Nendo's Wonderful Toru, an Electric Kettle for Alessi | Hacker News Reader

Nendo's Wonderful Toru, an Electric Kettle for Alessi

core77.com

17 pointssurprisetalk16 comments

Have you seen the new kettle? It's on Tubu. It's literally on Heebee. It's on Poodee with ads. It's literally on Dippy. You can probably find it on Weeno. Dude it's on Gumpy. It's a Pheebo original. It's on Poob. You can watch it on Poob. You can go to Poob and watch it. Log onto Poob right now. Go to Poob. Dive into Poob. You can Poob it. It's on Poob. Poob has it for you. Poob has it for you.

I love that even something as well-trodden as a kettle design can still be refined further. My main skepticism is whether this works well when the kettle isn't close to full - the image of it pouring implies a nearly-full kettle, but does the angle become awkward when it's closer to empty? Hard to know without actually holding one.

A video might help more than the whimsical drawings. It still looks nice and perfectly functional, but the copy seems a little pretentious without a proper demonstration.

None of this makes sense to me... how do you put water in it? How does having hot water pass through the handle improve things? Unless it pressurizes the water as it boils it (would that be sane?) how does it pour at all? Why did they draw people as flying kettle-sized rectangles with antenna feet?

The write up is maybe out of date - they are for sale in the US: https://us.alessi.com/products/toru-electric-kettle

(From inheriting an Alessi electric kettle in past life: if you are an aesthete go for it. If you are an engineer in your soul stay away).

Thanks but I'll keep my kettle that works, has a water level, and cost me less than eating out for lunch once.

Wait, so the hot water flows through the handle? Doesn't that make the handle too hot to handle?

The handle doesn't actually go through. It's meant to be an illusion.

Just went to the Alessi site for more details. List one for £160 and one for £170. No obvious difference. Click on "what is the capacity of the toru kettle" and it makes you wait for an ai to answer the question.

What am I supposed to infer about the quality of a design company when they can't even get such simple things right?

Well, if it looks cool and it nearly works that is totally on brand for Alessi!

They're different sizes, it's in the description and it's also described under "More info" > "Capacity (cl)". I'm not seeing the "What is the capacity..." button you mentioned.

I'm on mobile, Firefox.

Heh, I work in documentation, and using that particular image in the introduction is an absolute masterclass in confusing people and giving them the exact wrong impression about the entire thing.

The water doesn't actually travel through the handle, and the handle is not connected to the spout, they just visually align.

Has no water level indicator.

And what is Alessi?

Saved you a click: they made the handle higher up. This is on Hacker News for some reason

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