant boiling water tap system.

Photonicinduction's 10-second kettle[1] doesn't use a battery, instead it uses his 100A 240V input through a big variac to run at 10kW (440V, 22.7A). This isn't good for the longevity of the kettle he used, sadly.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDLw1Rx_cAI

>Photonicinduction

whatever happened to the guy, i was a fan of his videos then he stopped posting a few years back...

electroboom seems to be covering a similar niche, so that's good though.

Joking aside, I use a Zojirushi vacuum kettle that keeps the water at the correct temperature at all times, so I never wait.

The electrician, drywall repair, and other skilled labor costs of running a thicker gauge wire to the kitchen from the circuit breaker would far outweigh the cost of the wire itself. By orders of magnitude.

From web searching, North America is 120V but two phases. So you could redo the socket to 240V without running new cable through your walls.

But that's kinda academic if nobody sells kettles that have the North American 240V plug.

> From web searching, North America is 120V but two phases. So you could redo the socket to 240V without running new cable through your walls.

You'd need an extra conductor of wire than is there in the cable for a standard 240V outlet. (Hot1, Hot2, Neutral, Gnd).

You can run a Hot1/Hot2 240V circuit with existing 14/2 romex, but odds are that whatever feeds the outlet in your kitchen also feeds many other outlets, and you don't want them all to be 240V.

Note North America doesn't use ring circuits like the UK.

The Japanese hot water things basically solve this problem too by maintaining hot water all the time.

Convenient but inefficient.

So water heaters are inefficient? I’m confused, they save time.

I mean the thermal (and hence, electrical) inefficiency of keeping hot water warm all the time.

Similarly, even with good insulation, a combi boiler is more efficient than having a hot water tank.

Or you could use two kettles

This guy thinks outside the box.

Till the fuses flip.

Yeah this only works if you have more than one circuit.

Sure, but 27 minutes is such an absurd exaggeration. I can boil a liter of water on my electric kettle in 4-5 minutes. I rarely need a full liter, anyway, and I don’t always want the water at boiling temperature. It is typically under 2 minutes for me to have hot water for a cup of tea. In Europe maybe those numbers are halved, but to me it’s just a trivial difference.

Sure. But what about 1.7L? That's what my typical kettles does, at maximum.

It's great for boiling water for cooking; at 230V it's faster than heating on the hob. But if it took 7–8 minutes, that'd be frustrating.

My stove has a power boil option for that. Do you typically use your kettle to boil water for cooking?

I typically don’t even keep track of how long it takes to boil on the stove. I just do the rest of the prep work.

Yeah, we use the kettle all the time, for quickly bringing water to the boil. Always for pasta. Sometimes for potatoes (though they are probably better gradually heated from cold).

A power boil option would be a decent alternative.

I'm probably just impatient, to be fair.

Electric kettles in America seem to be something of a boutique item. I often had to say “tea kettle” before anyone even understood what I was looking for.

They are definitely 100% available to buy. However, they cost more and seem to be of lower quality than the range available in the UK.

I suspect the voltage difference is the underlying reason. If you have a gas burner then an old fashioned stovetop kettle is almost as fast as an electric kettle in the US.

I don’t know about Canada and Mexico, but these are the search results for a popular US store:

https://www.target.com/s/kettle

I’ve been using this $25 kettle for many years now:

https://www.target.com/p/hamilton-beach-1l-electric-kettle-s...

The cord is “6 inches” (it’s actually 24 inches on my cheap kettle) because most kitchens in the US have many power outlets at the countertop, where the kettle sits. It would be annoying to deal with excess wire.

Americans cut the Gordian knot of the impossible kettle by making tea in the microwave.

As an American who makes tea in the microwave, I feel disparaged.

>it seems people prefer to balance their kettles on the tops of stoves, like peasants

Is your kettle faster than a stove? Perceptions of speed are funny.

I live in the norther part of India near Himalayas, water to my house has 200-250 TDS and I use RO system to turn it down to 1TDS then it's remineralized again.

The short answer is, companies produce what most people are willing to buy and produces most income. That is not the same as producing best products for customers.

Some companies found the way to produce most income by offering best products for customers.

I am not an expert on kettles and might of course be oblivious to some glaring obvious facts about kettle-making business.

But it seems that it is very likely that good kettles just don't differ much form mediocre ones, when put on the shelf of the supermarket or when put on Amazon against competition that can buy a bunch of fake reviews. There would be no practical reason to spend a lot more on research to produce something that would not at all bring more income for the company.

Most people will buy cheapest kettle that satisfies their basic requirements. For me this is: it keeps proper volume of water, it heats water quickly, does not smell, is easy to clean from scale. Mine is quite expensive compared to most kettles only because "does not smell" is very difficult to meet (or it was when I bought it a decade ago).

There are good kettles. These are produced by companies who found their niche producing for customers who just don't care about how much stuff costs and will buy the best of each category regardless of how expensive it is. So while they might be good mechanically, I think overall they are not as good products when comparing return on the investment.

Now, as to filters, I would NOT buy a kettle with a filter.

Filter is something that keeps impurities and I definitely don't want that sitting hot in my kettle.

Also, filter will not prevent scale from depositing. There is no practical way to prevent scale depositing other than using distilled water which will make everything taste awful and will probably not be good for your health.

Contrary to popular opinion, "hard" water with lots of minerals is better for your kettle than water with little minerals. The scale that deposits from hard water is very porous and it practically cleans itself and is easy to remove with a little bit of citric acid.

The scale that deposits from water that has little minerals, depending on composition, can be very dense, hard and nonporous making it difficult to clean.

> There is no practical way to prevent scale depositing other than using distilled water

This isn’t exactly true, scale builds up because of certain minerals, not just any mineral, so filtering for those achieves similar results. For example, soft water also doesn’t build up scale. Anecdotally I make tea and coffee every day and use Brita filtered water and don’t get scale build up in my kettle, whereas using tap water builds scale in only a couple uses.

Seconded. We have extremely hard water and a water softening system (the kind you fill up with 50kg of salt or potassium every few months) + under-sink reverse osmosis. Water produced by the RO system can be boiled or evaporated with no, or at least microscopic, residue. Boil a liter or two of the untreated water and you'll be scouring the pan or kettle afterward.

This is very simple. If water leaves no residue then you have an equivalent of distilled water. Normal water for human consumption should contain palette of minerals. First to taste well, second to supplement your diet (supposedly, I don't have hard facts).

Also water safety issues. Flint, MI found out the very hard way what happens when you don't put that stuff in.

This is crankery. Minerals are collected by the body from all sources. The grains, fruits, vegetables, and meat one eats are surely not fed with distilled or RO'd water. Unless your diet is extremely unusual, the trace minerals removed from water will never be a problem.

WHO disagrees with you.

