Tea Infuser, White

i dos not work company v=closed doors has to hook up to internet

When you price your product very high, you also invite comparisons to other very expensive, excellent products. This one is no exception.What makes this different? Well, they clearly know a lot about how to properly make tea.There is plenty of room in the steeping chamber for the water to surround each piece of the tea. This is why tea balls tend to not work well. The tea expands when it hits the water, fills the chamber, and the water can no longer reach it or surround it for extraction.They control the temperature based on the type of tea. Lower temperatures for green tea, higher for black.They control the steeping time. Lower for green, higher for black.And, here's a new one. They steep the tea for short periods of time, more than once. This is interesting and new. They also pump air into the water during the steeping, which both aerates the water and moves the tea leaves around, facilitating the release of oils, tannins, and other compounds that make tea great. It is fun to watch, but more importantly, seems to work well in extracting flavor without unpleasant over-extraction.It looks great, from the indicators that aren't visible unless lit to the smooth, almost featureless white surface.A lot of thought has clearly gone into both how to make great tea and how to look great doing it. Heck, even the packaging is overdone, with cloth bags around every major piece, and sparse instructions printed on card stock collected in an elegant black paper sleeve.What they didn't put a lot of thought into was the user experience, and it shows. There are even odd engineering/design choices that are just wrong.None of the cards actually says how to set up the unit. One has what is in the box (it doesn't mention instructions, because there aren't any). One talks about how great tea is, and also tells you to download the app, which is a good idea. The last one gives a brief description of what the icons on the unit mean when they flash red, which is good because they look like blurry abstract shapes. You'll never figure them out without this card. Ironically, there is also a sheet of paper with important information like don't throw the unit into a bathtub full of water and jump in after it lest you die of electrical shock. That one has a missive to keep it and not throw it away, just in case you lose your mind and forget everything you learned as a child.All this packaging, cloth bags, cards, and a branded microfiber cloth for cleaning it, and no instructions? At this price, I'd expect a spiral-bound, tabbed, four-color process manual with all the things on the cards along with set up instructions, definitions of teas and what they are, and a lot more. Heck, I even looked over the packaging to make sure I didn't miss something, even though the card with "what's in the box" correctly listed nothing for instructions.When I set the unit up, I filled the water chamber before pushing it back, under the upper cabinet. This makes sense, because to refill it, I have to pull it back out in order to lift the chamber up and out. When I came across the water filter, I couldn't figure out where it went. I gave up and ran the app, as instructed.The app told me where to put the filter. At the bottom of the water chamber. Great. I then emptied the chamber, put the filter in, refilled it, and put it back.Pairing it was easy, but it still didn't work, with flashing red icons. I'll save you the pain. Twenty minutes of fiddling later, I had it working. The designers of this thing must hate user feedback, because I could never tell if it registered when I clicked anything. I clicked. Nothing. Clicked again. Nothing. Very frustrating. At least add a noise or, better yet, a message. It is quirky, but I'm reasonably confident the issues are all in the software and firmware. The hardware seems solid.The water carafe comes out with the lid over it. This is really weird, and I thought I broke the lid when I first pulled it out. You then have to take it over to the water source and fill the chamber with the big floppy lid hanging off of it. They could have easily attached the lid to the unit instead, but nope. This is what I mean by engineering problems.What I can't criticize is the tea it makes. It is astonishingly good - stunningly so, really. I'm shocked. The tea was both strong and not over-extracted. I have no way of measuring the caffeine levels, but even after using green tea in it, which has less caffeine than black tea, I was wired for sound. The multiple short steepings at lower temperatures appear to actually work, which is something I was not expecting.The tea sampler it comes with is in a nice box, but it is made of cardboard, not wood as I would have expected. Moreover, I'm not sure what they used to decide which teas to include, but I got a lot of herbal teas and no green tea at all, which is very disappointing. This kind of machine really excels at regular tea, and green tea is what I drink most often. I can't imagine why they wouldn't include at least a couple of green teas. Instead, I got two capsules full of mint leaves. Yay.When I first saw it, I thought the carafe and infusing globe were too small, but they aren't. Because it makes such concentrated tea (and I mean that in a very good way), a full carafe is more than enough. The small infusing globe is more than large enough to infuse two teaspoons of tea at a time, and because it does this more than once, the carafe is filled with that. Very economical, as long as you use your own tea.My other tea maker is excellent, and I thought it was perfect until I tried this one. It makes a lot more tea, it controls the water temperature, steeping time, and gives the leaves plenty of room to spread out for infusion. It is the  Breville BTM800XL One-Touch Tea Maker It doesn't bounce the leaves around with air, and it doesn't steep multiple times. The tea it makes is fantastic compared with any maker other than this one, and far better than you could do manually. It isn't persnickety, and it comes with instructions.Is the resulting tea as good? No. But how much are you willing to pay and put up with for that?Only you can answer that question.Sean Logue, 2016

