Putting sensors all over the home and connecting them to Home Assistant is fun, I know, but it isn’t for everyone — not yet. Thankfully, there are smart home upgrades that don’t require any apps. I may have replaced every light switch in my home with a smart one, but my favorite smart home upgrade doesn’t connect to my Homey Pro at all, and it’s an improvement my entire family likes as much as I do.
It’s time to buy an instant hot water dispenser
Our electric kettle has now entered the donate pile
I didn’t grow up with an electric kettle. Instead, my family boiled water in a saucepan on the stove whenever we wanted to make tea. Discovering an electric kettle as an adult felt like black magic. As a tea lover, this was a giant leap forward.
When Waterdrop reached out to me about their M6CG instant hot and cold countertop water dispenser, it felt like a similar leap forward. After just one use, I knew I wasn’t going back. My wife and two kids all had the same reaction. We haven’t reached for our electric kettle since. In fact, we’re giving it away.
A countertop instant hot water dispenser doesn’t take any time to boil, so I can stop taking shade from my European colleagues whose 240V kettles boil water much faster than is possible in America. A countertop hot water dispenser instead functions more like a tankless water heater, heating water as it comes out to get it to the right temperature. Since we’re talking about a small stream of water, they can function off a regular 120V wall outlet with no extra electrical work required. Just place your cup under the dispenser, press the button, and watch hot water instantly dispense.
Set water to the temperature you need
Some units also turn off automatically after pouring the right amount
Credit: Bertel King / How-To Geek
I’m an avid tea drinker, but that doesn’t mean I’ve taken the time to do it right. Before now, I turned my kettle on, waited for it to come to a full boil, and then poured water into my mug. It didn’t matter whether I was drinking black tea, green tea, or herbal tea — I steeped them all at over 200 degrees. If you’re cringing at this, I get it. It’s no wonder I never liked green tea before.
Waterdrop’s dispenser has a control panel on the front that lets me set the temperature I need. I can’t set exact temperatures and must instead settle for increments of around 20 degrees, but that’s a huge step up from what I had before.
The Waterdrop M6CG also wants to know how much water to dispense. With an 8oz mug, this is awesome. We can place a mug under the dispenser, tap a few buttons, and walk away to set a timer. When we return, the tea has already steeped in the time that it would take an electric kettle to come to a boil. This process may not be automated, but you can add it to the list of ways a smarter home can help you get up in the morning.
An under-sink model greatly helps with washing dishes
If you’re a homeowner, I can’t recommend this upgrade highly enough
While I like the M6CH enough that I wouldn’t go back to an electric kettle, it is far from a perfect product. This particular model is huge — too tall to fit under most of my kitchen cabinets. It’s also very heavy, being about as unwieldy to move as a Ninja Slushi XL. This is particularly frustrating if you have to move it in order to lift the water tank in the back, which you’ll need to do every other day as you dump out the old water and add in the new. This dispenser is also limited to dispensing 4oz, 8oz, 16oz, or 20oz of water, but not the 12oz that many of my family’s mugs hold.
Thankfully, I was also sent the Waterdrop K6 under-sink model, which places an instant hot water dispenser next to your kitchen faucet. I was able to install it myself with a couple of hours of work. The resulting dispenser doesn’t take up space on my counter and never has to be manually refilled or emptied. While it can’t automatically stop dispensing the way the countertop model can, it dispenses water much faster, so there is hardly any need.
While I still use this model for tea, it’s just as useful for washing dishes. It can’t fill an entire sink with water, but the K6 can instantly pour hot water directly into a bowl or pan. I’ve found this to make easy work of even the most soiled of dishes, and this upgrade has drastically reduced how much scrubbing is required. As a parent who spends hours of my day at the kitchen sink, I love this upgrade dearly. It’s not the only smart home upgrade I’ve made in my kitchen, but it’s easily my favorite.
Don’t limit your smart home imagination to IoT devices
Neither of these hot water dispensers is internet-connected, and there is no Matter logo on the side of the box. Yet being able to get hot water instantly, and at a precise temperature, is exactly the sort of awesomeness I envision a smart home being able to deliver.
While homeowners have the most flexibility to install the best models, with countertop options available, renters don’t have to miss out. That’s good, because purified drinking water is the perfect upgrade to pair with that water tracker you 3D printed.