HEALTH RISKS FROM DRINKING DEMINERALISED WATER

"V. CONCLUSIONS Drinking water should contain minimum levels of certain essential minerals (and other components such as carbonates)."

https://www.who.int/water_sanitation_health/dwq/nutrientscha...

Quoting the paper:

> In the past, acute health problems were reported in mountain climbers who had prepared their beverages with melted snow that was not supplemented with necessary ions. A more severe course of such a condition coupled with brain oedema, convulsions and metabolic acidosis was reported in infants whose drinks had been prepared with distilled or low-mineral bottled water (11).

Reference 11:

> 11. Anonymous. Hyponatremic seizures among infants fed with commercial bottled drinking water – Wisconsin, 1993. MMWR 1994; 43: 641-643.

Look that paper up and you will find the two (!) case studies in it were a woman who subsituted bottle formula with water for a whole day and a woman who gave her infant three bottles of formula a day and three bottles of water a day.

This is a reference I picked at random, from a provocative claim; it was so dishonest I didn't bother with the rest.

It is not like getting this kind of knowledge is easy to get, even for WHO.

You can't just yank 200 people, feed 100 of them distilled water for 10 years and make the other 100 control group.

I have more questions.

This paper is actually written by a Czech academic. It is hosted on the WHO website, but that tells us nothing. Do they endorse the paper, or do they just host it because it was referenced? What does the WHO actually have to say about RO water?

When I google "revere osmosis health problems" I get mostly conspiracy sites and "natural healing" bloggers trying to sell me crystals. The only MD opinions I can find say there is no substantial evidence of concern. Can you cite a medical professional's opinion?

Are you just googling narrowly to support your opinion and then throwing PDFs at me? That seems to be the case.

Sadly, the WHO are as prone to manipulation as any other political institution. Their continued recommendation to mutilate the genitals of infant males is another example.

There exist probably no single organization in the world that would agree with all your world views.

Does that mean you negate everything written by everybody?

> making it difficult to clean

If scale == lime then vinegar gets rid of it easily.

Your response is great and on point. I am not OP, but the filter is not to prevent scale from depositing in the kettle. Nor is it for filtering out dissolved minerals in the water. My kettle often ends up having small grains is scale floating around freely. If I completely empty it, they go into my coffee. Such a filter would keep these bits away from my brew.

>distilled water which will make everything taste awful

Huh, why? Does distilled water taste bad?

I have a reverse osmosis filter so there is never any mineral buildup in our kettle.

We have a glass kettle which cost £35, and is as good as new; even after a few years of use several time a day.

I feel like this article is intentionally pulling my leg.

There are hundreds of kettles on Amazon alone that meet this list of demands. The kettle at home I've had for 12 years meets them too. But the author gives up after trying two of the cheapest available?

After the over-the-top section about the bright lights and loud beeping, I started to imagine this as a parody of an English person complaining about stuff...

Hi, author here. I've owned kettles with lights (and I like them). I've owned kettles that beep (and I don't mind it at all). Believe me when I tell you, that section of my article was not over-the-top. On the first day, I sat on the couch (about 7 meters away from the kettle) and the light of the kettle shone so brightly in my eye that my first thought was that someone was flashing a laser into my eyes through the window.

Sometimes consumer electronics stuff is too bright-- it seems the market has a preference for bright blue LEDs still.

But all you need to do to fix this is color over the light with a black sharpie. It reduces the brightness by 75%+.

I’ve had blue lights that black sharpie could not dim.

The solution for those is black nail polish. Dirt cheap, easy to apply since it’s more of a goo than a liquid which you apply it by a brush that comes with the bottle, and it’s completely impervious to any sort of light shining through in one coat. If you’d like some light to see if the thing is on or off, apply a thinner coat.

It completely solved my aggressive LEDs on things problem.

That black kettle on the left of your photo is sold in US as "Fellowes". Notice how closely to the knob the venting steam flows? I've burnt myself a few times that way. An asymmetrical knob could remind the user of the safe grasp angle -- but then off course it wouldn't look so "minimal" in photos ...

Here's a t-fal kettle that suits.

I have a nearly 20 year old T-Fal kettle that I keep waiting to fail so I can replace w/ one that allows me to adjust the temperature but the thing just keeps working. Seriously, 20 years, used 2-5 times/day.

Amazon sells the T-fal BF6138 for $33 in the US. It has a window to see water levels, temp control, and a scale filter. Warning: the scale filters on mine only last 8-10 years. But I can't complain.

https://www.amazon.com/T-fal-Balanced-1750-Watt-Electric-Tem...

I dunno, manufacturers seem to love those bright blue LEDs. Maybe they're the cheapest? But I can't be the only person who finds them annoying. I have multiple devices where I can cover the blue leds with a layer or two of tape and they're still too bright. Let alone their use in a dark room.

My kettle was cheap AND works well. What's the problem? Cherry-picking?

Hi, author here.

Can you please send me a link? (not being snarky).

Thanks

I have this one, I like it. But there are many more like it.

https://www.bosch-home.co.uk/product-list/kettles-toasters/k...

Me too.

I have had to buy a half-dozen kettles in recent years (for more than one place), and they have all failed after about a year. These are $60-$90 kettles, old brands (e.g. Kitchenaid, warning!) with reputations they should want to maintain. Taking one apart, it is clear it was designed to fail after a short time in normal use. (Aside, KA mixers are now crap, too.)

There is a mainstream term: Planned Obsolescence. This is a real phenomenon, a fixed-point of runaway capitalism. We cannot tell by looking how long a thing will last. We have to depend on reviews, but the review systems get corrupted.

This has been well-known for many decades. Gaslighting the OP is nothing but abuse. It is often possible to buy a reliable product in a category, but its maker operates at a sharp commercial disadvantage vs. the shoddy work, by a process analogous to Gresham's Law. The bad products generate more profit, enabling more effective promotion, getting more sales and displacing the good ones. Makers of good products fall into line, or are driven out of business.

So, identifying a good product and spreading the word is the only defense we have.

Some people adopt a policy of never buying anything they have seen an ad for, on the principle that they would be paying for the ad instead of the product. This works, except that many products we need are not advertised. Also, some of us have been successful at largely eliminating our exposure to normal advertising, and even to "placements", advertising disguised as content, and we lose access to that signal.

But I don't think kettles are advertised much.

Buying a cheap kettle with fewer features often works, as there is less to go wrong, and the makers may be still trying to develop a reputation that could command a higher price--but not if you want the features.

So we have to rely on referrals from other buyers who got lucky and happened upon a good product.

The irony is that many of us would be ready, even eager, to pay a premium for quality, but apparently cannot find it at any price, or only at a price that would not enable a quality producer to stay in business while paying employees a living wage.

I use the previous version of this that I purchased in college nearly a decade ago: https://www.amazon.com/Adagio-Teas-010026001-variable-temper... Use it 4x a day and have descaled it several times.

