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Salter Elder kettle Review
A smart, 1.7-litre cordless jug kettle
In This Article
Verdict
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.
Pros
Cons
Availability
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
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
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 (theNinja Perfect Temperature Kettlehas 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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Should you buy it?
If you want a simple, inexpensive kettle, this one is quick to boil medium and big amounts of water
If you regularly boil just one or two mugs, look elsewhere
Final Thoughts
The Salter Elder kettle is a mixed bag. It’s a great colour, but its ersatz wood won’t be to everyone’s taste. It’s straightforward to use, but its push/pull lid is annoying. It boils quickly, but only a minimum of three cups. Overall its weaknesses take the shine off some strong features, leaving it hard to recommend. Check out other options on our list of thebest kettles.
How we test
Unlike other sites, we test every kettle we review thoroughly over an extended period of time. We use standard tests to compare features properly. We’ll always tell you what we find. We never, ever, accept money to review a product.
Find out more about how we test in ourethics policy.
Used as our main kettle for the review period
We measure the temperature of the water for different settings, and see how well insulated each kettle is by measuring 1-litre of boiled water after 20 minutes.
We boil one litre of water to see how fast the kettle is.
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FAQs
You can boil 800ml minimum, which is 300ml more than the average.
No, it can fully boil water only.
Full specs
Simon has spent fifteen years as a journalist, writer and editor for B2B and consumer markets, working in editorial, agency and client-side contexts. For Trusted Reviews, he reviews a variety of home …
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We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
Why trust our journalism?
Founded in 2003, Trusted Reviews exists to give our readers thorough, unbiased and independent advice on what to buy.
Today, we have millions of users a month from around the world, and assess more than 1,000 products a year.
Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
