At this point, if you are going to buy a french press, I will strongly recommend an all-stainless steel construction. Most commonly, the piece that breaks is the glass carafe, so you extend the life of your purchase with a stainless steel construction. You do lose something in the process-- it is more difficult to see how much water you pour in when you don't want to make a full batch, but I'll make that tradeoff, having broken more than my share of carafes. Quick temperature changes + glass = breakage. So here's another stainless steel construction. Mostly, it works, as a french press is a simple device. However, there are a couple of interesting choices here. Not everything is metal. You'll notice that the handle is plastic. Does that bother me? I'm not sure how harmful it is, but why? The fittings aren't the tightest, but at the end of the day, that's not going to affect functionality that much. What catches my attention for this review is something that could really be troublesome, as a plastic versus metal tradeoff. On most presses, the filter is captured between stainless steel holders, and screwed into place at the bottom of the plunger. Then, when you clean it out after you're done, you unscrew it a bit to get the grounds out from the nooks and crannies, and screw it back, all nice and secure. It's a fine system. The filter on this Primula doesn't work that way. It is, to all appearances, glued into plastic fittings at the base of the plunger. That makes cleanup very easy. My concern is that every time you sacrifice simple metal construction, that's a potential failure point. The purpose of a stainless steel construction is to minimize failure points, so why go this route? I don't understand. OK, the ease of cleanup is there, but you are adding a failure point. And not just a failure point-- when a filter breaks (it doesn't happen often, but it does happen) on a normal press, it is replaceable. Here, if the filter separates from the plastic because of glue failure, or something, or it pops loose from the plastic moulding, or however it's attached, the entire press becomes useless. I don't like that, for the long term. So, there are some sacrifices in construction that I just don't understand here. Simple, stainless steel construction works. Why the compromises? I don't get it. It works, and it's easy to clean. Probably the easiest I have had to clean, but these compromises could hurt long term viability, and if something does go wrong with the filter, the press itself becomes useless, which is not generally the case. So, good, but a few flaws make it not a five star press.
