Sage - The Tea Maker Compact - Smart Tea Infuser with 5 Presets for Green, White, Oolong, Herbal & Black - Variable Temperature & Steep Time - 4 Cup / 1L Capacity - Smoked Hickory

Excellent product

Bought one in 2018, writing this in 2025, still works great and looks fine. I'm a heavy tea brewer, used it for over 5000 cycles easily, it broke a few times but all it needed it to bring back was dry off after spilling tea on the base. Few things could be done better but overall, this is the best kitchen appliance I ever had.

I bought this a few weeks ago to replace my old Swann teasmade. I was a bit concerned at the high price tag, but it is a beautiful bit of kit. It took a few goes to tame the new kettle taste and to get the combination of steep time and tea amount to my liking, but since then, every cup of tea has been perfect. It is kept at exactly the temperature you want for up to an hour. I am very pleased with it plus it looks good. I clean it out as soon as it has cooled down every day using warm water and a microfibre cloth, and then refill it ready for the next morning. We live in a hard water area, so I await to see how much lime scale builds up, but I’m hoping that daily gentle cleaning will keep it down. The tea maker came with one sachet of descaler which I will keep for when it’s needed. The only downside is the weight of the kettle, it is pretty heavy, even empty. It wouldn’t be suitable for my elderly Mum, for example as she would struggle to lift it. It is easy to use once you work out what all the buttons do. I haven’t used the timer function yet, but I have programmed it, so maybe one day! For me, it’s five stars all round.

Superb update to a fantastic tea maker

I bought this as an Xmas gift for my parents, they are some of the world's most frequent tea drinkers so what better present!To start with the top line summary:When used properly Sage genuinely brews the perfect tea, it's a hefty price tag for a glorified kettle but as the bloke who sold me my bed said: "think about how much of your life you spend in bed; why wouldn't you invest a small fortune?" Likewise for those people who drink several cups of tea a day I think it's fair to say this item is a worthwhile extravagance.What they loved:The keep warm setting that ensures your tea remains at the optimal temp for an hour.The automated mechanism does everything except load the teaLooks fantastic in any kitchensturdy and durable, certainly well madeBeep to notify you when it's readyWhat they didn't like so much:You can't fill the kettle more than 3/4 or as soon as it starts to boil it prematurely starts brewing the tea as the bubbles spill into the tea basketthe measuring guide, instead of being on the front, is on the handle which seems stupid as you need to cover it to hold it under a tap.All in all, this is a niche product that the average tea drinker would probably choose to pass on in favour of something 90% as effective for a quarter of the price, but it's clear this product was not designed for the masses and it is pretty great if you are into this sort of thing.Not my cup of tea but I can see why a lot of people would love it.

I drink a lot of tea. My girlfriend and I drink 1-2 kettles a day between us, every day of the year.I live in Sweden and ordered this from the UK; hence I needed to buy an adapter and the shipping wasn't cheap, but it was definitely worth it! The tea comes out perfect, EVERY time. Especially when it comes to green tea, it makes everything so much easier. Just set it to your desired strength, push the button and when it beeps, your tea is ready! In my opinion, the presets are just fine, but you can fine-tune brew time and temperature to your liking. I really don't miss the manual steps in making sure the temperature is good and not leaving the leaves in for too long.Somebody pointed out that you can brew each batch of leaves twice, thus saving money. :-) I don't know about saving heaps of money, but you can definitely re-use the leaves. We brew each batch of leaves at least twice. With oolong tea, we set the brew timer to 30s and brewed the same leaves fifteen (!) times without losing flavour.One thing that wasn't obvious to me in the item description, was that while you can boil 1.5L of water, you can only brew 1.2L of tea at a time, due to the basket taking up space. This is the one drawback I can think of. 1.2L is merely two medium-sized cups each for my girlfriend and me.The bottom of the kettle will get brown sooner or later. Take care when cleaning it such that it doesn't get wet on the outside. Neither the basket nor the kettle can be entirely washed, due to all the little tight corners, and due to the small holes in the basket. Not a big deal for me, but you may want to know that it will not look brand new no matter how much you clean it. Another good thing to know is that the "keep warm" function only keeps the tea warm for up to an hour.A warning about rooibos: the holes in the basket are small, but not small enough to not let some of the rooibos pieces through. As long as you don't mind a few pieces on the bottom of your cup, this is no problem, though.