My brother has had one of these for 8+ years and uses it all the time: https://www.amazon.com/Beach-Temperature-Auto-Shutoff-Protec...

My parents run a motel and they stuck close to 4 dozen Amazon Basic units in the rooms - haven't replaced a single one yet: https://www.amazon.com/AmazonBasics-Stainless-Steel-Electric...

Like, I can't think of a single electric kettle I or my friends have owned that hasn't been absolutely bulletproof.

Once a product is good and sells well, all the incentive goes to aggressively reducing costs (and thus making the product worse) and making sure that no other good products appear. A stable state of this situation is that every company is making low-quality products.

Planned obsolescence is also a factor. See, for example, the Phoebus cartel: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoebus_cartel

Other examples abound. The modern version of planned obsolescence is corporations using the DMCA to prevent consumers from repairing their own stuff.

A certain amount of planned obsolescence can be a force for good. It makes sure that production capacity does not become stagnant and disappear. But senseless cost reduction is an atrociously bad thing.

I draw a hard moral line here: Intentionally designing failure into a product is just plain wrong.

I don't mean fail safes, like building a table saw that fires an explosive charge to stop a spinning blade when it detects the presence of a finger [0]. If some given production capacity can only be sustained by selling fresh barrels of oil converted into easily-broken home goods is it worth sustaining?

[0] https://sawstop.com

On the other hand, perishable stuff is pretty natural. If anything, it is non-perishable stuff that seems odd... There's nothing eternal in an ecosystem. Individual animals and plants die continuously and their stuff is recycled on an on. The individual cells on your body die and are replaced.

While I absolutely abhor that you cannot buy a toaster that lasts more than two years, I still see a case for well-thought-out obsolescence to be an important ingredient in sustainability.

Think about a spaceship that is moving a city to another star system for a multi-generation trip. Would you embark anything that is non-perishable? What if it breaks by accident? It is maybe better to make sure that nothing lasts more than a generation, so that there's always people having the experience to build it again (because they have already built it before).

I'm not convinced by your "moral hard line" against planned obsolescence. It is a matter of quantity: today our technology is sadly too perishable. But a (tiny) amount of planned obsolescence may still be a good thing. Just don't say it too loud :)

Mechanical design is all about designing failures.

You want the thing to break in a safe way where you can tell before hand that it's aging and needs replacement

That’s not designing failure into a product. That’s designing a product so that when it does, it fails in specific ways. The latter is just good product design and engineering; the former is what’s arguably unethical.

quality isn't a binary state, but a continuum.

Therefore, by adjusting the quality down a little bit, the company gets a bit of feedback as to how low quality a typical consumer is able to tolerate at their price point.

So i think ultimately the responsibility lies with the consumer to demand the quality they want by purchasing good quality stuff, even if it costs more, and to educate themselves to discern what is quality and what is fluff.

Spoken like a person with a good income. The principal is fine, but the definition of expensive varies by person and product.

The issue is that higher price and promise of quality does not reflect reality once you start using the item. We paid £100+ for a cutlery set and it still stained for example.

Maybe it’s users fault but wouldn’t that imply that buying good ratings on sites like Amazon would be fruitless? If users don’t care that is.

Hi, author here. Thanks for your comment.

Follow up question: can't a competitor make a kettle that's 20% better (and more profitable)? You do say that the incentive goes to "making sure that no other good products appear", but I'm not sure how a Bosch can stop a Cuisinart from making a slightly superior (and more profitable) kettle.

Maybe. A competitor, however, can’t make people pay more for a kettle that’s insufficiently marginally better.

Considering these are multinational companies doing at least tens of millions in business every year, I presume they have the expertise to do obvious market research and come to the correct conclusions about what and how much people are willing to pay for, and that is reflected in the choices you see in the marketplace.

That's a good point. Thanks. So I guess it boils down to (heh) "most consumers are happy with the existing kettles" (which could actually negate the very premise of my article.

I believe the same problem exists with another kitchen appliance: toasters.

Is there a single toaster able to consistently toast bread to the same level each time? The technology must exist.

Commercial toasters, like those used in restaurants and hotels, do this.

Sadly for a ludicrous price.

I don't mind paying for quality, but a 700-1000$ for a toaster is too much

It's not even the price. I have a commercial toaster sitting in the garage, works well. But I don't have counter space or a need for a toaster with a conveyor belt. I'm just not making that much toast.

The main problem is toasters generally toast the bread for a set (adjustable) time. When you toast the first slices the toaster starts cold, but when you toast more slices right after the toaster starts hot so the slices get toasted more.

If only there was some sort of “sensor for temperature” so the toaster could adjust the time with its temperature.

I think bigger problems is the moisture content of the bread itself.

Unless your bread is fresh out of the pack, depending on where you brought it from either refrigerator or rack, it's moisture content is going to vary changing your toasting time.

This one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1OfxlSG6q5Y

Oh yes!

Technology Connections made a video about just that, and it’s crazy that bread colour control just no longer exists!

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=1OfxlSG6q5Y

The breville toaster ovens work fairly well. If you have it set to "6" and toast some bread, and put more bread in immediately afterwards, it correctly reduces the toasting time, since it is already warm.

I've had one of these for nearly a decade now, and I love it. I even use it in place of the regular oven when I've got something that needs baking that's small enough to fit, just because it takes about 1/4 the time to come up to temperature.

Since the bread is flat in there, it also makes it much easier to melt cheese on top of it without either getting the bread hot enough to melt it all by itself (which would surely leave it much browner than I like), or microwaving, which makes the bread soft and moist.

> I was confused: how could a (very expensive) kettle not come with a filter? (When water boils, calcium precipitates. That’s why your kettle gets much more limescale than your water jug).

Do you not have vinegar? Specifically: white distilled vinegar (5% or 6%)?

That does a very good job at cleaning off limescale / calcium / other deposits. Pour onto the scale, wait 15 minutes, and rinse it out. Acids man, they work.

Everything else seems available on a $15 kettle.

If you have hard water, you'd know just how silly that question is. Everyone descales their kettles at some point, but we don't want to do it every other day. That's too much effort for making coffee or tea. The filter is there to extend the amount of time you can go between descaling to reasonable timescales.

I went on a similar kettle-quest a while ago and wound up accepting the disco-ball LED enhanced model because it was cheap and did the job (and mine doesn't beep - that would have immediately sent it back). I still think about going with the fancier one with a temp control for that perfect cup, but just waiting a minute for the water to come off the boil is fine enough for me.

I'm looking at that limescale filter pictured: and I don't think it helps with hard water at all.

It looks like the point of the limescale filter in the picture is for keeping the limescale IN the kettle, and preventing chunks of limescale from pouring out of the kettle and into your teacups. Anything else, it'd be utterly useless for.

A tiny metal mesh won't do anything to pull limescale out of hard water. For that, you need Reverse Osmosis and/or demineralizer. Much larger activated carbon-filters (aka: Brita) barely helps with hard water in my experience (and Youtube tests suggest it doesn't change ppm counts much at all).

