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Not Everybody’s Cup Of Tea But...
When the Tefal Quick Cup was launched late last year, I thought, brilliant idea but it will never work for long with our hard water and regular use. How wrong can you be? It has performed really well both in home use and at the office, even taking over from our commercial tea machine when it went wrong.
The idea behind the Tefal Quick Cup is to be a kettle replacement product which uses only a fraction of the energy of a conventional kettle and can provide filtered ambient water as well. In most respects it does this very well supplying boiling hot water in just three seconds at the touch of a button. This works on the electric shower principle of heating the water in a small tube on demand.
The resulting energy savings are impressive. In our tests it used 66% less energy than a conventional electric kettle to boil a measured amount of water. The potential savings don’t stop there, the pure convenience of having a device which can produce instant hot water in tiny or large quantities is amazing and saves a lot of time, water and power. Excellent for rinsing cans, gravy, topping up pans which are about to boil dry, etc, etc. I have even used it to make cous cous. It is very good for making real coffee and a medium sized cafetiere will fit under the spout, a large one requires moving it to the edge of the worktop.
It’s best as a single drinks machine. It is very difficult to get an ordinary kettle to boil just enough water for one drink and you run the risk of burning out the element if you even try. The Tefal Quick Cup as its name suggests has no such problems and can be programmed to automatically fill your size cup for one touch operation. It also prompts you to change the filter and when to descale it, which is done with vinegar. I drink mainly ground coffee or Earl Grey tea, both black and for these it is fine but although it didn’t seem to worry anyone at work, it doesn’t make the best traditional English cup of tea, probably because the water doesn’t get to a rolling boil. That’s the only negative, otherwise it is a great invention, which will find a good home in any kitchen, office or even possibly, bedroom.
Charge Of The Light Brigade
Having bought an iPhone, which has turned out to be easily as good as the hype, amazingly I can often browse the internet out in the woods where there isn’t even enough signal to make a phone call. All I need now is to find a good online guide to fungi identification!
This connectivity comes at a price though, battery life. Apple designed it to be recharged by connecting to your computer or mains adaptor, but what to do when neither is available?
Solar rechargers seemed to be the answer, so I have tried out the three main ones – Freeloader, Solio and Power Monkey – all of which are electrical stores which can be charged via their own solar cells. They will all recharge and/or power a wide range of devices including most mobile phones, digital cameras, iPods, PDAs, GPSs and other similar devices.
I have used all of them to recharge a range of phones, which they all do with ease and then at least partially recharged the units via their solar cells. It’s the depth of winter with leaden skies but surprisingly they all picked up a useful charge on the windowsill.
So what’s the difference? Well the most obvious difference is capacity. You get what you pay for. The Freeloader holds 1,000mA, Solio 1,600mA and the Power Monkey 2,200mA. That means the Freeloader can recharge an iPod or a mobile phone once, the Solio twice and the Power Monkey has even more capacity and could be used to provide power for up to 40 hours iPod listening, 96 hours of mobile standby or to take 1,600 pictures on a digital camera.
Some other differences: While they can be fully recharged by the sun in about two days, they can also be charged more quickly by other means. Solio and Power Monkey come with mains adaptors which allow them to be recharged from the mains almost any-where in the world. The Freeloader however recharges via USB and so requires a suitable port to pick up power.
Other differences include how long they can store power for – this ranges from three months for the Freeloader to around a year for the Power Monkey – and how rugged they are. Basically you get what you pay for with the degree of protection going up with the cost. That said, they are all well made and have been used on major expeditions. They also come with a range of ‘tips’ but if the one you require isn’t included it will almost certainly be available cheaply from the manufacturer’s web site.
Oh yes, the iPhone... At the time of writing only the Solio would charge an iPhone straight out of the box. Power Monkey have just produced a special tip which will be in future kits, and Freeloader are updating their product so it should work with the latest Apple products by the time you read this.
Wireless Working
Recently a range of wireless standby products have appeared and I have been trying out Bye Bye Standby’s Energy Saving Kit. This consists of three plug adaptor modules which are controlled by a small wireless remote control. Ideal for using to control appliances with hard-to-reach mains switches, I have been using them on my studio lights and find them really good. One remote can control up to 10 devices, so the possibilities for wirelessly cont-rolling your home are almost endless.
Just time to mention the Souvenir Cranwell Battery Regenerator which recharges ordinary single use alkaline AA batteries. Yes, I was pretty sceptical too, but it really works!
John Adams
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Tefal Quick Cup.
Freeloader.
Solio Silver Classic.
Power Monkey Explorer.
Bye Bye Standby
Energy Saving Kit.
Souvenir Cranwell
Battery Regenerator.
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