Upgrading to a smart kettle saved me time, money and a burnt mouth
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As I write this, I am surrounded by three mugs on my desk and one next to my laptop (dangerous, I know). You'd only need to take one look at my workspace to glean that I am a lover of hot drinks - more specifically, coffee and herbal tea.
And since working from home, my drinking habit has only increased (likely something to do with the short walk to the kitchen in my house rather than a long meander around banks of desks and down some stairs to reach the queue for the kettle in the office).
For a long time I was happy boiling my regular old kettle, playing on my phone while I waited for it to boil. How naive I was.
I am now the proud owner of a smart kettle, a Bosch Styline Variable Temperature Cordless Kettle to be precise, and it's only since using it that I realise just how much time, money and flavour I was wasting before.
The Bosch kettle allows you to set the boil temperature to 70, 80, 90 or 100 degrees, as well as offering you the ability to keep water warm in the kettle (ideal if you have a baby or boiled the kettle a little too early before your friend arrived).
For someone like me, who drinks a mix of herbal teas and coffees, it's brilliant, because not all hot drinks should be made using 100 degree water - in fact, when it comes to coffee and herbal teas, adding this temperature of water actually burns the beans or the leaves and ruins the taste and the benefits.
The only time you should be boiling your kettle to 100 degrees is when you're making green or black tea. Seriously.
So, I now mainly boil water to 80 degrees - not only does this take a considerably shorter amount of time, it also saves as many units of energy being sent out into the environment, and so helps to offset the number of times I use the kettle in a day.
If I'm in a rush and want to gulp down my morning cuppa but only have a few minutes to do so, I boil the kettle to 70 degrees, which means I don't need to wait for it cool down before it is drinkable and I can chug it on the go without burning my mouth (it's the small pleasures, hey?).
On top of all this, the limescale filter and enclosed heating element makes cleaning the kettle quick and easy, meaning I can add extra minutes when calculating how much time this device saves me.
And I'm not the only one who loves it.
The Bosch Styline Variable Temperature Cordless Kettle has 6,500 reviews on Amazon and an overall rating of 4.6, which is high for a product with so many reviews.
Most people just wanted to say that they "loved it", though several made the point that the "robust" kettle had lasted them years (since 2014 in the case of one user).
"Reliable", "awesome" and "game changing" were also all words used to describe the product, and lots of people commented on how smart the design looked in their kitchen.
Time to put the kettle on? I think so.
Buy it: Bosch Styline Variable Temperature Cordless Kettle | £69.99 from Amazon
Our top affordable pick: Ambiano Digital Kettle | £39.99 from Aldi
