BALMUDA in the US: Which Product Is Worth Buying

BALMUDA lists nine products on its US store and asks premium prices for all of them: $154 for a kettle that only boils, $379 for a countertop toaster oven, $699 for a coffee maker that brews one small carafe at a time. The company is best known in Japan for a rice cooker and a microwave that it does not sell here at all. So the useful question is not whether the brand is overpriced in general. It is which of the products it actually sells in the US earns the money, and which one you should walk past.

The short answer: The Kettle at $154 is the sensible entry point and useful on its own if you brew pour-over coffee. The Toaster Pro at $379 is the one to buy if you eat bread most mornings, because the steam function and the mode list are genuinely specific, and it is also the biggest thing on your counter. The Brew at $699 needs a reason, and "it looks good" is a real reason at that price only if you have already decided you want a machine that brews a small carafe well rather than a large one quickly. Everything below is from BALMUDA's US store on September 8, 2026, with the Japanese-market specifications kept separate.

What BALMUDA actually sells in the US

The US kitchen lineup is five appliances. The rest of the catalog is a clock, a fan, a lantern, and a speaker.

• The Kettle - $154, a 0.6-liter gooseneck kettle, model K02H, 120 volts and 1200 watts.
• MoonKettle - $259, a 0.9-liter kettle with temperature control and a 30-minute hold.
• The Toaster Pro - $379, a 1300-watt steam toaster oven with six modes.
• The Teppanyaki - $449, an electric griddle.
• The Brew - $699, a drip coffee maker with a vacuum carafe.
• Not in the kitchen - The Clock at $499, the Naturewind Studio fan at $429, The Lantern at $154, The Speaker at $299.

Two things are missing compared with Japan. There is no rice cooker: The Gohan is a Japanese-market machine, which is why it shows up in Japanese kitchens and in our study of rice cooker brands in RoomClip photos but never on the US store. There is no microwave either. If you came to BALMUDA for those, the honest answer is that the US lineup cannot give them to you at 120 volts.

How the four countertop appliances compare

The Teppanyaki is a griddle and sits in a different decision, so the comparison below covers the four products people usually weigh against each other.

Our picks

Pick #1: BALMUDA The Kettle, $154

This is the least risky way into the brand. It is a 0.6-liter gooseneck kettle with one switch: it boils, then it stops. There is no temperature display, no keep-warm, no app. What you are paying for is the pour. The spout is narrow and set low on the body, which is the geometry that lets you land water where you want it on a filter bed, and at 2 pounds it stays controllable when full.

Best for: someone who makes pour-over coffee or loose-leaf tea and does not already own a gooseneck kettle. Avoid if: you fill pots for cooking from your kettle, or you brew green tea and want the water at a specific temperature. Main drawback: 0.6 liters is two mugs, and the 2.5-foot cord assumes an outlet close to where the kettle sits.

Pick #2: BALMUDA The Toaster Pro, $379

The Toaster Pro is the product the brand is built on. You pour 5 cc of water into a port on the top before each cycle, and the oven runs a heat pattern matched to what you selected: Shokupan for thick white bread, Golden Toast for everything from light loaves to bagels, plus Pizza, Croissant, an Oven mode at 350, 400, or 450°F, and a Salamander Grill mode that uses only the top element for browning.

Be clear about the size. The outside is W14.1 x D12.8 x H8.2 inches and the interior is W10.8 x D8.1 x H7.0 inches, with a stated maximum bread height of 2.2 inches. That is a small oven inside a body wide enough to crowd a short run of counter. We have not run our own kitchen tests, so we are describing what BALMUDA specifies and what the box contains, not ranking its toast against another brand's.

Best for: households that eat bread or pastry most mornings and have 14 inches of clear counter width. Avoid if: you need to reheat dinner-sized dishes, or you are replacing a full-size oven. Main drawback: the Baking Tray with Rack is a $34.90 add-on, and BALMUDA marks its toaster accessories as final sale.

Pick #3: BALMUDA The Brew, $699

The Brew is the hardest to justify and the easiest to describe. It is a drip machine with three settings, Regular, Strong, and Iced, that brews into a double-walled stainless vacuum server. BALMUDA lists the hot sizes as roughly 4, 8, and 12 fluid ounces and the iced sizes as roughly 2.5, 5, and 7.5, so the largest hot batch is about a mug and a half. The body is narrow, 5.5 inches wide, but nearly 15 inches tall, which is the opposite footprint from the toaster.

Best for: one or two people who want the same small pour repeated every morning without doing it by hand, and who want it to stay hot in the vacuum carafe. Avoid if: you brew for a household, or you want a grinder built in. Main drawback: the batches are small for the money, and a kettle and a dripper do the same job by hand.

What the $699 actually buys

It helps to look at the mechanism rather than the marketing. Water falls from one fixed head onto the middle of the filter bed, the way a hand pour lands it, instead of from a shower screen that wets everything at once. BALMUDA calls the approach its Clear Brewing Method and describes three parts to it: temperature control, dripping measured in 0.2-milliliter units, and "bypass pouring," which adds hot water to the finished coffee rather than running it all through the grounds. Whether that is worth $699 is a taste and budget question we cannot answer for you, but it is a specific thing to be paying for, and it is also why the batches are small: the tank holds about 16.5 fluid ounces.

You may already own what the kettle is for

The Kettle's value depends entirely on a question about your kitchen: do you already have a gooseneck kettle? If you do, the BALMUDA version changes how the thing looks on your counter and not much else, because it has no temperature control to add. If you do not, and you are buying a first gooseneck anyway, $154 puts it in the same range as other well-built pour-over kettles, and you can compare it against the HARIO kettle and scale setup before deciding.

Counter space is the real constraint

In a US apartment kitchen, the deciding number is usually width, not price. The Toaster Pro needs 14.1 inches of width and 12.8 inches of depth, and its door opens forward, so it wants clear space in front as well. The Brew asks for only 5.5 inches of width but 14.9 inches of height, so it fights with an upper cabinet instead. The kettles are the easy ones.

Japanese kitchens have less counter than US ones, and the common answer there is to give the toaster its own small rack and use the shelf underneath for bread and jars, which is what the photo below shows. Our small-counter kitchen organization guide covers more of those layouts. Before you order, measure the width, the depth to the backsplash, and the clearance under the cabinet, and check where the nearest outlet is against the cord lengths in the table above.

The 100-volt trap

This is the mistake that costs people the most money with this brand. Japanese-market BALMUDA products are rated AC 100 volts, and their plugs fit US outlets, so nothing warns you at the socket. The current Japanese kettle, The Pot KPT03JP, is listed at 100 volts with a 550-milliliter capacity; the US model, The Kettle K02H, is 120 volts and 0.6 liters. They are not the same unit with a different label. The same split applies to the toaster: the generation shown below is tagged as the K01A, an earlier Japanese model, and it is the shape that fills import and secondhand listings.

What Japan gets that the US does not

Two products define BALMUDA in Japanese kitchens and neither is on the US store. The Gohan is the rice cooker, and The Range is the microwave in the photo below. There is no 120-volt version of either, so the practical options are to skip them or to buy a rice cooker from a brand that does sell US models, which is what our rice cooker brand study looks at. It is worth saying plainly: the photos in this article show Japanese homes, they are examples of how these products are used and where they are placed, and they are not evidence of how well anything sells or performs.

Frequently asked questions

Ready to buy?

Check the model number and the voltage on the listing before you order, and confirm the seller is BALMUDA USA or an authorized retailer. Prices below were taken from the US store on September 8, 2026 and will change.