I bought this kettle after my previous Morphy Richards kettle packed in! Seeming relatively sturdy, I thought this was the perfect cure... how wrong I was - speaking from owning this kettle for about 1 year.

~~~APPEARANCE~~~
This black beast of a kettle is quite stylish until you find out it is made of cheap black plastic, though functional. There is a switch on the kettle handle which emits a lovely, stunning blue neon light when hard at work - which is great bonus! The crown of this beast is the stainless steel lid which is truly panache and looks the part in any contemporary kitchen. All in all, not the best look but alright.

~~~USABILITY~~~
The black plastic is actually non-slip which means you have a firm grip on the kettle - ensuring that you won't burn yourself by spilling hot water all over! You can fill this water up to a maximum of 1.6 liters, however it is extremely difficult to deduce the volume of water in the kettle as this is hard to see as well as only 0.5 liter gradations - how inaccurate for those who love to stick to a recipe word-for-word! (Not me, honest!)

It takes on average of 1 minute to boil 1 liter of water - which is average for any kettle. However it is extremely noisy when heating the water and slightly inefficient since so much steam comes out of the spout thus losing precious heated water!

Prior to extensive use, there was a sieve where the spout starts to emerge from the kettle - this was very useful for filtering limescale etc. until it broke!

There is a lock on the lid which has a flicker which poorly prevents steam escaping from the spout. This is a major flaw of the product since it gets rendered useless after extensive use since the lock doesn't close the spout properly - how annoying! However the lock is a very secure way of boiling water - perfect for a young family with toddlers/children.

Another good function is the automatic stop when the water has finished boiling - which is good when you nip out to the lounge when you are chatting to your friends and leave the kettle on.

~~~PERSONAL EXPERIENCE~~~
Limescale has built up inside this kettle tremendously quickly and I don't appreciate not having the sieve inside the kettle since I now find the odd bit of limescale in my tea! VERY UNPLEASANT! Especially when you live in a city with hard-water.

Despite this, the kettle remains relatively clean since there are no fingerprint marks that propagate because of the cheap plastic (I'm not sure if that is a good thing or a bad thing!)

~~~SUMMARY~~~
This semi-stylish kettle is not worth the £40 I spent on it, it is very bulky, too noisy, gets limescale way too easily and seems to break oh-so-quickly! Definitely would not recommend you buying it as it is money badly spent!