Customer Reviews

Breville BKE820XL Variable-Temperature 1.8-Liter Kettle

5 star:		(49)
4 star:		(13)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(13)

 

 

I am relatively new to the tea scene (my wife and I started drinking Teavana teas about a year ago) and as such I have been searching for a really good kettle. I wanted an electric kettle because of their ease of use as well as the extra features some of the nicer kettles offer. After an exhaustive search I decided upon the Breville SK500XL Ikon Stainless-Steel Electric Kettle based in no small part to the excellent reviews it has received on Amazon and other sites.

I went to a few stores to examine it in person and compare it to about ten other electric kettles that the different stores carried but nothing seemed to come close to the design and quality of the Breville. So after finally making my decision, it was simply a matter of time before I made my purchase. I am very glad I waited as within 2 weeks this new Breville kettle was released. While still substantially costlier than the SK500XL, the BKE820XL has a number of features and design improvements that made the extra cost more than worth it. These include:

- Multiple temperature settings (different teas require different temperature water for an optimally brew) with 20 minute hold
- Improved water level indicators now on both sides (the single water level indicator on the SK500XL is behind the handle which makes it hard to read)

I've only had my BKE820XL a few days (I purchased it from a local store) so I cannot speak to its long term reliability yet, if it is anything like the SK500XL, I don't expect to have any problems.

Oh yeah, and the tea I've made in the last few days is easily the best I've ever brewed! Yay!

UPDATE 1/2/2009: I've had the BKE820XL for over a month now and I still love it! The only thing I've found that I would critique is:

- After you are done boiling water for the day, you need to either dry out the lid by hand or leave the lid open for a few hours to let the water evaporate (from the lid where it collects). I am concerned that not doing this might lead to issues down the road.

Even with that, I am still overjoyed with my purchase (which I use at least 5 times a week) and highly recommend it to anyone in search of a quality electric kettle.

UPDATE 3/12/2009 - Nothing much to report except that my wife and I are continuing to use our kettle mutliple times a week and are extremely happy with it. It has a permanent place on our counter! :)

UPDATE 09/26/2010 - Just wanted to pop on and provide a quick update. We have had this kettle almost 2 years now and have yet to have any issues with it (fingers crossed). We have used it at least once a week (if not a lot more) pretty much without fail and are still very happy with it. At this point if something were to go wrong with it, we wouldn't hesitate to purchase another one. Highly recommended. :)

UPDATE 09/30/2010 - A commenter chastised me a bit for not mentioning the BPA controversy in my review. As I mentioned in my reply to her, I would caution everyone to be sure to read the actual scientific papers or publications that are as unbiased as possible. I find a great source for all things scientific to be Arstechnica.com. They have a great way of breaking down complex topics in ways that non-scientific types (like myself) can really understand and absorb (see this BPA article as an example: [...]).

If you don't want to wait for a conclusive link between BPA and health issues (of which there has not been one to date that I am aware of), I can completely understand and sympathize. If I had an infant I would definitely be doing all I could to minimize their BPA intake. Still, with that said I would ask that anyone concerned by this or other health issues please try to represent the facts in your arguments and not the hype; this allows others to make their own, informed decisions as well.

UPDATE 09/04/2011 - We've had our Breville almost three years now and have yet to have any problems with it. Most of the negative reviews seem to be in regard to the potential BPA issue which I've already posted my opinion on (both above & in the comments to this review) however a few have mentioned actual mechanical issues. Perhaps they use theirs more than we do (we use ours at most once per day but probably more realistically about 3 to 4 times a week on average) or maybe they just received a lemon (or perhaps ours is the exception, I couldn't really tell you). I have noticed recently that the lid sometimes stays shut while the water is still hot; I don't know if it has always done this and I never noticed before or if it has recently started to do this, either way I look at it as a design element (to help keep me from spilling hot water on myself) but perhaps it is a design flaw? Regardless all I do is tap on the lid once or twice while pushing the button and it opens right up. Other than that it works just as well as the day we bought it (I still don't have a decent thermometer so I couldn't tell you how accurate it was new or used but the water still seems as hot...for whatever that is worth).

First, this kettle is gorgeous! I bought it for it's beauty and easy to use variable temperature and the fact it had a viewing window to easily see how much water was inside. Before I used it, I emailed Breville to find out what type of plastic the viewing window was made from. The response I received was a defensive email about how polycarbonate and BPA are safe for food contact and this kettle is safe. I've been reading the research on BPA and polycarbonate for years, so they didn't share anything new with me. I would have preferred their response to simply state "polycarbonate" and then offer to provide me with more information if I had any concerns.

