Hamilton Beach 40898 Cool Touch Tea Kettle

• Cool touch design
• Stainless Steel body
• full size 8 cup capacity
• Automatic shut- off
• Mineral deposit filter

Metal liner, cool outside, good balance - best combo of features:
Most importantly, my wife loves it, and she is a gadget-phobe. I just bought a second one for my mother. We have been using it for two months now, and no problems so far. After my usual exhaustive search, I selected this tea kettle because it had the best combination of features. PRO: - All metal: stainless steel liner and no exposed heating element to accumulate scale buildup. The lid is plastic but it doesn't come into contact with the water. I really didn't like the idea of boiling water in contact with plastic. - Cool touch exterior for safety and also it insulates the water inside, keeping it hotter after the kettle shuts off upon boiling. - Nice balance for the handle - I find the electric kettles with the handle on the top to be much more difficult to lift and pour. This one has the handle on the side - much better. - Wide mouth top is easy to fill and clean. The lid pivots in the middle - too hard to describe so I added a clip from the user manual. Easy to remove lid to clean, though as others mentioned it does get in the way a bit when you're filling the kettle. - As with many other kettles, it is cordless -- the kettle lifts easily off and on from the corded base, and you can hide any extra power cord inside the base. CON (none of these matter to me or my wife): - No water level indication, but then if there were you would probably have connections that could leak over time and potentially plastic parts in contact with water. - Water temperature is not adjustable.

Plastic still touches the hot water!:
Does noboy notice that the underside of the lid is all plastic? Also, that black shadowing in the photo near the "spout" on top of the lid is not shadowing or light reflection. It's plastic! Worse yet, there is no way to pour out your water without it flowing along all that plastic at the spout unless you completly remove the lid before heating the water! I'm sending this back and asking for my shipping fees credited to me as well. This is a misrepresented product!

I love it.:
This electric kettle has been great. It's all stainless steel on the inside, except up where the lid is, and the hot water doesn't touch those parts. It was important to me that I not get plastic, rubbery parts in my boiling water, and all of the other stainless steel kettles I looked at had something questionable touching my water. Not so on this one. It doesn't take up much space on my counter top. It doesn't heat up my house. It doesn't leak unless I overfill it. The only issue I have with this kettle is that the fill line is on the wrong side, where you can't really see it unless you detach the lid (you don't want to do that). I can sort of see the line, but not easily. And, you can really only fill it about 1/2 way. I don't mind though. It's a small price to pay for everything else. I would recommend it.

Good while it lasted:
Pro: Cannot burn you. Not cool by touch but not super hot either. Heat the water pretty fast. Con: Lid design is not well thought off. Doesn't open up. Instead front part goes up while back goes down. So it's not convenient to put the water in. Also gave up after 2 years of light use. I'm not buying it anymore.

Spout leaks:
I spent ages looking for a good electric tea kettle and read all the reviews on a number of sites. The Hamilton Beach Cool Touch looks good and works well, that is until you pour the hot water into a mug and then it leaks along the spout onto the counter. We've still been using it, but will be buying a new kettle soon.