Well designed, thoughtful features, delicious coffee much better than older style autodrip makers
There's a lot I like about this coffee maker. In short, it is EASY to use, brews DELICIOUS coffee and is actually pretty FAST considering how it works. This is a relatively unique coffee maker given all the options out there. It's a great design conceptually and practically. I feel it brews more similar to a manual style pour over than how most basic coffee makers work. So far, I have been using basic bottled drinking water from the gallon jugs from the grocery store (as opposed to tap, even filtered tap, because we have pretty hard water) and it works very well with the the drinking water. I'm using the stack of supplied Bunn filters that came with the coffee maker and ordered more Bunn filters for when those run out. I grind my coffee using a Flair Royal manual grinder on a "medium" setting (typically around a "7" within the second rotation from the zero point, for those familiar with how that manual grinder works) and the coffee is very balanced with great flavors and easy to drink, even black. It's not bitter at all. The controls are very easy. Once you have water poured and a filter with grounds in place, you just hit the brew button and wait about 10 minutes. After it heats the water at the top, you hear a single dull pop sound when the water valve opens, the brewing starts and within seconds you start to see hot coffee dripping into the carafe. The actual dripping down of the water through the grounds only takes a couple minutes. If you only brew to "4" cup line on the carafe (about 2 average sized mugs worth) it's usually done dripping in about 8 minutes total but the machine will continue to say "brewing" for a few minutes afterwards. Some things to be aware of: 1. There's no auto-pause, so if you pull the carafe out while the coffee is dripping down then it will just keep dripping and go everywhere. So it's important to leave the carafe in place until the dripping has completed. Again, once it starts dripping you only need to wait a few minutes. 2. The lid is designed to come off very easily when it is in the VERTICAL position. Many reviews seem to complain that the lid "comes off too easily", but I'm guessing what is happening is they're raising the lid by blindly pushing it down with their thumb unaware that the little nubs holding the lid on have flats on them for this exact purpose - to allow it to come off easy when veritical. When the lid is down, and even partially raised, it is effectively "locked" into the handle, or at least prevented from poping out. You can of course raise the lid all the way without it coming off, but if you push up or pull up on it in that position it WILL come out easily. 3. Grind size matters. To get the best tasting cup of coffee, grind your coffee fresh to the correct size using a high quality grinder. If it's coming out bitter, it's likely that your grind is too fine. 4. At the beginning, you need to pay attention when you're lining up the basket and sliding it in. If you don't catch the lip of the basket on the sides then you could potentially not realize it and drop it. But, once you get used to sliding the basket in it's not hard to do. There's no tactile indication that it's in place other than you just can't push it any further. But, if you slide it back 3/4" it could fall out. So just be careful that it's seated fully before you let go! Specific things I really like about it: 1. The coffee tastes really great! 2. The filter basket is easy to clean. There aren't super deep ridges in it like most auto drip makers have. 3. Brew time is relatively quick. I think under 10 minutes for a couple mugs is great. 4. The carafe pours flawlessly without dripping thanks to the unique lid design! The lid does look a bit odd at first but it really works amazingly well at preventing the drips. 5. It's pretty quiet while brewing even when heating the water. Not a major thing but I still appreciate it. 6. For the money I haven't seen anything that brews coffee this way and I think it's a winning design concept. I recommend buying this machine. Read more