(Brita clearly makes a different taste: so its filtering something out of the water. But its just not limestone / scale / the stuff that makes hard water)

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Descaling with vinegar (or citric acid tablets, or some other acid) seems to be the easiest solution, short of a more expensive, dedicated filter (like Reverse Osmosis).

You're just not going to soften hard water with a reusable mesh. That's just not how hard water works.

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IMO: That's why we don't see limescale filters on electric kettles. Physics / chemistry simply doesn't work the way the parent post expects.

> It looks like the point of the limescale filter in the picture is for keeping the limescale IN the kettle, and preventing chunks of limescale from pouring out of the kettle and into your teacups.

That's the point, yes. You have tea with lime flakes otherwise.

As for filters I actually prefer the taste of hard water (and the tap water is good to drink where I live, just inconvenient).

As for kettles - most people where I live use the ones you put on your gas stove as electricity is more expansive.

It takes around 1/5th kWh to boil a liter of water, or around $0.04 for me (in a place of fairly expensive electricity for the US).

How much cheaper would gas have to be for me to choose gas over electric? Probably $0.25/liter or more cheaper.

People I know with gas or induction stoves use it to boil water because it's faster. This must be doubly true in the US with it's comparatively weak power outlets.

I measured. It takes fully twice as long on a gas range burner, with a wide, flat-bottom kettle.

I have no reason to doubt your result for one specific electrical kettle and one specific gas stove.

Well, yeah. That's exactly what it's for. The kettle I'm using right now has one and that's exactly what it's for.

I get that it's fun to try to "big time" me with physical explanations for simple phenomenons that anyone who actually owns a kettle can explain, but it's very simple: the filter isn't there to provide any kind of softening. It's there to keep chunks of limescale from falling out of the kettle when you pour the water.

Yep, that's the big mystery you couldn't solve in 30 sentences. It's a strainer.

Just trying to understand your thought process here - did you think that the parent thought that the filter would somehow remove lime out of thin air? I'm honestly amazed how you didn't immediately come to the conclusion that it's just for filtering lime out before pouring.

I have been in homes with hard water, but its not my day-to-day life.

I usually use a $15 kettle, and no lime precipitates when I typically use a boiler. I can see that lime eventually builds up in the kettle, but as described earlier: a bit of vinegar removes those deposits without much issue.

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Honestly, I can't say that I've ever seen water so hard that it'd precipitate visible amounts of lime in a kettle. I usually see that sort of stuff on humidifiers or distillers. Not really a kettle.

I mean, everything eventually has lime buildup ("soft water" isn't free of lime/calcium, it just has 1/2 the calcium of hard water). Knowing how to clean that stuff off is important.

I had no idea how bad hard water could get until I moved to London.

I get limescale on everything. I descale my kettle every week or two (almost daily if not using a Brita filter), shower head monthly. I pour citric acid down the toilet weekly. My taps actually form little calcium stalactites over a few months. Thermostatic shower cartridges are an annual replacement item because the limescale gets them too.

I keep demineralised water around for sensitive equipment like humidifiers.

On the bright side, I love how hard water tastes.

I use the Brita Maxtra+, and have confirmed with test strips and en electric meter that it reduces my 400ppm to 150ppm or so. Not zero, but significantly increases the interval between rescaling and results in a more pleasant cup of tea. Not sure about the others, but the Maxtra+ is advertised specifically to soften water.

However the filters do not last as long as they claim. I have to replace the filter maybe 2/3 through it’s rated life or I start to get limescale and tea scum.

I don’t drink the Brita water though. I much prefer the taste of hard water.

> If you have hard water, you'd know just how silly that question is. Everyone descales their kettles at some point, but we don't want to do it every other day. That's too much effort for making coffee or tea.

I have very hard water and I do it every day before I boil soft water for green tea. It takes only 1-2 minutes...

I only ingest RO water, no scale to speak of.

I recommend using a microwave to heat water (with a porous wooden stirring rod to prevent overheating).

I cook all of my food in a microwave using techniques and technology developed in the 70s. Browning pans have evolved since then and I can cook better food than ever in one sixth of the time. My oven/grill is called a MicroPro and is made by Tupperware. It is actually life changing. My wife cooks for me consistently for the first time in our marriage of 10 years, I never get burned cooking, and we get 2 hours back in every day.

I am convinced that the microwave cooking movement was opposed by the fossil fuel industry and oven manufacturers.

Electric pressure cookers can achieve the same thing and arguably produce tastier food. The electricity use is probably even less than a microwave due to the lack of evaporation.

pressure cookers require WET food. They're only for a subset of food.

I have a rice cooker and a bread maker too. There is a pressure cooker for the microwave, but I don’t feel I need one. Time savings—-the ability to make a Thanksgiving meal for 4 and eat it and put it away and clean up in 35 minutes—-is the main benefit. You would never know the food was cooked in a microwave. It is indistinguishable. Bad associations created through de Beers style society level advertising campaigns that seem more like traditions than advertisement are the reason.

The only reason I can buck these trends is that I have made my living in advertising and public opinion influencing.

Bespoke good design exists. It's a niche, and rarely survives mass production if has moving parts or requires close tolerances, and unused features are whittled away.

The original openwrt targeted a design of home router which was hackable. The first thing the v2 did was shrink the memory and run a simpler OS: it became less hackable, because the bill of materials shaved 15c off manufacturing costs and hackability was not in the design goal spec.

Bauhaus design was awesome because it was applicable to mass production. But, if you look at modern derivative they aren't quite as good. Same with eames chair, and I guess, this kettle: it's not innately profitable to have a satisfying click when the lid shuts, at 2x the unit cost to make unless it's 10x the unit cost to sell

Yeah, perhaps globalism doesn't give an opportunity for "pride in craft" the way it did in the old days.

Maybe the UK just has a more developed market, but places like John Lewis almost certainly sell a kettle that meets all those points. It'll be pricey.

But places like Argos will too.

This one is only £20 and hits all their points: https://www.argos.co.uk/product/8528728?clickSR=slp:term:ket...

I bought my dad a kettle from Tesco 5 years ago for £5. He uses it daily and it still works.

Re scaling, he uses bottled water (which may upset some people, I'm sorry) but you can buy 5 ltr bottles for £1 and you get no scaling at all. His kettle inside is as good as new. inside.

Hi, author here. I do think that the UK probably has one of the more develop kettle markets (I was extra surprised when my extra expensive kettle bought in the UK didn't have a limescale mesh, considering high calcium levels in London and elsewhere in the UK).

And, not trying to be snarky, but with the kettle you list one has to open the lid (or lift it up) to get a sense of how much water is in there. One of the requirements listed in the article is for the water level to be shown to the user.

If by lime scale filter they mean a mesh screen to prevent the scale flakes from getting in your cup, then I agree that would be nice, the screen on mine lets small flakes through.