Regardless, they weren't going to change my mind. I don't feel comfortable with polycarbonate around my boiling (or close to boiling) water and in this day and age where BPA is a huge uproar, I am super surprised that Breville came out with a brand new kettle containing polycarbonate. I would have loved to see this kettle have a glass viewing window and lid, that would have been super! Especially with the price point they are selling this at. Having it be a "toxin free" kettle with no plastic would have been a great marketing move.

I did reply and thank them for the information and politely told them I would be returning it due to the polycarbonate, but that if they came out with a version that had glass instead of polycarbonate, I'd snap it up in a second. I received no further reply from Breville.

I drink various types of teas constantly to my dentist's consternation, such as Irish and East Frisian in the morning with Pu Erh Tuo Cha and Green Jasmine in the evening. On the weekends I drink French Pressed coffee.

I did it the old fashioned way with a thermometer. Needless to say, but I will anyway, this kettle did make life simpler, but, (always a but) it has not functioned as advertised.

The primary issue is on the boiling setting for black teas. Sometimes it shuts off, and sometimes it doesn't. The other presets have worked flawlessly, and this may only be an anomaly with this particular pot.

I will say that I am going to order a second one, and send this one back to Breville for repairs. That should tell you how much I like the idea of this kettle.

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.

If you are looking for a kettle with no plastic in the boiling area, this comes close, but it's not perfect. A perfect kettle would have no plastic coming in contact with the boiling water. Therefore, I give it 4 stars. There is a large plastic aparatus inside the kettle (to enable boiling tea leaves in the pot I'm assuming) which can easily be removed (although instructions on how to do this are not in the manual). It pretty much just pops out. Once that piece is gone, the plastic parts are relatively minimal (i.e., the windows on the sides and the lid). The heating element is covered with stainless steel it appears, and it boils water well to five different settings. It is light and easy to handle, nice looking, etc. Nice "ding" when it's done. If you only drink black tea varieties, you may not need all these temperature settings. If you drink green, white, oolong, etc, then this is the pot for you. Except for the pastic parts, I'm pretty happy with it so far.

This is an incredibly elegant and precise, yet easy to use kettle. Even the sound to let you know when it's done is discreet and pleasant. Our household has a variety of schedules, and drinks a variety of teas as well as french press coffee. It's wonderful. Finally, jasmine green tea comes out at home as it should!

The manual holds only critical information, so it's brief - but read it well. I started to be dissatisfied about how the hold temp function works until re-reading the paragraph later.

I've only two minor criticisms. I wish that the minimum water that could be heated was 250 ml not 500 ml, but I get around it with an incredible insulated mug/carafe. More annoying is the cord length; if it was just a few inches longer to 2' it would be great. It's been difficult to find a place on the counter near an outlet that wouldn't steam the cupboards above or get knocked over. (And there's no room to stuff 3-6 feet of the correct type of 3-pronged appliance extension cord.)

So - very minor gripes. Even if it broke tomorrow, I'd order another immediately.

This is a good kettle. I like it. Here are things I wish I knew before purchasing:

-The base stays slightly warm wether you use the kettle or not. That is: I just plug it in and never use it, but after a while the base where the buttons are, is a little warm. Reading through the instructions, I found that you are supposed to unplug it if you're not going to use if for a while. The cord where it plugs into the wall has a hole in it to make it easier to unplug. So that added an extra step to my morning ritual. My guess is that it's not energy star compliant so I don't want to have it using energy staying plugged in all the time.

-It is not double walled or insulated. Touch the handle, nothing else.

-It has plastic parts in it that contact the water: The display and some parts below the inside of the spout where the filter is. The cap is plastic as well so steam is in contact with it when it condenses and goes back in the water.

Would I get it again knowing what I know now? Yes as it is the only variable temperature kettle I found (that's not a piece of junk).
Is it overpriced? Yes. But I want to drink oolong and other teas and using a kettle that just had "boiling" as a setting was too inconvenient.
Almost all stainless steel kettles I've looked at had plastic parts so I don't know what other options are.
This was my old kettle (purchased for a normal price (before it became a collectible or something)) Braun WK600 Impressions 7-Cup Electric Kettle, Brushed Stainless Steel and that had some plastic parts as well. The breville is quieter.

Was great while it lasted, but died just one month out of warranty. Previous Russell Hobbs kettle lasted 25 years. Unit only works intermittently. First the automatic shut off failed. Now often won't start, shuts off for no reason, and beeps randomly at all hours. There are many more negative reviews for the similar kettle without variable temperature control. Have never written a negative review before, but this product seems to be inferior.

I was under impression that it's all stainless steel inside and it's not. To me it's a huge turn off. I don't feel comfortable about plastic parts coming in contact with hot water.

I'll admit - it's looks great. However, after a year of a moderate use it became a hassle to get the tea or coffee. The sensor that suppose to turn it off quit working and the water continues to boil until one of the family members manually cancels the process. Very disappointed as I paid a good deal of money. Buyers beware.