Hot, cold, (almost) boiling and filter water all on tap
The InSinkErator 4IN1 Touch is a fantastic addition to your kitchen if you’re looking to make your life easier. No more kettle and no more annoying filter jugs (or worse, water in plastic bottles). It’s super stylish, easy to install and requires very little maintenance apart from the occasional filter or battery change. It’s expensive yes, but you will be saving some money on your energy bill (albeit not enough to offset the cost).
Pros
- Easy to retrofit
- Cold filter on tap
- Instant (almost) boiling water
- Safety lock
Cons
- Expensive
- Need cupboard space
- Not technically boiling water
Boiling taps aren’t a new thing but the InSinkErator 4N1 Touch takes things a step further by adding a filtered drinking water option to the mix.
The 4 in the name refers, therefore, to regular hot and cold water (as per a normal kitchen sink tap) alongside boiling water and cold filter water.
I say boiling but technically the top temperature of the InSinkErator 4N1 Touch is 99°C … but read on to find out why that’s not really a problem in our full review.
InSinkErator 4N1 Touch: Design and finishes
The 4N1 Touch, which is made in Italy, comes in a range of stylish shapes and finishes.
You can choose from an L, J or U shaped tap (it’s an L on review here) with the choice of chrome, brushed stainless steel or velvet black (it’s the latter for me here).
The cost changes slightly between the finishes; it’s £1,280 for the chrome, £1,391 for the stainless steel and £1,447 for the black.
That cost is for the full system, not just the tap.
It’s designed to retro-fit where your old dumb tap was; all of the pipework simply slips down a regular 35-38mm tap hole in your kitchen worktops or your sink.
The black model, as you can see in my pictures (although I scrubbed it up for its photoshoot) is going to cause limescale issues if you live in a hard water area.
However, any mechanical issues this causes (on all the colours, obviously) are covered with a 5 year warranty; the guy who installed my tap said InSinkErator are really good when it comes to simply swapping damaged parts for new ones in that period.
You also get a 2 year warranty on the hot water NeoTank, which I’ll cover more of next.
InSinkErator 4N1 Touch: Installation
You can choose to install the 4N1 yourself – I’m told it’s pretty easy – but you also have the option of adding a pro installation to your basket for £180 if you shop directly with InSinkErator.
Whatever option you go for, you’re going to need some cupboard space either under or right next to your sink, along with a plug socket to power the system.
Although the shiny part above counter level is what you’ll be using and seeing everyday, it’s the units underneath that will be doing all the heavy lifting.
The system comprises of a 2.5l NeoTank, where the hot water is stored (you can adjust the temperature from 88 to 99°C) and a cold water filter – which you need to replace every 6-8 months (£79 for a 2-pack).
These tanks are fed from your cold feed and travel into the tap via their own dedicated tubes, separate from the regular hot and cold feeds your normal kitchen tap would have used.
There’s also a third, small part, to the system – a battery pack (9V) for the touch button that disperses filtered water. I was told this battery should last a couple of years before it needs changing.
In my case, I have a Butler sink with a fairly small single cupboard underneath. As you can see from the picture, that’s about as tight as you’d want it. We still have room for dishwasher salt and tablets in there but that’s about it.
InSinkErator 4N1 Touch: In use
The tap itself is super easy to use. The NeoTank takes about 10 minutes to completely fill up and boil for its first use, but then it simply tops itself up as you use it and keeps the water at the temperature you set it to.
It’s only if you fill up a couple of saucepans that you’re likely to actually empty the NeoTank, so basically you’ve got (almost) boiling water literally on tap at an instant.
The hot water pours pretty slowly, via a sprung loaded dedicated handle on the left hand side, which isn’t really an issue for tea or coffee, but can be a bit laborious for a big pan of water.
However, you’d hardly want (almost) boiling water pouring out like a regular tap rate as you’d likely scold yourself.
Speaking of scolding and it’s pretty kid safe as the hot water lever has a safety lock that requires a manual push, and it springs back as soon as you release it and the flow stops.
My mum and wife, ardent tea drinkers, both insisted the (almost) boiling water tasted “different” in their tea… “like water that’s been boiled twice.”
That’s no doubt because the water sits in the NeoTank and stays hot – it’s not used instantly after boiling like a kettle.
I’ve not noticed a difference in coffee and the latest update from my wife is: “I’m used to it now.”
The regular hot and cold tap is on the right hand side and in the middle is a push button for the filter water.
Push it and it’ll start pouring your cold filtered water and then push it again to stop. It has a 20-second time out so you don’t have to worry about leaving it running by accident.
InSinkErator 4N1 Touch: Energy use and cost to run
In terms of money saving / eco credentials… it’s not an easy nor exact science to work out really.
If you’re a big tea or coffee drinker, or you fill a lot of saucepans from your kettle then there’s no doubt that you’ll be using less energy with a boiling tap.
I tried to do some sums using an energy monitoring plug but it’s not really possible as kettles obviously vary depending on how much water is in them.
What I do know is the InSinkErator 4N1 Touch used around 1.2kWh to fill the NeoTank from empty and then just a few hundred watts a day to stay hot and top up.
Kettles, as we’re constantly told, are one of the biggest energy hoggers in our household. On average a 2-litre kettle has a power rating of around 3kWh; but you’d obviously not boil a kettle for a full hour.
So let’s say, roughly, that boiling a kettle for 4 minutes will use about 0.225kWh… and you can see where the maths gets murky.
Instead, let’s focus on a quick Google search that shows various consumer watchdog sites stating that boiling taps use roughly 50% of the energy of a kettle in a year.
So that’s great news for your electricity bill.
Obviously though, there’s a pretty hefty outlay to get one in your house; hefty enough to say it’s never really going to save you money.
But it is better for the planet and it’s definitely more efficient.
Make of that what you will.
