Credit: Rita El Khoury / Android Authority

When I first set out on the epic journey of finding a kettle for my apartment, I didn’t know the road would be this perilous and complicated. See, I have no previous experience with electric kettles — where I come from, you just boil some water on the stove and brew your Arabic coffee, hot cocoa, or tea with it.

This newfangled world of pluggable kettles was new to me, and I thought I could get a smart one so I’d have hot water by the time I got out of bed. The prospect of saying “Hey Google, turn on the kettle” while still snoozing was a bit of a dream. Turns out heat and electricity aren’t a joke and many manufacturers don’t trust that you’ll actually have water in your kettle before you remotely turn it on, especially if there’s no sensor to detect the water level before the kettle gets too hot.