An utterly impressive, remarkable, and devastatingly charming piece of kitchen machinery - makes the best coffee ever.
Positive Product Points
Extreme ease of use. Very easy to calibrate. Everything readily at hand, not buried inside some monolithic structure. Very solid and well engineered main body and underbody wiring construction. Really produces best range of heat and brewing results I've seen in any consumer coffee maker.
One first clue as to the seriousness of this product is the AC line cord/plug. There is no scrimping here. Several levels above any other competitive machines. The current draw of the Technivorm is over 1000W and the wiring is more than adequate.
Negative Product Points
I would redesign the sprinkler arm/coffee filter holder/basket assembly. At first glance it seems a bit "jury-rigged" although I've gotten quite used to it. Might consider a heavier duty plastic a few mils thicker for the filter holder.
Detailed Commentary
Desite the "negative product points" I find the machine holds up to daily use extremely well. Most importantly, it does produce really effective brewing temperatures for a decent range of brew strengths. Using a laser infrared thermometer, temps of 200-203 deg F were consistently shown for the water entering the filter holder; resting brew temps (in the carafe on the hotplate in "high" position) are consistently over 167 deg F. Taste of the various brews is significantly improved over other commercial domestic coffeemakers I've tried, and is even a cut better than the French Press we used to use. Also, no other coffee maker I've ever tried could produce a really hot cup the way I like it. To use an inferior machine, and then zap the cup in a microwave to get it where you want, is/was a ridiculous procedure!
The general appearance of the machine at first looks like a bit of cobbled-together engineering a la Rube Goldberg: a nicely finished industrial version of a sort of lab experiment! And if I were making it, I think I would go a few more mils thickness on the plastic filter basket.
But the whole concept works and it works phenomenally well. The brew time is also the fastest I've found: interestingly enough, if one wants to "modulate" the brew by varying the spray pattern of the entry hot water into the basket by rotating it, moving the nozzle, stopping the flow into the carafe until the water level builds up in the holder, one can play with the ultimate result. Or, one can just go ahead and let it do its thing and get fantastic coffee very quickly. This versatility is not available in other machines I've tried. And interestingly enough, the aesthetic of this machine grew on me and at this point I'd say it has a definite charm just as it is.
Buying Experience
Couldn't be better. I've rarely encountered the level of advice, support, and product research that I found with George Howell's Terroir Coffee ( http://www.terroircoffee.com ) If everyone treated their customers the way Terroir does, customer complaint departments would be out of business.
