11 July 2023 , 09:00
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When it comes to buying gadgets for my home, kitchen accessories have to be on the top of my list especially if it's anything to do with my favourite hot drink, coffee. It's safe to say I've spent a small fortune fueling my love for the drink, whether it's the newest machine, pods, syrups or coffee grinders.
Until I came across one staple coffee accessory on Amazon for less than the price of a large frappe at your local coffee house. This £5 milk frother elevates a homemade mug within seconds, so much so, it even outperformed one much pricier brand, Nespresso.
The Silreck Handheld Milk Frother is currently reduced to £5.98 and listed as one of the retailer's 'top choice' products. At such a cheap price, is it worth the effort of going to checkout?
Brands including Nespresso, Whittard and Krups all make similar-style electric frothers and coffee machines, all you have to do is plug them in at the wall, pour in your milk of choice and press the button. The fancier versions come with a 'cold froth' setting which is perfect for iced coffee lovers and you can even set to steam milk if you don't want a frothy top.
How does a £5 milk frother compare to a higher-end version?At the same time, they're not always cheap and prices for the accessory can reach as much as £190, if not more - a high price for some just to froth up some milk. Intrigued to see if a cheaper gadget would do just as good of a job, I put it to the test.
Amazon is selling 32 packs of Walkers ready salted crisps for just £10
At first, I was slightly dubious to give it a try, the damaged packaging and cheap plastic casing didn't do any unboxing favours, but the results blew (or should I say 'whisked') away my low expectations. The Silreck gadget uses batteries to power the whisked end and can be used on both hot and cold milk.
Unlike the 'high-end' milk frothers, the Silkreck is designed to be put into a mug of milk and whisk by hand, it's not something you can switch on and leave to do its magic. Although the quality of the whisk feels pretty cheap (I suppose you get what you pay for) the results were a lot better than I thought - beating my Nespresso machine.
The mug on the right is the milk I frothed with the £5 mixer, which came out a lot frothier than the Nespresso frothed mug on the leftI decided to beat the product against the Nespresso Electric Frother I use daily at home, because how different could the milk results really be? The mug on the right is the milk frothed with the £5 gadget, the one on the left was done by the £75 Nespresso version.
You can clearly see how much more height the cheaper mug (on the right) has, and it took just seconds to do. Of course for £70 more the Nespresso model comes with a whole range of other features, it can be done with a click of a button, there's a hot and cold setting and does up to 240ml of milk at one time.
Although the cheaper frother beat Nespresso at first it did loose its froth a lot quicker (Harriet Morphy-Morris)However, the £5 mixer certainly is incredible value for money, and just by looking at the mugs, you wouldn't know any difference between the two (in my opinion anyway). The only downside to Amazon's Silreck gadget is you'd have to heat up the milk first before frothing, something the more expensive models do all-in-one.
Another downer, I mean can we really complain for a fiver, is the milk frothiness didn't last.