Quooker Cube: expensive, unnecessary, and worth it every single day

We drink a lot of water and a serious amount of tea.

For both, there has basically always been a simple solution: a kettle for the tea, a crate of sparkling water from the basement.

It works.

And yet there is now a tap in our kitchen that cost a multiple of what a normal tap costs.

And I would not give it back.

What the Quooker Cube actually does

The Quooker itself is, first of all, a tap that delivers boiling water at the push of a button.

Not hot. Boiling.

The Cube is the unit that lives in the cabinet underneath. It turns the tap into a source of chilled still and chilled sparkling water as well.

In practice: one tap, three things. Boiling water for tea, cold water for drinking and sparkling water, without ever carrying a crate again.

Why it matters so much day to day

The real trick is not the technology.

It is the "right now".

Tea runs all day in our house and is nobody's weekend event. That used to mean: switch on the kettle, wait, forget about it, boil again.

Now I hold the cup under the tap and the tea is basically ready instantly.

With water it is the same thing, cold. No hauling crates, no empty bottle at the worst possible moment, no deposit-bottle Tetris in the hallway.

Sparkling water is just there.

This sounds like a luxury problem, and it is one. But it is one of those small things you use several times a day without ever thinking about it again.

What I like about it

• Boiling water with no waiting. Tea, coffee, quickly pouring over something. The kettle just gets in the way now.
• Sparkling water without crates. No hauling, no deposit, no "oh, the last one is empty".
• One tap instead of three solutions. Kettle, water crate and filter jug are suddenly redundant.
• It becomes normal immediately. After a week you wonder how it ever worked before.

The honest downsides

The price is steep. There is no way to make that sound reasonable.

A Quooker with a Cube costs a multiple of what you would purely functionally spend on hot and sparkling water.

On top of that: this is built-in tech under the sink. Not a gadget you move somewhere else on a whim, but a small decision for the house.

And it needs CO2 for the sparkling water.

The good news: you are not stuck with the expensive original bottles. Compatible CO2 bottles from third-party suppliers are a lot cheaper, and that makes the running cost bearable.

Still, honestly: if you rarely drink tea and do not care about sparkling water, none of this makes sense.

Would I recommend it?

Yes. But with a clear if.

If water and tea run all day in your home anyway, the Quooker Cube is one of the few expensive things that feels like everyday life rather than waste.

If, on the other hand, you rarely need hot water and are happy with tap water, stay away. Then it is simply a very nice, very expensive tap.

For us it was an investment that made me swallow hard at first.

But boiling water for tea and cold sparkling water at the push of a button are worth it every single day.

And that is exactly the kind of good stuff this site is about.