Can we talk about how my $8 thrift store kettle beat my $90 one at boiling water?
I picked up a cheap old kettle at a thrift store in Boise last month just to have a backup, and my fancy $90 gooseneck kettle from the online store started sitting in the cabinet. The cheap one boils a full liter in about 4 minutes while the pricey one takes closer to 7, and the spout on the cheap one pours just as clean. Did I just get lucky with a good used one, or is everyone else overpaying for kettles like I did?
The price difference is mostly about the spout shape, not how fast it heats up. A gooseneck is built for slow, steady pouring when you make pour over coffee, so the narrow opening is on purpose. That narrow spout actually slows down how fast heat escapes and how fast water moves through it, which is part of why yours takes longer. The cheap kettle boils faster because it has a wide open spout and probably a flat bottom that sits right on the burner, but that wide spout is exactly what makes it a bad pick for pour over. So you didn't get lucky, you just bought a kettle for a job the other one wasn't built to do.