Filed under: Bosch Tassimo Coffee Maker
Unlike a lot of the one cup coffee makers you`ll find around this website, this Bosch TAS4511UC Tassimo Single Serve coffee maker does not utilize Keurig K Cup technology but rather T-Discs produced by rival company Tassimo. Just like Keurig licenses the right to use its K cup technology to other coffee maker companies, Tassimo also licenses out the rights to its system to other coffee maker producers such as Bosch.
My first impression after trying this machine was its speed. Basically as soon as I inserted the T-Disc the coffee began brewing without any warmup time. And it brews your coffee within a minute or two after beginning. Fast! It`s also quiet, and doesn`t make any significant noise that could disturb you.
One of things I like most about this coffee maker is that it uses milk T-discs, so you can combine gourmet coffee discs with milk discs to make special blends without having to measure out the milk yourself and hope the taste turns out well.
The Tassimo technology is really quite impressive. Each T-disc features a bar code that the coffee maker reads, and according to the type of blend indicated by the barcode, it adjusts the
temperature, amount of water/milk, and method of preparation to match the the blend inside the T-disc. I had never even imagined let alone experienced this technology until I tried this Bosch Tassimo Single Serve Coffee Maker.
The main downside I can see is that Tassimo doesn`t offer the same wide range of flavors and coffee blends that Keurig offers. This may or may not be a problem, depending on what flavors you are interested in. So before buying, it would be good to look into the flavors available and see if they are sufficient for your tastes.
Read more about the Bosch TAS4511UC Tassimo Single-Serve Coffee Brewer
Filed under: Breville Coffee Maker
The Breville BKC700XL single serve coffee maker is in a much higher price range than most of the brewers you`ll find on this site. Luckily it offers correspondingly more advanced and impressive functionality that justifies the price. The BKC700Xl is a great value, so whether you choose it or not really depends on whether you need such advanced funtionality and whether it`s within your desired price range.
This coffee maker features an easy-to-use and intuitive LCD display that doesn`t take much time at all to master. It features a digital clock with timer functions, so you can set the time that it starts to brew, and the times that it shuts off. Those functions may seem basic, but it also features 5 different pre-set brew strengths, as well as a variable temperature function. These features are not common at all in the lower price range single serve coffee makers, and they offer you the power to control your coffee with precision.
One of the most fantastic features of the Breville BKC700XL is its ice coffee function which cold brews ice coffee concentrate, which you can then dilute with water and/or milk for a great ice coffee blend. Beware, this blend is a very strong concentrate, so if you don`t dilute it you will likely be awake and caffeine wired for the next week and a half!
It is in every way a high quality unit. It`s also very quiet when it brews, which is another indication of quality. It uses Keurig K Cups, and has been frequently compared to the Keurig Platinum B70 in both functionality and quality.
Read more about the Breville BKC700XL
Filed under: Toddy Coffee Maker
This Toddy Cold Brew Coffee Maker is very different than most of the one cup coffee makers reviewed on this site. The big difference is that this is a cold coffee maker. That means that it does not use electricity to heat up the water in the coffee resevoir. In fact it doesn`t heat the water at all, but rather uses cold or room temperature water that slowly becomes saturated with coffee from the ground coffee beans. There are many benefits to this including lower acidity and bitterness, which allows the natural flavor and subleties of the coffee to be enjoyed.
I have to emphasize that cold brewing is a way to for coffee fanatics to enjoy a special brew of gourmet coffee, as opposed to a fast and convenient way to drink a cup of coffee on the go (which is a good description of most of the coffee makers featured on this website). It takes around 24 hours to cold brew some coffee, so you should only buy this item if you know about the process of cold brewing and are interested in experimenting with it. Then again, even though the brewing process lasts 24 hours, the resulting brew is coffee concentrate, that you can add water to to produce much larger quantities of coffee. The coffee concentrate produced by the Toddy Cold Brew Coffee Maker is enough to possibly last you about 2 weeks.
This toddy coffee brewer is easy to use and easy to clean up. If you experiment and study the cold brewing process a little bit, you can get good at it and easily make great coffee with this unit. My only beef with it is that the construction is a little bit flimsy, so I can see the carafe or handle breaking after a fair amount of use. But I`ve been using mine for 6 months and so far so good. But for under $40, it`s an affordable brewer in any case. I`ve definitely gotten more than $40 of value out of it.
Read more about the Toddy Cold Brewer Coffee Maker
Filed under: Black and Decker Brew and Go
The Black and Decker Brew and Go DCM18S is one of the most popular single serve coffee makers on the market, and might even be THE MOST popular of them all. While most personal coffee makers pour coffee into a small mug, usually an 8 ounce mug at the most, the Black & Decker DCM18S comes with a 15 ounce stainless steel travel mug, and it feels the 15 ounce mug. That means that people like me who find an 8 or even 10 oz. coffee to be insufficient, this coffee maker gives you a nice big coffee.
The travel mug really is a great feature and I am surprised that more single serve coffee makers don`t come with travel mugs. Lots of people think of K cups as the be all and end all of one cup coffee makers, but k cups are basically only good for making a single cup of coffee at home. If you want to drink coffee at work or during your commute, a mere 8 ounce little coffee in a small mug isn`t going to cut it. But this stainless steel travel mug will keep your 15 ounces of brewed coffee nice and hot. I guess you could pour the contents of your k cup coffee into a travel mug, but it`s so much easier to have the brewed coffee land right inside the travel mug.
