I tried a one cup kettle - and I think it's a genius buy for tea lovers

Nobody wants to have to compromise on their hot drink habits, but in the wake of the energy crisis, everyone is more conscious of how much everyday appliances can cost to run. The best kettles are high on the list of most-used appliances, especially for tea and coffee lovers, but daily running costs can start to stack up, as I discovered when I tried an energy monitoring plug in my flat for a week.

I review products every day for my job, so I was naturally intrigued when I heard about the LAICA Dual Flo Electric Kettle, which is designed to dispense one cup of boiling water at a time. Would it be a gimmick, or would it actually help to cut costs in the coming months?

The LAICA Dual Cup Kettle

I was a little bewildered when I first unboxed this kettle, as it's pretty different to your usual run-of-the-mill model. To use the one-cup function, you fill the kettle (the capacity is 1.7 litres, so fill it up all the way if you want water for a day of at-home tea consumption), and then select the cup size using the dial before pressing the silver button. It takes about 40 seconds for one cup of water to boil,  which spouts out of the side to where your mug will be waiting. 

To see how much it costs to run, I plugged in my electricity monitoring plug (which you can buy on Amazon) while using this kettle too. I was pleasantly surprised to find that boiling one cup of water was less than 1 pence, meaning that even if you're a ten-cups-of-tea-a-day drinker, the money this kettle will cost you in real terms is absolutely minimal.

The hands-free element of this kettle also made me think of just how great it would be for users with limited movement. My dad loves his daily dose of tea and cake, but in recent years has struggled with his mobility, and filling and boiling a heavy kettle is something that is becoming increasingly difficult. 

I think it's great that this kettle can be filled once at the start of a day (by another family member potentially) and then one cup filtered out at a time with just a push of a button. My dad likes to use one of these cup carriers from Amazon to take his cuppa from the kitchen to the living room too, which is a good match for this kettle.

Thanks to those features, I'm planning to take this kettle home for my dad to use - but the jury is still out when it comes to user reviews online. While there are generally good feelings about the one cup dispensing system, some reviewers wish you got a little more water in each sitting, as even on the highest setting they found that their mugs weren't totally full. Some also thought the price to be to steep at £69.99. Despite this, most users agreed on the benefits of the energy-saving credentials of this kettle, and after testing it, I'd agree that it's a game-changer for homes where the tea is always brewing.