We have three ways we make tea in our house (maybe six, if you count using bags and loose-leaf separately):
1. Small automatic-drip coffee maker. This works surprisingly well, because the basket holds the water long enough to allow a decent steep. We'll either chuck a couple of bags in the basket or use a paper filter and loose-leaf tea.
This is my wife's preferred method, because it's easy and the pot sits on a warmer. She's a slow tea drinker.
2. Keurig, with either pods or with teabags. The easiest in the short term, but the result is, at best one or two cups of tea (unless emptying all the water it holds over several teabags or loose tea in a big glass jug). Also, it's not quite boiling, so that's not so good.
3. The good old-fashioned method of warming a teapot, heating water in a kettle, and brewing the tea. This is the most time-consuming and the most trouble, and the tea goes cold too quickly (unless you drink loads of tea quickly). This is my preferred method.
It also dirties the most dishes, and uses the most water, because I brew the tea in one vessel, then transfer it to the teapot to hold it, so to speak. I use water to warm the brewing vessel, warm the teapot, warm the cup, and then the water for actual boiling. For approximately four cups of tea (meaning 32oz, one teapot), that's about 10 cups (meaning 80oz) of water.
This all gets really involved because I get kind of particular about things. I don't like putting loose tea in the teapot because it's a real chore to get it back out (the tops on all my pots are fairly small), and if the tea sits in there with the leaves more than a few minutes, it gets bitter, and I don't like putting loose tea in any kind of strainer or bag because the whole point of loose tea is that it's able to "swim" in the water and really soak freely in it, and expand and all that. It can't do that wadded up in a strainer or a bit of cheesecloth.