Grinder loses abilities quickly; impossible to guage your perfect cup of coffee; burner not hot enough; cleaning this machine requires tedious fine motor control and lots of time; cheap plastic construction
Detailed Commentary
I bought this machine at WS and was very excited at the prospect of the burr grind and brew feature. I initially had some difficulty guaging a fairly strong cup of coffee, finally realizing that the brew strength and grind guages had little to do with it: the secret to this machine is to use about half the water for double the coffee, e.g., 5 cups of water for a 10 cup setting of coffee. In other words, forget about entertaining with this one unless you grind your own coffee!
Adding insult to injury, the grinder then began producing even LESS coffee over time, in spite of my fastidious cleaning of the machine and the coffee track, per the manufacturer's instructions. I called Capresso's customer service, and their response was that I likely used beans which were too oily and that for 45 bucks I could send them the maker and they would fix it back to its original, poorly functioning state (my words, not theirs).
Other issues included coffee which was never hot, and after grinding beans and brewing a pot, I had a miniscule amout of grinds everywhere within the pot and on my counter and cleaning became a chore.
My advice: Skip the grind/brew machines until the technology and quality improves. I defected to a KitchenAid pro-line pot and am very pleased (see the review!).
