Salter Elder kettle

Salter’s Elder Kettle is a smart, 1.7-litre cordless jug kettle. It’s distinguished by a lovely, deep teal finish, but its fake wood handles are somewhat less successful, and its 800ml minimum capacity is very high, which resulting in higher running costs.

Introduction

Salter’s Elder range of kettles and toasters is livened up with colour panels and a dash of ‘wood’. The Salter Elder kettle is a 3kW jug with deep teal sides that look great in a modern kitchen.

It sits on a 360-degree base, and has a single water gauge just behind the handle. There’s a removable limescale filter and boil-dry protection for safety, but precious little else in the way of features.

Design and features

• Lovely colour
• Fake wood
• Wasteful 800ml minimum fill level

Much like Salter’s Elder two-slice toaster, the Elder kettle looks better in the flesh than in photos. Its deep teal sides would complement a modern grey or white kitchen, but also wouldn’t look out of place in a more traditional or country-style room. However, while the toaster gets away lightly with a single plastic, wood-look knob, on this kettle it’s used for the on/off lever and lid, not to mention the large handle. At least it’s comfortable to hold.

Unlike most jug kettles, the Salter Elder kettle has a push-fit lid, rather than one on a hinge. Hinged lids are usually quick to release and easy to close securely, but to fill the Elder you must hold it with one hand while pulling off the lid with the other. It’s not the biggest chore, but you do need to take care when it’s hot, and when replacing the lid – if it’s not fully on, it could leak when pouring.

Even with the lid firmly on, the Salter Elder kettle will leak a little if you pour it too aggressively. Otherwise, it’s easy to use, and pours fairly neatly. There’s quite a lot of noise during the mid-part of the boil, but nothing worse than you’d expect from most single-skinned metal kettles.

Performance

• Fast and efficient boiling
• Cools down a little quickly
• High minimum could prove costly

This is a 3kW kettle, and it heats extremely quickly. It boiled 1.5 litres of room-temperature water in just three minutes. Kettles don’t vary much regarding power consumption, but this one used 0.15-kilowatt hours (kWh) for the full boil. That’s about 5p at today’s 34p per kWh price cap.

This efficiency is undone, though, by the Salter Elder’s needlessly high 800ml minimum boil. While most kettles will heat just 500ml (the Ninja Perfect Temperature Kettle has a minimum of just 250ml)- almost enough for two mugs of tea – here you’re effectively boiling an entire extra mug’s worth every time. That makes it slower: boiling 800ml took a minute and 46 seconds, which is about 30 seconds longer than a similar appliance took to boil 500ml.

Being on for longer means using more electricity – this kettle consumed 0.09kWh to boil 800ml, whereas the similar kettle needed 0.06kWh to boil its 500ml minimum. Boil the minimum amount five times a day and the Salter Elder could cost you 14.6p, compared to 10p for a kettle that goes down to 500ml. That’s more than £17 difference over the course of a year.

To be fair, you’ll recoup some of the difference if you don’t empty the kettle between boils, as any remaining water will still be warm for some time. That said, this kettle does allow water to cool a little quickly. Sixty minutes after boiling, 800ml of water had fallen from 100℃ to 53.1℃. I repeated the test with a 1.5-litre fill, and the water had cooled to 64.7℃ – the best kettles are still at more than 75℃ in this test.

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