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In addition to plain room temp tap water I will compare it to a different heating method. For me that will be stove top. I will edit this with results when the water cools.

Background: I decided to take this up because things are easier to taste at room temperature than if they're hot or cold. My previous comparison was done with hot tea and this seems like a better straight up control even if it doesn't directly reflect the real world use.

Method: I used unfiltered city water that is pretty average - not hard or anything like that. I brought it to just a boil with each method then left to come to room temperature. I tasted and so did my roommate. I marked the glasses and they mixed them up so neither of us knew which was which.

Results: There was a definite difference between boiled and not. Both boiled had a slight drying feel compared to straight from the tap and left to come up to room temp. There was an extremely slight difference between stove and microwave. The stove tasted a tiny bit flatter/blander and the microwave tasted a little more minerally. We could only find the differences by tasting very, very closely and I thought the flatter tasting one was going to be the microwave. Both of us would rather drink the straight tap water than boiled and cooled water.

Conclusions: For my use case the taste difference is so insignificant that it doesn't matter. It is also only a difference and not a better/worse judgement. I could probably do more to help the taste of my water by adding a filter than by adding a kettle.

Further research: I would be curious to see how the trial plays out in areas with hard water. The mineral taste from the microwave might be stronger in an area with a higher mineral content in the water to begin with.