I had previously owned a TM 1.7 model from this same company. I loved the thing. I am an iced tea addict and when one of my children took the pitcher outside for the TM 1.7 and one of their friends stepped on it and made it unusable I had a small nervous breakdown.

After the breakdown I immediately went to WalMart in search of a replacement pitcher. When no pitcher was to be found I decided to buy this new model, the TM3P, thinking that there couldn't be much difference in performance. Boy was I wrong.

True, the tea is made much more quickly in the new machine and it comes with two larger pitchers, but things go seriously downhill from there.

First, when the tea is brewing and begins to drip into the pot it also drips down the side of machine where the pitcher sits. If you make sweet tea like I do this means you end up with a sugary, sticky, disgusting mess all over the front of the pitcher, the machine and on the counter. I have children who are expert mess makers; I do not need a tea pot that wants to compete with them for the title of Grand Champion King of the Messies.

Secondly, the pitchers were not, much to my dismay, dishwasher safe. They warped. One so badly that I could no longer put the lid on it. While I from then on washed them by hand I find this state of affairs unacceptable. Who in this day and age makes something that isn't dishwasher safe? If they are going to do that they need to emboss "Not Dishwasher Safe" in big red letters on the pitchers so that you don't end up with a pitcher that looks like it was made by a glass-blower with the hiccups the first time you wash it.

Lastly, the warped pitchers eventually cracked due to my having to force the lids on and I was back to square one with a tea maker that had no receptacle for the tea. I ended up finding a replacement pitcher for my original tea maker online.

My advice is to stay away from this tea pot in particular and from tea makers in general where the tea is placed in a space that is part of the tea maker itself instead of one that is placed in the pitcher. The shallowness of the depression where the pitcher nestles is probably why the tea maker was so messy.

Recommended: No