Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Despite the 1-star review, which I will get to in a moment, this Breville kettle gets 5 stars for performance and aesthetics, both of which are addressed in detail by others in their reviews, so I will not repeat. It gets 4 stars for durability - I have had the kettle for about 2 years and it still works great, however less than a year in, the inside bottom developed several dozen small white spots. I have tried more than once to remove these with baking soda but they persist (I never boil anything other than Brita-filtered water). Now, why the 1 star? As some others have commented, Breville kettle uses plastic material for the water-level windows on both sides of the kettle - not BPA free. Even plastics that have no BPA still leach chemicals into water at boiling temperatures, so the use of plastic instead of glass in a kettle is truly not acceptable any more. Here are some numbers, to support this potentially serious issue. I recently purchased ZeroWater Water Tester ZeroWater ZT-2 Electronic Water Tester, which measures the amount of dissolved particles in water (with very consistent and accurate results; highly recommended, may change your water drinking habits). We are fortunate to have relatively clean municipal water, its reading came in at 47 TDS (typical range in the U.S. is 51-200), which Brita pitcher gets down to 35 TDS. After boiling Brita-filtered water in this Breville kettle, the TDS reading went UP from 35 to 90 TDS! The same Brita-filtered water boiled on the stove in a non-stick pot went up from 35 to 43 (after boiling for 3 minutes). In a steel pot, the particles' reading went up from 35 to 47. The particles concentration goes up, in large part, due to evaporation of some of the water by steam, thus leaving a higher concentration of heavier (non-evaporating) particles in the pot. I repeated the test a few days later. The absolute readings were +/- 3 from the above results, but the conclusion was still very much the same - using Breville kettle to boil water adds chemical particles to your drinking water. You have to decide for yourself - are the satisfying performance and stylish looks of this kettle worth adding significant unnecessary and potentially harmful plastic particles into your body. UPDATE 11/15/12: After about a year, 2 performance issues developed: 1. The auto-shutoff stopped working - it actually got delayed, rather than completely not functioning - the water would boil and boil, for 5-10 minutes, before the kettle would finally shut itself off. 2. Kettle started leaking at the bottom of the handle. Not a few drops type of leaking, but a little stream. I'm looking for a replacement now.