The Utopia is a good looking appliance that makes great coffee. It is far superior to any drip type maker on the market today.

The only negitive points I can come up with are #1 you cannot submerse the caraffe to clean it due to the wiring in the bottom, and #2 cleaning the funnel tends to be a pain.

The Utopia is a favorite of mine as the coffee it brews is excellent. The design is modern looking and unique, it looks great. You will need to expirement with the grind of the bean depnding on your grinder, too fine and you get the muddy bottom, too course and under extraction occurs. The grind should be similar to that used for the French Press. A burr grinder is a plus here. Follow the directions for maximum and minimum water levels as this will affect operation of the unit. I clean the funnel with soapy water after every use and dry it off, this seams to keep the funnel from accumulating any deposits from the water. I do the same with the caraffe,and filter. The keep warm function does not spoil the coffee, the heat is regulated to keep the coffee's tempature just right. It does not cook the coffee while keeping it warm. Another must have is a thermal caraffe. This unit shuts off after 2 hours or if the caraffe is off the base for longer than 8 minutes. The Utopia's controls are easy to understand and use. This unit also has a timer function so you can wake up to what is this brewers best feature, the aroma of the coffee your brewing.

This was given to me as a gift, my daughter bought it on the net from Starbuck's site. She said it was fast easy and painless.