While it lasted, this machine was so much fun to own, watch, show off, and enjoy. It is a wonderful conversation piece for parties and it really made wonderful, tasty, hot coffee. We seemed to really get the benefit of the high-end beans we buy. We could taste the nuances of the beans and we were never dissatisfied with the temperature.

Really difficult to clean. But possible with dedication and a well-designed system.
Bad electronics. One day it failed to shut off automatically after daily use for six months. Luckily I was home and could turn it off manually three hours later. One day about two weeks later I couldn't turn it off manually. For about a week I turned it off by unplugging it. Then, tragedy. Saturday morning. Slept in. Awoke with immediate need for coffee. No more electronics. No more coffee from this Santos. Rage.

A beautiful machine aesthetically and taste-wise, we were thrilled to operate this machine for the seven months it worked.

The coffee was wonderful. Perfectly hot temperature, perfectly brewed, with lovely nuances detectable immediately and later. We would pour the hot coffee into a thermal carafe to keep it hot, so we could enjoy the coffee for hours. We never had one pot that was off or not as good or not hot enough. My husband is a real coffee snob, and he became even harder to take anywhere. Any time he was served coffee at someone else's house, I had to hear about it on the way home. He started carrying his thermal coffee cup everywhere to avoid having to drink inferior coffee.

It is a bit high maintenance to clean. It took us about a month to work out a good system, but once we did it was highly doable. Basically we realized that we could clean out the grounds with a rubber spatula, carefully, into the trash, and scrape out the compressed grounds in the filter in clumps with the same. Then you dump it carefully, deeply, into a deep trash can. We would rinse it in the sink to get rid of remaining grounds, remove the filter, and finally hand- or dish-wash.  Then we would just rinse the base carafe, being careful with the electronics. Once a week I'd run a couple pots of hot water and some denture cleaner through to remove the brown stain from the clear plastic. That system solved the problem of the machine essentially being awkward to clean.  Eventually the brown stain stayed in the plastic, but we were willing to put up with it due to the yummy coffee and our dark countertops' camouflage effect.

Eventually, though, the electronics died a slow, painful, tragic death. First the auto shut-off went, luckily while I was home and could catch it a few hours later. Then the on/off button, which was always tricky pre-coffee, being incredibly small, stiff, and impossible to read, went completely unresponsive, so I started unplugging it to turn it off. Again, the coffee was so good I was willing to put up with all of this. But when Saturday morning arrived with no coffee at all, all loyalty was destroyed.

Now we get to go through the unhappy warranty process with Bodum. What a pain. But what to replace it with???

Easy. Amazon.com. We'll see how the return process goes.