If by filter they want to prevent limescale in the first place, that requires an ion exchange resin and I highly doubt any kettle includes that or anyone would want a kettle that includes that. Or it would require an even less practical membrane that the water would be pumped through at high pressure. Or a two stage kettle where the that distills the water for you.

If the kettle claims to have a filter to prevent scale, i.e. remove calcium, then the kettle is lying.

The trend for kitchen products which beep at you baffles me. Kettles, dishwashers, washing machines, ovens and hobs all seem to beep these days and there's almost never a way to switch it off. Can anyone tell me why? I can't believe anyone actually likes the beeping. Is it a result of disability legislation maybe?

I am quite happy with this recent purchase : https://www.palaisdesthes.com/en/stainless-steel-with-variab...

Looks a bit like Cuisinart. Costs about the same too, the only difference being that Cuisinart has a temperature quick select on buttons (85° and 100°C), and the lid opens from a button above the handle.

The lid button is surprisingly nice to have, because you don't accidentally burn your hand when refilling right after the first batch.

If it's recent, you don't know whether it will fail next week.

I’ve baught the same kettle several times during more than 20 years years. Very durable design. It fullfils all the points, except the bonus point. Price is close:

https://www.amazon.de/-/en/Philips-HD4646-00-kettle-anti-lim...

Why multiple times? What about durability?

Could have been for different people as presents? Lost in a move? Etc

Presents. One new for myself. Edit: Two actually. Retired one after about 10 years for safety reasons. Still have it as a backup.

Several times over the course of 20 years is not that bad. I'm guessing he wouldn't be buying it every 2 years (like common appliances that break apart right after guarantee period).

Some people I know have a 50 year old kettle. Sure, they look a bit old fashioned, and have marks and scratches, but they still 100% boil water.

I don't really see any reason kettles can't be made to last that long - it isn't like the human need for boiling water is going away anytime soon.

To get a design that lasts that long isn't much more expensive either - all it takes is very carefully recording what's broken on each kettle that fails, and modifying the design to avoid that failure mode. Within a few iterations, you'll end up with most kettles lasting 50 years.

50 years is a bit extrem, but my expectation would be 10 years minimum.

Have just one year to go for my Wilfa kettle (2L, temperature control, has filter, wireless charging, pours badly though)

I regularly use a Philips hand mixer, mostly for whipped cream, which was gifted to me in 1973.

Came to recommend the same one. My first one stopped working after a decade, now been on the second one for six years. (The "stopped working" thing is not ideal, but given the constant use, also not a dealbreaker for an electrical appliance.) I most like it for the big ... 'spout'? that allows filling it without needing the lift the lid.

I do remember it being the only decent option in the store. I guess other people have other priorities in kettles, for all those other models to stick around?

Stop working is the right way. I was a guest once where the kettle set on fire. Recommended this on as replacement.

Funny, I've spent entirely too much on the one I have in the US because it has a temperature control. I want my tea and coffee at hot, but below boiling so it doesn't wreck my mouth. He calls it a bonus but it's the one feature I actually care about.

You do realise you don't have to drink it while it's actually boiling, don't you? You can:

1: Leave it a few minutes to cool down

2: Blow on it

Jeebus! --talk about 1st world problems!

I just put a couple ice cubes in my cup and pour the brewed tea in.

I just use a bit of tap water, the Δt is about the same and it's less wasteful.

Thanks! I’ve started doing this myself and it works even better than ice.

My dog is sadder now though. She loves to eat ice, so if I’m opening the freezer less she misses out.

Temperature control is also important if you aren’t drinking black tea. Green, white, other other teas have optimal brewing temps.

While you can stop the kettle at those temps that is a lot harder than it happening manually.

Similar Philips story for me - had several pairs of SHP2000 (and HP200, which is basically an earlier model nr for the same exact headphones) over the last 20+ years. They're comfy, sound great for their price and the quality hasn't become worse over the years.

I got a pair of HP200s in the 90s for 40 guilders ($20 USD). Easily the best value headphones I have ever purchased, was a shame when they got stolen.

"Currently unavailable" LOL

Yeapp, that kettle got Hackernewsed SO badly!

As someone who remembers very little of the German he took in college, I’d like to mention that I’m amused that a kettle is literally a “water cooker” (Wasserkocher) in German.

kochen can mean to cook or to boil, so in this case water boiler is the literal translation.

According to some accounts Germans were unintelligible barbarians who couldn't have known cooking other than boiling bones to create broth.

We have a similar Breville kettle (it’s a Strix design sold under several consumer brand names) and it doesn’t have temperature control which is the cause of the OP’s troubles.

https://strix.com

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Taylor_(inventor)#Career

"'temporarily' out of stock"

There are two drivers at work here: - Luring customers to buy your brand (and not someone else’s) - Enticing customers to upgrade (think cars jam packed with undesirable features).

It’s very easy to list features, whereas a good portion of your list is harder to quantify; or taken for granted until it’s bought.

Another standard practice is to stuff more “smart” settings; that also drives up cost so corners are cut elsewhere (or now, your information is sold; I’m looking at you, Neato).

As long as consumers let themselves get fooled by this, this will continue on.

I like this Amazon Basics kettle I have. It's only 1 liter, but I rarely need more than that.

https://www.amazon.com/AmazonBasics-Stainless-Steel-Electric...

I bought a kettle that turned out to have an obnoxious loud beep, so I just desoldered the piezo speaker that emitted the beep from the circuit board. Problem solved.

Perhaps people like me, who just make things work, are a part of the problem? I mean, if they don't get any negative feedback, I guess they'll just assume that people are happy with their products.

Then again, does anyone actually want loud beeps and bright lights on home appliances? Who are those people?

  >Then again, does anyone actually want loud beeps and bright lights on home appliances? Who are those people?

Presumably the same people who leave every sound effect switched on [usually full volume] on their phone. So, when sitting near them on a bus or train, you have to suffer an endless cacophony of bleeps, buzzes and bells as thye do... <whatever the feck it is morons do, that requires you can't be separated from your phone for more than a nanosecond> ...for the entire journey.

I have no answers to the question posed, other than that capitalism doesn't incentivise "good", it incentivises profit, and with these kind of small electronics those two things are mutually exclusive. The very first thing I thought of when I started reading this article, was this thread [1] about a toaster from decades ago that is better than anything one can buy today. I watched several videos about that toaster that day and it now lives rent free in my head, especially every time I take the burnt or unevenly toasted toast out of my stupidly expensive, but rubbish, Dualit toaster.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21164014

If you remove the anti limestone bit, it’s not that hard:

https://www.amazon.de/-/en/Klarstein-Garcon-Kettle-Temperatu...

Some places do not event need to worry about limestone, but if you do, use a water jug with a filter whose job is just that, like what Brita proposes.

