What is a fun gadget you have purchased that has added value to your life?

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A countertop water boiler. It turns out I go through just about 4L of tea a day and now I spend a lot less time boiling water. And when you refill it and it comes to temperature it plays Fur Elise
edit: typo
- You mean a kettle? How did you not already have one?
  
  Very uncommon in the US at least.
  
  They're a little different. Kettles are small (1-2 liters) will heat water until it's boiling and then shut off(or have the user disconnect the heat source)
  Water boilers hold a larger amount of water (3-5 liters) at a consistent temperature with a button to dispense it.
  I upgraded from a kettle to a zojirushi water boiler and I've never looked back. The thing is incredible. Absolutely worth the price.
  
  Oh! Ok, you've sold me! :)
  
  It also keeps the water still hot because they're insulated.
  
  It's because the USA power standards are not suitable for kettle life. The 110 voltage on their power means it takes ages to come to the boil. The idea of putting a few cups of water into a kettle, pushing a button and having boiling water inside a minute does not exist.
  That's why these tabletop things are useful: yes they take ages to initially boil, then they maintain that temperature. 110 volts is fine for that task.
  
  There are 240v outlets in the USA, but they're usually only used for things with heavy power draw (clothes dryers, EV chargers, electric hot water heaters, etc). Some areas have 208v instead of 240v though.
  But yeah, boiling water is slow in the USA and a lot of people do it in the microwave (whereas I never saw anyone ever do that in Australia). We've got a Breville espresso machine that has instant hot water, which is useful for some of the use cases we'd use a kettle for.
  
  We use our breville for hot water too
  
  This is kinda true and kinda not. Even on 110, an electric kettle is faster than a kettle on a gas stove. The real answer is that Americans just don't drink much tea. My family is unusual in that regard.
  
  Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
  This is kinda true and kinda not
  Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
  I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
  
  This video also proves my point. And he knows it. Nearly 5 minutes to boil a litre of water? That's hilarious!
  I just replicated his experiment, with an identical bottle of water in my kettle, and was surprised that it took 2:47 to boil. I honestly would have thought it quicker than that.
  This isn't about tea, either. In fact, I boil the kettle for coffee far more frequently than for tea. I would also boil a kettle to quickly get 2L of water for cooking pasta. But since I've just boiled it and it's 10:30pm, I make peppermint tea. Ahhh.
  
  Did you miss the part about how it's still the fastest way to boil water? Yes yes, it's slower than yours, we're all jealous. Even still, we would all have electric kettles if we needed to boil water all that often because it's faster than anything else we have. But:
  People don't make pasta or rice every day, and even when you do you usually have plenty of time for it to come to a boil while you're chopping or stirring or whatever. People who do make rice that often typically use a rice cooker.
  You can't really boil enough water in a kettle to cook potatoes or vegetables or anything else.
  Coffee makers of most types typically boil their own water (yes there are pourovers and chemexes, but they aren't that common and people who use them do buy kettles).
  Nobody would buy a kettle for just cooking even if we did have more power delivery, simply because you don't cook anything by boiling all that often. Case in point: my family drinks tea, and so we own a kettle, but tea is really the only time we boil water (in the kettle or otherwise) for anything on a daily basis.
  
  No, these devices hold water at the appropriate temperature for long periods of time using extremely good insulation. They provide hot water on-demand after reaching temperature and are used in a way that is somewhat different from kettles.
  
  No, I mean the things I linked to. They're like small countertop hot water tanks. I also do have multiple kettles.
  
  In the US most do not own a kettle
  
  What? I’m American and everyone I know owns one.
- And Zojirushi sells parts for their appliances! So instead of having to buy a brand new boiler, I just got a lid for my 15 year old boiler. I’ll always give business to companies that support their products like that
  
  While that is true in this case, I do remember a post about one of their rice cookers that bricks itself when the CR battery dies, that requires a soldering iron to replace.
  Found it
  Edit: ok not a total brick but still…
- +rep for Zojirushi. My water boiler lid recently began chipping and pretty much disintigrating and on their website I saw they even have replacement parts for discontinued products. Very cool of them
  Example: https://www.zojirushi.com/app/spare_parts/item/8-CDQ-P010
- fur elise? fleur de lis is the ⚜
  
  Yes, thank you

470 comments