Still the best bang for your buck in home auto-drip brewing equipment.
Positive Product Points
Bunn's unique reservoir means hot water is always at-hand for brewing coffee [or tea, or hot chocolate, or....] Its basket and shower-head deliver much better flavor extraction than most auto-drip brewers.
Negative Product Points
Some models appear to deliver less than optimal brewing temperatures, its brew cycle is *too* fast, and the grounds basket is smaller than the SCAA recomends for coffee to water ratios.
Detailed Commentary
I'm a big fan of the Bunn home coffee brewer. I use mine every day -- several times a day, most often. Among the available auto-drip brewers on the market today, I think it stands head and shoulders above the competition. It has a fairly large brew basket, it offers pretty good brew turbulence, and, it consistently brews at an optimal temperature... usually right around 195º-197º F. Even so, it's not without its quirks. For one thing, its brew time is just a bit too fast. While this does minimize the morning wait for that first cup of strong, black coffee, it does so at the expense of optimal flavor extraction. And while the brew basket is passable large, it's not quite large enough to contain a filter filled to SCCA recommended proportions of eight standard coffee measures for a full 8 cup pot. [Since most folks tend to use half of that amount of coffee - or less - this isn't an issue that affects everyone.]
Buying Experience
Satisfactory.
Three Month Followup
It's been something more than three months [it's been more years than I might care to think of, actually] but perhaps a follow-up is in order. I still use my Bunn every day... but only once a day: the morning pot. Now, throughout the rest of the day I rely on Melitta filter cones... a two-cup cone for a single serving, and a six-cup cone to brew directly into a thermal caraffe.
If the Bunn had a larger grounds capacity, and if I could tweak its temperature a bit, I'd use it more often. But the Melitta filter cones are just dead simple...
