I just received my new Cosori kettle. I haven't even turned it on yet and I'm already having regrets. There are poor design decisions all around on this model. FIRST, THE LID: The lid had to be pressed firmly in place. There's no hinge, and you can't easily lift it without also holding the kettle itself (and not just the handle, unless you want to risk the hot lid also flinging up at your hand). Why is this a problem? Well, the capacity is severely lacking. This kettle barely heats enough water for 2 cups of tea or coffee, less if you use larger mugs like I do. That means if you're a heavy tea or coffee drinker, and you need to refill this frequently, you have to wait for it to cool before you can get that tight lid off and add more water. After just removing and replacing the lid about a half dozen times, I'm also hearing a slight crackling sound in the plastic of the lid's handle. It's not inspiring confidence in this kettle's longevity. CONTROLS AND SETTINGS: The control design is also not great -- on the kettle base, haven't tried the app yet. Cosori's fallen into one of the worst trends in electric kettles these days by offering presets and no manual on-board temperature controls. These are rarely accurate or adequate. This model, for example, starts at 180F, which is a bit high if you drink more delicate teas. Sure, there's the app. But why should customers be wed to yet another tool that can become buggy or introduce changed features without our knowledge or consent at the time of purchase? Kettles should be designed to last. Apps often are not. So if something happens to the app's development, or to the company itself, you might suddenly lose the extra control you're paying for when you buy this kettle. It's one more potential fail point. Fine for convenience. But granular temperature control shouldn't be limited to that. An LED screen to show the current temp and simple up & down buttons should be a priority over separate buttons for each manufacturer-chosen preset. A decent design would have fewer buttons with more customer control. This might not seem like a big deal if you only plan to use those presets. But I've used several electric kettles, and I can tell you they're very rarely accurate. Even when they're accurate at the point of the temperature sensor, that's not the same temperature of water elsewhere inside the kettle. And when you use electric kettles to brew pour-over, French press, or AeroPress coffee like I do, you'll want a very precise temperature. You can't rely on presets. You learn about variations in your kettle, then you tweak the temperature manually to account for any differences between kettle and cup. OUTER FINISH: The outer finish is another poor design choice. It came already scratched, and there's no way to fix that with this kind of finish. More, if it scratches deep enough to the stainless steel below the outer finish, you'll see it clearly due to the color contrast because this is so dark. The scratches on my lid are like this, and it doesn't seem to require a particularly deep scratch for it to be blatantly visible. THE OPENING: The opening is also less than ideal. You're unlikely to fit your hand in there for cleaning, and even a dish wand or bottle brush would be awkward given the curve of the wall. And I'm not sure why they have a rough texture to the inside of the lid unlike the more polished-looking stainless steel in the body. But the inner lid, while metal (which is good), also seemed to come coated with a dusting of some light kind of powder. The lid in general is a real disappointment. SUMMARY: Look. I have no doubt this little kettle will heat water just fine. But whereas this seems to be Cosori's "top of the line" electric kettle, it feels more like a "lite" version of what a proper kettle should be. If you're a light or casual tea drinker who doesn't mind the pre-sets and/or doesn't mind literally watching your water boil on an app, this might be great. But if you drink more than a cup or two of tea a day, drink tea or coffee quickly enough that you might have to refill this before it fully cools (so you can safely remove the lid), want real control of your kettle ON your kettle and not through a separate app, and don't just want something that will look pretty on your counter, you can find better. This does have potential to be improved. But that would require at a bare minimum a more reasonable capacity (which would also solve the narrow opening issue potentially), a better lid design, and better manual on-board controls. Still not sure if I'll even fire this up given how many problems there are after just unboxing and inspecting it. Given how long I searched for a new kettle, I'm beyond disappointed at the prospect of having to return this and start my search over from scratch. This brand came recommended, so I had much higher hopes for Cosori.