The idea is not to change the chemical composition of the water (as a softener in a Brita filter does), but just to filter out any chunks of scale that have formed inside and come loose.

Really you just ought to descale your kettle regularly.

Tea made from a scaly kettle will form a scum, even if you use a mesh limescale filter. Apparently Yorkshire Tea for hard water might help with this, but I drink decaf so that's not an option for me.

My kettle request: a kettle designed to use all the power available from the 20A receptacles that are put into most modern North American kitchens.

And therefore blow the circuit periodically as only a dedicated circuit has one outlet per breaker.

I've never seen a 20 A plug on an appliance, even though every kitchen less than 20 years old is fitted with 20 A outlets. Probably because manufacturers don't want to make them because most kitchens still only have 15 A outlets. If I ever build my own house I'll probably fit a 240 V outlet in the kitchen for an imported kettle.

Once upon a time there were great kettles, for a relatively high price. More affordable alternatives with less integrity were created and higher priced kettles were forced out of the market because they generated smaller margins. It's similar to undercutting prices with neighborhood coffeeshops: with all the other coffeeshops gone, the remaining one gets all the business. Coffee has short-term value that is about the same no matter the cup of coffee; in my opinion a cup of coffee does not have a long-term value in economic-terms. A kettle has short-term value and long-term value, but consumers are judging the price of the kettle not on a pro-rated per annum value for how long the kettle actually lasts, but on the immediate pricetag. If a kettle is $200 but lasts 20 years, that's $10/year. If a kettle is $20 but lasts 6 months, that's actually $40/year. Just-in-time construction meets disposable-goods culture and all the good kettles are gone.

> recently my local ALDI offered a kettle that met most of the above requirements, and I very happily purchased it

It's a mistake here to buy only one.

If you're going to buy semi-complex hardware that is at a price-point that makes it unserviceable, and you really like that model, you really aught to buy two or more.

I've done this with tools. Aldi cycle their stuff out faster than most so having a second means I don't have to stop and deal with an obnoxious return policy (I'd rather a cheap tool repaired; cash doesn't get work done). If they can't fix the first, I have big pile of spare parts to fix the second one myself.

I bought the stove-top Fellow Kettle [0] a year ago and it's a fantastic kettle. Boils water surprisingly fast, has a thermometer attached to it and the polished steel is beautiful. They don't have filters because you are supposed to filter your water, a bad water isn't going to produce a good water based drink.

There are good kettle for enthusiastic coffee or tea lovers, but you have to be ready to pay a fair price for a product focused on a niche market in the west.

[0] https://fellowproducts.com/products/stagg

You're searching for a very niche product: something that's not simply a metal vessel that you can use to boil water, but that's not a full-featured water boiler/warmer[1].

Electric boilers last forever, usually have multiple temperature settings, and don't have you wait before the water is ready. If you drink a lot of tea, I strongly suggest you try one.

[1] https://www.zojirushi.com/app/category/water-boilers-warmers

It's not very niche. Nearly every household and workplace I know has an electric kettle.

Maybe niche where you live. Where I live (europe) every home has one.

My kettle fulfill almost all his criteria. It max out at 1.25L and it beeps. I like the beep feature, it's not super loud on mine, but I guess it could be possible to disconnect the beep.

How is it possible that he is returning used and perfectly working kettles? Is it common in the US that you can return something that is not broken and was used just because you dislike it?

I had the same issue buying an electric kettle for my 87 year old mother who had been boiling water on the stove and forgetting she had it on. I didn’t want her to burn the house down.

I know someone who bought an electric kettle for his geriatric mom, this electric kettle was metal with plastic underneath. You can imagine what happened to the electric stove when she tried to boil water and forgot how this thing actually worked.

I have the Fellow Stagg EKG EU. I have been using it daily for almost 2 years and I love it. Trully wonderful piece of equipment. It does not fit the criteria the author desired but it fits all of mine. Good pour-over spout, PID control, precise, fast, holds the temperature for 30 min since the last time it was touched not set, great UI, elegant, reliable. However, it's small, very expensive, and doesn't have a filter (but I only use good water in it)

Are there good kettles produced by non-capitalist systems?

Maybe there’s some soviet-era kettles that are still working well. Or would be interesting to hear from Cubans or North Koreans who might have this kettle problem licked.

I’ve had these kinds of problems where the market seems to favor trash or superficial. I’ve tried to find a decent trash can and varies between $10 plastic bins and then ones with similar quality but just higher prices and nicer marketing.

I’m trying to replace a 20 year old brabentia that was $200 way back when.

I think the challenge is that designers are expensive and so prices can get really high even though problems can be solved with just slightly more expensive components.

I’m hoping for 3D printing to be able to incorporate assembly so I can just send a spec for a one off manufacture at a reasonable price. Really hard for a kettle or trash can today, but maybe one day.

I have a perfectly good one (Russell Hobbs, 3000W, no noises and so on, no lights, 1.7L, &c.)—https://www.amazon.co.uk/Russell-Hobbs-Colour-Plus-Kettle/dp.... I suppose it’s because in Britain kettles are essential (for tea and so on.)

My main issue with existing electric kettles is that a cup of tea is 250 ml, while required minimal amount of water in kettle is 500 ml.

As far as I can understand, the primary (but not only) reason behind the 500ml minimum requirement is that early kettle designs included a heating element that was above the base of the kettle (something like this: https://media.sciencephoto.com/image/h1300610/800wm/H1300610...) and for safe and effective operation of the kettle, the heating element had to be covered by water.

I do think there is another reason for the minimum quantity requirement (increasing the likelihood that the generated steam will trigger the temperature sensor) but this other reason is far less important.

In other words, almost all modern kettles don't actually need a minimum of 500ml of water - maybe just 100ml or so to ensure water does turn into steam and triggers the temperature sensor.

Kettle producers have just never really updated the "minimum amount" line. Though I have occasionally started to see kettles without this line.

Well the one I use currently I think falls on the category of "disco lights" though it doesn't bother me at night

There was probably a reason why that kettle went out of production, maybe it was related to the defect you had, who knows

Limescale filter? Use a jug filter before putting the water on the kettle. No limescale and much better taste.

No filter jug removes all the limescale in hard water areas. You still need a filter on the kettle

Why would a filter on a kettle remove what a filter on a jug doesn't?

A jug filter is much bigger and uses a different mechanism, a kettle filter is just a mesh to anything bigger than a large grain of sand in the kettle.

Because the concentrations in the kettle increase locally due to boiling, and there is precipitate that doesn't happen in the filter jug.

My cheapo kettle bought after the last one fell apart in my gf's hands checks almost all the boxes. I think low-tech is almost always better. Also I agree that a consumer trying to buy a cool look is a major problem. Just get something simple that does what it has to do.

https://direct.asda.com/george/home/kettles-toasters/17l-tem...

https://www.amazon.com/Zojirushi-586362-CV-DCC50XT-America-C...

