Having had our new gas boiler replaced this week, we’ve now had to replace another kind of boiler. Our electric kettle, bought from Lidl in July on what I termed “gadget day“, stopped working. Jane checked the fuse with no joy, so I’m pretty sure the microcontroller inside the machine has gone (the bit that would detect power, water temperature and button presses, return a temperature reading to the display and turn on an appropriate LED light based on that reading).

I’ve spent a while looking online at various options. Variable temperature kettles aren’t uncommon but the reviews of the cheaper ones often mention problems like randomly breaking after a short time while the expensive ones are simply very expensive for what ought to be a fairly simple set of operations.

I’d almost settled on a Bosch one from Argos at about £65 but, meanwhile, popped back to Lidl to return the faulty one. Since it isn’t just that I’ve decided I don’t want it but the device is faulty, it was a no-quibble return and refund. However, on wandering round afterwards to pick up a few essential groceries, I found another Silvercrest kettle in the middle aisle.

This one was about £25 and less fancy than the one I took back but it covers all the essentials. The controls are in the base rather than directly on the kettle but they do have proper buttons rather than a smooth surface that didn’t always seem to register finger presses. It only offers 70, 80, 90 and 100°C settings rather than 5°C from 40-100°C but, even with the great range of options, I only seemed to use 70, 90 and 100°C so this will be more efficient. The lights and the live temperature read out were nice-to-haves but I can live without those.

Now I’m just hoping that this one lasts somewhat longer than four months.