Hamilton Beach Electric Tea Kettle SS

We have had so many of these awesome electric kettles over the years. We use ours every single day until it goes kaput..for a few years if we're lucky. It doesn't seem hard to get this right when it comes to a functioning, stainless steel, electric kettle, and I trusted the Hamilton Beach name, so I ordered one when the lid on our 2-3 year old Aroma stopped opening and then failed to stay shut. 1-right out of the box, we noticed there was no mesh filter. That was certainly not a deal breaker, we've had mesh filters in the past just end up falling apart, but there was also no pretend filter either...the metal piece built into the design with 1/2 cm size holes in it that wouldn't really filter anything, but gives you the sense of the waters being filtered as it pours into your cup (see photo). Again, not a deal breaker - even when I noticed in the packaging that a mesh filter was indeed supposed to be included. 2-in the product listing, it's not noticeable, but there are actually two water level windows. I really prefer the water level window to be part of the handle assembly and not such a prominent part of the kettle body since it's basically sitting in the water as it boils, but this kettle has not only one but two big chunky plastic water level windows built into the kettle walls (see photo). Definitely not a fan of that. Again, not worth returning it over. 3-another design flaw, the power switch lifts up to turn on, rather than pushing down like all the other electric kettles on the market. 4-okay, now we're moving from annoyances to deal breakers. From our very first use, the kettle would not shut off. It just kept boiling and boiling and boiling. Not shutting itself off defeats the whole purpose of an auto-shutoff electric kettle. I don't want to have to babysit it, that's why we abandoned stove-top models. This is also a safety hazard in my opinion. 5-the upper part of the handle-where your thumb rests when picking it up-is very hot when you are pouring your newly-boiled water. Another safety hazard...and frankly the last straw. It didn't even survive 24 hours in our house. Way too many red flags. We returned it and are trying again with a different model. I was annoyed to have to do a bunch more research and read through even more reviews, but so far so good with our first venture into the world of electric glass kettles. The reviews, warranty, and apparent trusted name of Cosori sold us on this one: Cosori 1.7L 1500W wide opening