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Kitchen · Smeg · 2014

Smeg KLF03 Electric Kettle

A design object that boils water: no temperature control, real weight, and you know why you bought it.

Stainless shrugs off acid cycles; plastic yellows — #5

Overall

6.3

out of 10

Axis scores

Kitchen is scored on these 5 axes. The total is their plain average — nothing is weighted.

Smeg KLF03 Electric Kettle — axis scores out of 10Horizontal bar chart of editorial scores out of 10 across 5 axes. Bars run from a shared zero baseline; longer is better. Smeg KLF03 Electric Kettle: Performance 6.2, Value 3.6, Durability 7.6, Ease of use 6.6, Quietness 7.6.PerformanceSmeg KLF03 Electric Kettle — Performance 6.2 out of 106.2ValueSmeg KLF03 Electric Kettle — Value 3.6 out of 103.6DurabilitySmeg KLF03 Electric Kettle — Durability 7.6 out of 107.6Ease of useSmeg KLF03 Electric Kettle — Ease of use 6.6 out of 106.6QuietnessSmeg KLF03 Electric Kettle — Quietness 7.6 out of 107.6Editorial score out of 10 — higher is better
  • Performance — How well it does the core job
  • Value — What the same money buys elsewhere
  • Durability — Failure and fade reports past the one-year mark
  • Ease of use — Setup, daily operation, cleaning, maintenance
  • Quietness — Operating noise — a higher score means quieter

Specs

Body
Painted or polished steel, 50's Retro line
Control
On and off
Capacity
1.7 liters
Lid
Soft-opening, removable limescale filter

As published by the manufacturer. We didn't measure these ourselves.

Is it for you

Buy it if

  • The kettle is staying out on the counter and has to match the toaster
  • Boiling water is genuinely all you ask of a kettle
  • You want a lid that opens slowly instead of springing at you

Skip it if

  • Anything brewed below boiling — you want the temperature-controlled sibling instead
  • A full kettle has to be liftable one-handed and comfortably
  • You are buying on function, where this money buys you nothing at all

What you are buying is the shell, and there is no point pretending otherwise. It shares its palette and its curves with the toaster, the blender and the coffee machine, so a counter can be made to match in a way no other kettle here allows. Nothing further down the specification explains the outlay, and the product does not really claim it does.

Weight is the first surprise. The body is substantial empty and the better part of two kilograms of water goes on top of that, and reviewer consensus points at the handle join as the place where the complaints land. Pouring a full one across a counter with one hand is a two-hand job for a lot of people.

The water window clouds. Bubbles lodge behind it after a few uses and limescale marks it from the inside, and within weeks most owners stop reading it and judge by weight instead. It is the one functional feature the listing advertises, and it is the one that stops working properly first.

The soft-opening lid is the opposite story — small, unadvertised, and genuinely better than the spring-loaded button lids on most of this field. It swings open at a controlled speed instead of snapping, which matters more at seven in the morning than it sounds like it should.

There is no temperature control on this model at all. Smeg sells a variable-temperature version under a different model number in an almost identical shell, and people buy the wrong one regularly enough that it is worth stating plainly before anyone orders on the strength of a photograph.

Longer-term reports are unremarkable rather than reassuring. A minority describe seeping at the base after a couple of years, which is the ordinary way kettles end, and polished finishes show every fingerprint in a way the matte colours do not.

Last updated . The scoring method is on how we rank.