First: I'm a beta tester. I got this for free in exchange for an honest review.The Teforia is gorgeous and looks really cool in my kitchen (photo attached). When people come in they point to it and say "what's that?" and we all brew some tea. It's fun to watch the machine work. It's truly impressive. Most importantly, the tea is excellent. It's clear and full-bodied without any bitter or acidic tones. Delicious. Maybe I could make it this way myself if I precisely followed an expert's instructions, but it would take a lot more time and effort than I'm willing to put in with my busy life. I love that this machine does it for me. I am proud to serve such delicious tea. Also, I love that the tea goes into glass, never plastic (the outside is BPA-free plastic, but the tea goes into glass inside).Now for the problems that need some work:1. I can not get the app to work on my phone (Samsung Galaxy S5). It works on my husband's phone (S7) and my ipad, but not my phone. I have uninstalled and installed again, no luck. I have turned everything off and on again, no luck. It hangs up at the place where it tries to connect to my wifi and asks for the password. I put it in (correctly, of course) and it just hangs there, never moving forward. I have tried dozens of times to get it to work, to no avail. I'm sure they can fix this with an app update.2. My machine has a leak. At first it appeared to be dripping from the bottom, but I have seen tea dripping down the side (from the spout), so I think that may be the source of the drip (due to the shape of the carafe, it accumulates on the bottom and appears to be coming from that source). It's unsightly (photo attached) and disappointing.3. The "sips" make the thing so easy to use, but they are not cheap. If you want to use your own tea, you can do it with the app (if you get the app working on your phone) but I really wish there was a way to do this without using the app. It's annoying to have to use an app (another app to clog my phone) to make tea. What if I want my friends to be able to make tea at my house? Then they have to get the app, too, and go through the long (and possibly futile) process of making it connect to the wifi and bluetooth to just make tea. I understand that the app tells the machine exactly how to brew the tea, so you'd have to have a lot of buttons on the machine to be able to do this correctly (and know the recipes)... part of the wonder of the Teforia is that you don't need to know the recipes in your head... I don't know what the answer to this is, but I do know that I can't brew my own tea leaves without the app.Lastly: As of right now, the price is just way too high for this machine ($1500). This is ridiculous. This is a $200-$300 machine, not $1500. I would suggest that the developers (you awesome people, you're so cool!) get rid of all of the unnecessary luxury bits (like the heavy soft beautiful cloths that wrap the machine in the box that I have no use for now) and the heavy gorgeous cardstock informational cards that have very little information on them, and the nice embossed vellum piece of.... vellum that doesn't do anything... actually, keep the vellum, but get rid of all the extra useless luxury and reduce the price of the Teforia.Thank you for letting me test this unique machine. I wish you the best!

We love the tea infuser. Here is the issue. On Christmas morning we were trying to start the unit. I never knew or understood we needed the tea PODS. Also found out the company went out of business. How and where do i buy the PODS ? Never was offered any. Trying to buy and can't find. Luckily you can use an apt to use your own loose leaf tea. So i wish we could buy the PODS. But so far it works well. Concern, what happens if and when it goes bad ? Did purchase 2 year warranty, but am still worried if something goes wrong. Sure wish the company or Amazon knew or announced they were going out of business, we may not have purchased. Fingers crossed.