As usual, you gotta get the one made in Japan.

Yes. I've bought several Zojirushi products over the years and I've found them to be super reliable. Buy a ceramic tea kettle and this water boiler. Much better than an electric tea kettle. The insulation is superb and that makes it energy efficient. You don't have to wait because it's always ready.

Also, their thermos are insanely good.

What a coincidence, I bought one today. Optimised on minimal plastic this time. It was slim pickings. Found a glass one without the gaudy blue LED illumination from below, so bought it.

Just get a Braun one. I've had one for over 10 years (I think it's a Braun Aqua Express WK 210). No fuss.

I'm sure they make a decent one with temperature control.

When we moved countries we only brought 2 suitcases each. Left all at home. Now I wish I sorted a van to bring everything with us.

After five years I am still looking for high quality cutlery that will not stain after a month. We went through three sets and never opted for the cheapest one. All of them stained even though it says stainless steel on them. I have cutlery at home from 80's and it never stained and still going strong. I brought a few pieces back with us after visiting old country and the difference in quality is obvious.

Which countries?

I got a good set some years ago, from German brand WMF. Doesnt stain and it is scratch proof & nice. Also stays sharp and hasnt needed sharpening in 8 years.

Edit: maybe the water scale/salt levels are different in the new location? Or maybe it's the different cleaning agent in the dishwasher

From central Europe to UK.

It's the product as I did bring the 'minimum set' with me when we came for first few days. Those forks, kives and spoons are still like new.

I'll check WMF, thanks!

You're welcome. I bought the "Chromargan" alloy series:"WMF Vision", btw :-)

Edit: i also suggest to check out the different models in person. The blades have different thicknesses and handles have different shapes, its not easy to get an idea what fits best from the pictures alone. Took me an hour of thinking until i made my choice. Ps: found a nice comparison on YT, the guy expanded his set from 6 to 12 persons in 2018 and holds a daily driven knife from 2008 (left side) against a new one (right side). Only micro scratches according to the (german) video and no stains at all. Also mentions that its still sharp.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=WhxZQL5W1a8&t=110

And make sure to get a "cromargan protect"-named set. Just looked up "Vision" on amazon, it's expensive (12 persons set is 700£) :-) but still recommended, the more expensive sets have better steel and thinner blades. This set is great for both steaks and spreading butter. Also, you can start small and extend after some years (wmf cutlery has longterm availability)

> I am still looking for high quality cutlery that will not stain after a month.

Stainless steel refers to corrosion resistance, and I don't know any cutlery that corrodes in a month, even from the dollar store.

Are you talking hard water stains? What are you seeing on your cutlery that is causing this concern?

But they unfortunately do corrode. Tiny visible stains. Most of the people wouldn't mind them probably but I do. It's just bad quality.

Capatilism will produce the desired kettle.

It's an open contest, the first to produce it will stand a chance of rich reward. Right now the article's author has a headstart on everyone else on the planet, if he truly understands what people want in a kettle. (If he doesn't, then he's at the head of the line to waste some time and money).

Unsure if the author really wants an answer, but capitalism does not optimise for good design or for consumer satisfaction. It optimises for profit.

But that wouldn’t answer the question. Why is it not profitable to make good kettles?

Also, you’re wrong. The people designing these kettles aren’t doing so to make more money for their company. If anything you could say that capitalism optimises for job security. That’s why you don’t see new features on kettles, and why no one will make a left handed microwave. No one wants to take a risk

Not sure if this was a troll, but I'll assume it was honest and then point out that every system optimizes for profit. Profit is just taking out more than what you put in. That could be being paid even if you don't show up to work, or doing one hour of work and getting paid for 2, or selling something for $2 when you could easily sell it for $1. Everyone wants to take out more than they put in.

The genius of capitalism is in encouraging and facilitating competition so that other firms can come and take away your profit by selling something that appeals to customers more. In this way, the universal profit motive is turned into better products as people compete for surplus income rather than having that assigned by birth (middle ages), political connections (soviet systems), religious considerations (indulgences/moral crusaders), etc.

But everyone is going to optimize to get more than what they put in -- e.g. profit. The only question is what determines that income stream -- being able to sell products to consumers better than the other guy, or being a loyal party deputy.

>Not sure if this was a troll, but I'll assume it was honest and then point out that every system optimizes for profit.

If we bend profit to mean anything we like, yes.

But the commonly understood sense is "making more money", not "keeping party bureaucrats happy" or "making the private owner of the company proud of the quality of his products, even if he's not making as much as he could".

Aside: Not a troll. Appreciate you taking it at face value, thank you. I think too often I give short answers and expect others to understand / expand my point.

Will expand properly elsewhere but the implicit point was that profit is not necessarily even remotely connected to product quality or customer satisfaction, but the author seems to have made the assumption that they are.

Hi, author here (and I really am looking for answers).

Thanks for your comment.

As someone below you hinted at, wouldn't one expect that "high profit" would result from "high consumer satisfaction"? I think that's the step that puzzles me.

I have to say, reading through this thread I'm beginning to think that the existing offering of kettles in the market does deliver sufficient satisfaction to consumers, removing the incentive to create a better product.

Multiple commenters have said they don't mind beeps, or flashy lights, or the lack of a calcium mesh. It may be worth pointing out that the kettles I bought had VERY loud beeps (I don't mind a "normal" beep), VERY strong lights (I don't mind "normal" lights, I actually enjoy seeing light in my kettle). Also, I actually do pre-filter my water with a Brita jug, and I also descale my kettle regularly, but the calcium content in my area is so high that I'd have to descale between every 2 cups of tea not to get calc bits in my drink.

This all leads me to conclude that probably my opening premise is wrong: maybe I am unreasonably picky about kettles and, since capitalism makes kettles for the masses and not for the 3% of people who are as picky as I seem to be, then I can't find a (cheap) kettle that meets my requirements.

But... why did the first 19.99€ kettle exist then? How come that product was possible (and later disappeared)?

Another part of me feels that if someone produces a reasonably durable kettle that meets all the requirements in my post (as well as some secondary requirements that I didn't write about but that my 19.99€ kettle did meet), then that will quickly become the new gold standard for kettles and in 10 years we'll look back and say "oh my goodness, can you believe we used to not have temperature control in most kettles?"

You may ask "then why did the 19.99€ kettle disappear?" and that is a good question. The best answer I've been able to find is that it was a generic supermarket-brand kettle and it cannibalised profits from other more expensive brandname kettles. I also don't understand why the super advanced toaster (that someone else in this thread posted a video of) disappeared. And I guess that is the crux of my question, really: in 1948 we had a design of a toaster that was superior in every way to modern day toasters. How come it's disappeared for good?

Question: does socialism, communism, fascism, anarchism, or other ism produce a better kettle? Could we conceive an ism that makes better home appliances?

