Don't fall for all the hype! Stick with french press!
Positive Product Points
I actually like the looks. Brews at 200 degrees.
Negative Product Points
Carafe is a piece of s@#$%! and poors all over the place if you're not using a cup with a large mouth. There is no automatic off switch. You need to stir the grinds because it doesn't saturate the coffee entirely. Makes weak coffee if you do not operate the manual on/off on the filter housing. Spills all over the place when you pull the carafe out. Over all, very poorly designed.
Detailed Commentary
this maker is over-priced at 250! if the carafe did not pour all over the counter when using smaller cups, I may not be complaining as much. It was just the final annoyance. The first annoyance is that you need to stir the grinds with a chopstick to get decent coffee which kind of defeats the purpose of having a drip machine. Along with that, you have to operate the on/off switch on the filter housing (turning it off for a minute to let the coffee saturate for the required four minutes) or you truly wind up with coffee that is weak Without doing this it is very inferior to french press. Also, the coffee spills out all over the place when you pull the carafe out. Especially during the brewing process (off switch does not work!!). You have to wait about five minutes for it to slowly clear out or it WILL make a mess! The only thing that is good is that it does brew at 200 degrees. I think it looks great (am I the only one that feels this way?). Other than that, it is not worth the price. If it required no work to brew a decent cup of coffee, it would be worth it. Unfortunately there are no other choices other than french press or vacuum pot (both which make a far better cup of coffee IMHO). They also require the same amount of work if you are using a swiss gold filter in your technivorm. If not, you are saving a little bit of cleaning time. Aside from the looks, the hype, and the industrial (200 degree) heating, this machine truly is a piece of crap. Stick with a french press or vacuum pot and save your 300 (with shipping and tax) to get a nice grinder like a rocky or a mazer.
Buying Experience
no problems here.
Three Month Followup
poor design
One Year Followup
Still think this is an awful design. It does makes good coffee. When the spout switch is the off position it still spills all over. I tried to fix this but I cant. So you have to wait about 8 min to pull the carafe out or you will get coffee all over your counter. Unacceptable! Very poorly designed and/ or bad quality control. also, if you forget to check the spout off switch (which is easy to do in the morning) youve just ruined your batch and made a mess. there must be a better made machine that will brew at the same temp now that were getting towards 2010. i may start searching again for one and will never look back when this thing is gone. oh yeh, the carafe design is ridiculously stupid. it spills all over the place like you would expect it to by just looking at it. the old design was fine. they switched probably to save a few pennies. i thought i would get use to using this but no such luck.
