Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

This is a nice little electric tea kettle. It requires that you heat at least 1 and 1/2 cups of water because of the submerged coil. I especially like the detachable cord. My concerns are two fold. First, the sides do get hot. The handle remains cool, but I would not trust small children to be near it. Second, for the automatic shuttoff to work, the lid MUST be snapped closed. It will continue to boil if the lid is not completely closed (the instructions do state this). This is why I only gave it 4 stars. It took me 7 minutes to boil (to auto-shutoff) a full pot (4 cups). The minimum (1 and 1/2 cups) took 2 min 50 sec. It is supposed to be a 1000 watt heating element. Measuring it with a "Kill A Watt" meter, I found it actually used only 850-880 watts. Update January 2013: After more than 7 years, this kettle is still in use boiling a single cup of water at my work approx 4 times per week. That is over 1000 uses. A few times the detachable cord was not in all the way, and when I turned it on, the on light did not turn on. Simply pushing it in fixed It. The heating element does appear to have some wear, as its got a few pitting marks. This is to be expected. Other than that there have been no problems. I would still rate it 4 stars.