They don't, and no one is claiming that they do. The author is simply puzzled as to why capitalism (a system where maximizing profits is the goal) hasn't capitalized on the desire for a good kettle? And the speculated answer is that maybe there isn't enough desire for it to be profitable, because most people are happy enough with mediocre kettles.

I physically tore out beeper from my kettle and it worked perfectly ever after.

Capitalism produces nothing. People produce things.

The beauty of capitalism is that if you have an idea on how to produce a better product, you do it and became wealthy. For example electric cars.

If you were sitting there post recession 2010. You look at electric cars and your options are awful. In fact most electric cars look like ass and they clearly are doing that on purpose to avoid having the industry change. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitsubishi_i-MiEV

But then Tesla came along with a Lotus EV called the roadster. It doesnt look like trash.

You then look at other options where people are building their own and doing really nice jobs.

So why is capitalism so bad at producing electric cars? It's obviously not considering what's happening today. The problem is you're expecting the wrong people to produce a better product.

Tip, if you can find such a niche where someone isnt doing something as well as you can. Go do it and you'll win.

I've never owned a kettle that proved to be a problem. I think I've owned about two kettles in total. Yay Capitalism.

You, sir, must either live somewhere with very soft water, or be very young, or be not from the British Isles?!

It's not the responsibility of the kettle to fix the water. Put a filter in your tap or use bottled water.

Bottled water for a cup of tea?!

Good idea about the filter.

I grown up in communism. It was impossible to buy stainless steel kettle. Our industry simply could not produce that material, and borders were closed. Today it is recommended not to buy cheap kettles from communist asia, it may contain poisonous bromine.

Today I just use dumb kettle on induction stove. Never breaks and saves space.

Great idea, and in theory the induction cooker should be able to detect temperature, to turn off when the water boils, and also be able to function as a rice cooker etc.

But I've never seen one with a temperature sensor or probe.

Actually, they do have a temperature sensor that is used to turn off the induction over a critical temperature.

But it’s below the glass top, so it lags behind the real temperature, only tread the temperature of the bottom of the pot. This makes it unreliable for fine temperature control.

I have a portable one that gives you the possibility to set the temperature you want by 20 degrees, but it’s not fine enough for tea (40, 60, 80, 100, 120... degrees Celsius)

Only just ok for Chinese hotpot:

https://www.amazon.de/Klarstein-Einzel-Induktionskochplatte-...

Or just use timer...

And a huge table of times depending how much water, what kind of rice, etc, etc.

With a temp sensor you could also do pseudo sous-vide (pseous-vide?).

Big brain here. Kettle on a stove will never break, and if your stove breaks you have other problems anyway.

Two plate stove was like 100 euro. It has normal tactile buttons, not that glass touch insensitive junk.

You’re just glorifying poverty. Nevertheless, you’re not wrong.

Not really glorifying poverty. You can be rich and still take the simple route with appliances

Which "communism"? Even North Korea makes stainless and have for ages. I'm guessing it were cost, not that they couldn't.

It very much does. Classic kettle for gas stove by Kitchen Aid

Because of the microwave.

I don't have a medium account. Is the article about high quality of Soviet kettles?

Capitalism isn't the panacea its evangelists want you to think it is. That's the short answer.

Definitely not capitalism to blame here, but the fact stands: despite an electric kettle being a very basic household appliance that is used everywhere, it is almost impossible to buy a product, that would reflect how long they have been around. Ideally, you would assume that todays kettles are the end product of decades of refinement and engineering and do their principal job well and last long.

Well, they don't. Besides the points the author goes on about I have two primary issues:

- Most kettles are not efficient. Stop the time they take to heat 1l of water from tap temperature to boiling. You get anything between 1:40min and +3min depending on your kettle. Mostly irrespective of price range. (Physical limit for the power plugs in my region would be ~1:30min).

- Virtually all kettles have plastic that comes in contact with the water, specifically in their lid. While I am definitely not one to support fearmongering of "all these bad plastics" and "bad chemicals", I also believe this is a situation that should be avoided. We know that plastics in general but sometimes specifically in cheap products contain chemicals that are bad for our health. Now, at the lid of your kettle you condense boiling, distilled water which is quite perfect for chemical extraction. Even if I would trust the producer of my 20$ kettle to only use food-safe plastics that are even safe under long term contact with boiling water (I do not), I would prefer to have a lid from stainless steel. Now try buying that...

Long story short: I think kettles (and toasters) would be a perfect start for an open hardware household appliance initiative. Spend some time and money on really engineering the shit out of some simple but ubiquitous household items and make the design freely available. Design kettles that do just one thing: boil water well. IMO this would be a boon for humanity.

The writer lists 11 requirements for the kettle beyond functioning as a kettle. The piece essentially asks "why hasn't capitalism found and manufactured my personal optimum in a high dimensional space for 19.99€?"

Very strange title, I don't understand why people blame "capitalism" for problems like this.

Saying "crappy kettles exist because we have a free market" is like saying "murder only exists because we allow people to freely move around".

Something being allowed to happen in a system doesn't mean that the system is the thing causing it to happen.

"Why are people buying crappy kettles" should be the title.

Is something else producing better kettles than capitalism?

Because I've got a pretty awesome kettle "from capitalism"

TL;DR Market consumes nonsensical kettles. Capitalism is to blame.

Not the fact that we buy with clicks. Not the fact that market does not strongly prefer reputation systems. Capitalism.

Huh? You just pointed out what capitalism is about.

Capitalism is about ownership of means of production. Look it up.

It's not possible to boil it down to just that. Also, please don't be snarky.

Unfortunately too many people are turning an economic term into a political term. But I do agree that we should all be polite here.

Yes it's not the fault of capitalism as such (private ownership of the means of production for private profit), but of market-based economies.

They deliver a combination of what producers want to produce, and what people want to buy (measured by what they actually buy), not necessarily what people need or is good for them. Just look at the industrial food complex.

You blame market as a mechanism. I blame people.

Thought experiment: mechanism does not exist anymore. Would people still want to click nonsensical kettles on their screens and not care about vendor's reputation?

Thus my answer is education, education, education.

I would argue civilization is a combination of educating people, and improving the environment to suit human needs.

I don't believe raw market mechanisms alone are suitable to serve human needs.

> not necessarily what people need or is good for them

Who gets to decide what people "need" or what is "good for them"?

There you go putting ideas in my mouth.

I did not say that someone should assume authority and dictate what people need or want. Just that raw free markets with purely economic/financial incentives fail at the task.

But nutrition science would be good place to find some answers to the 'need' question for food.

> I did not say that someone should assume authority and dictate what people need or want.

The very idea that there is any sort of universal standard for what people "need" or what is "good for them" implies such an entity.

Here's a novel thought: how about treating people as adults with their own intensional stances and allowing them to decide for themselves what they "need" or what is "good for them"?

You're not their parent. "Nutrition science" isn't their parent, either.

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