Come back Russell Hobbs, all is forgiven....
I grew up in Europe with electric kettles so I think I know what to expect. I had to return the M677, as it took too long to turn off. I called their customer service and they said it should take an average of 12 seconds to turn off. The average for mine to click off was 1 minute and 15 seconds (timed only after coming to a vigorous boil with steam escaping). It didn't matter if it was full or not. Only once did it click off in less than one minute. Once I came downstairs and it was still boiling away, I was not sure for how long it was boiling so I decided to return it.
Giving them the benefit of the doubt (their customer service was good - a real human picked up in a few seconds), I replaced it with a model M678 which is a little larger, and its average click off time is 35 seconds. It still feels like it's too slow to click off and most of the time I flick it up manually, but at least I feel I can trust it to turn off if I leave the room. (My old dead Russell Hobbs would...
Good overall kettle
Right - this thing's a tank.
I've used this kettle at least once a day for the last six years now and I'm just now smelling burnt plastic when I try to use it. It's pretty much at the end of its life, but it still boils water much faster than the largest burner on my stove top. For the first five and a half years that I've owned this kettle, I've never had any problems with it. It's very portable. I used to constantly tote it back and forth from home to work.
I see only three shortcomings that keep this from being a GREAT kettle. Otherwise I have no serious complaints and would recommend this kettle.
The metal sides become very hot.
The cord's a bit finicky. It's hard to wind up out of the way, and once you do, it just unravels again.
The spout's overlarge. It's really easy to dump two cups of boiling water all over the place just trying to fill a small teacup. It's not so much a problem, as it is just plain annoying. You have to...
Works great for making a thermos of green tea
We have had this thing for most of a year now, and have used it every day to make a big pot of green tea. Here are some tips on doing that.
We bought a 2.2 liter pump thermos. Yes, this kettle is 1.7 liter, but wait. Every day we throw in 5 bags of green tea and a little less than a cup of cold water. Careful how you rip off the string so you don't open up the bags; we find that holding the staple between finger and thumb while pulling the string keeps the bag intact. We somewhat overfill this kettle (no sign of a problem ever) with water to the middle of the circle you'll see on the inside, bring that to a boil, and add it to the thermos.
With green tea you do *not* want to add boiling water, because it makes the tea bitter. But the bit of cold water you put in first brings the temperature down just enough, and adds enough volume that it fills the 2.2L container. That's one day of tea for the two of us -- imagine the antioxidants! Note that the tea...
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