Other pluses of the Black and Decker DCM18S are its price and its speed. It is one of the cheapest single serve coffee makers out there, despite being easy to use and good quality. It also brews a nice, fast cup of coffee in just about 2 minutes.
The downside is perhaps that it doesn`t provide you with all the varied and exotic flavors that you get from Keurig K cups or Senseo coffee pods. You simply buy your own coffee blend and user a scoop to put the coffee into the filter, just like you do with a regular coffee maker. But for most coffee drinks that is just fine, as long as you don`t need to have a huge variety of sweet flavors. This Brew and Go coffee maker comes highly recommended.
Read more about the Black and Decker DCM18S Brew and Go Personal Coffee Maker
Filed under: Mr. Coffee Single Serve Coffee Maker
The Mr. Coffee BVMC-KG-001 Single Serve Coffee Maker is another coffee maker tat uses Keurig`s K cup technology. You can use any K cup coffee flavor in this machine, despite the low price of Mr. Coffee brewers. This unit offers good tasting coffee, as good as that brewed by a Keurig machine. And the construction of this coffee maker is very solid and sturdy, so it is likely to remain durable and strong for years to come.
As with other Mr. Coffee single serve coffee makers that use k cups, the size of coffee you get is limited. With a Keurig coffee maker you can brew a larger coffee. The maxiumum size you can brew with this unit is an 8 oz. coffee, which is often insufficient for a coffee beast such as myself. But for other coffee drinkers this is a decent size. That`s something you can decide for yourself.
As for ease of use, this Mr. Coffee single serve brewer is as simple as it gets. You just put water in the resevoir, put a k cup inside, and press a button. There really is litte more to it than that. So any casual coffee drinker can make sense of this unit on their first try.
The bottom line for the Mr. Coffee BVMC-KG2-001 Single Serve coffee maker is that it produces a nice cup of coffee just by pushing a button, but it lacks the option to adjust the coffee size that some other more pricey units have. If an 8 ounce coffee is sufficient for you, then this coffee maker is great value for the price.
Find out more about the Mr. Coffee BVMC-KG-001 Single Serve Coffee Maker
Filed under: Mr. Coffee Single Serve Coffee Maker
One of the best makers of low-priced yet high quality coffee makers is Mr. Coffee. They usually make standard coffee brewers, but this Mr. Coffee Single Serve coffee maker is theresult of a collaboration between Mr. Coffee and Keurig, the masters of single serve cup k-cups. This Mr. Coffee unit works with Keurig technology, which includes coffee k cups produced by any of Keurig`s partner companies. Keurig k cups offer a variety of flavors to enjoy, but you get that versatility in the Mr. Coffee price range.
One of the good things about this one cup coffee maker is that it is small, and can be tucked into a little corner of your kitchen very easily, and can be easily stored away somewhere. It also brews a cup of coffee very quickly, in just a minute or two.
Its size is a benefit, but also a drawback. That is because it can be hard to fit some mugs under the spout, limiting the use of this coffee maker to smaller mugs only. Another drawback is that you can only make one size of coffee with this maker. Some other k cup units allow you to use two k cups at once and make a larger serving of coffee, but with this unit you are limited to one k cup. Also related to the size of this coffee maker is the fact that its water resevoir is tiny, and only fits enough water for a single serving of coffee.
The bottom line is that this is the simplest and most basic k cup coffee brewer you are likely to find. If you want to have the option to enjoy k cup technology and flavors at home as a supplement to your regular coffee brewer, this might be a good option. But if k cups are your main source of coffee, then you are probably better off getting a slightly higher range K cup brewer with more features and higher capacity. Being able to brew a larger cup of coffee is quite an important feature if you have just one coffee maker.
Read more about the Mr. Coffee Single Serve Powered By Keurig
Filed under: Senseo Coffee Maker
The Senseo Supreme 7832 lives up to its name, as one of the most heavy duty and high quality one cup coffee maker machines out there. A number of things distinguish it from the cheaper Senseo hd7810. One of the most practical and noticeable differences is that is has an adjustable spout, meaning that you can raise the spot up so you can fit a taller mug inside this coffee maker than you can into the original Senseo 7810 model. It also has a larger resevoir (32 ounces of water instead of 20 ounces) to accomodate for the larger mug sizes that you may choose to use.
Another excellent added feature on the Senseo Supreme 7832 is an interactive LCD display that lets you select the size and strength of your coffee. You can opt to use just one coffee pod, in which case you can select 3 ounces, 4 ounces, or 5 ounces of coffee. If you opt to use two coffee pods, then you can select either 6 ounces, 8 ounces, or 10 ounces. Personally I love my coffee strong so I`ll be loading up two pods and selecting the “3 bar” option, giving me a nice 10 ounce big mug. You can select from 1 to 3 bars. It`s a very intuitive interface and easy for anybody to use.
I just also love the sleek silver appearance of the Senseo Supreme 7832. The plastic-looking colors of the 7810 are no match for the beauty of this. It`s very impressive when you have guests over and they marvel at all your expensive-looking gadgets. I guarantee they`ll want to sit down and enjoy a nice cup of coffee with you after they spot this unit in your kitchen.
Read more about the Senseo Supreme 7832
Filed under: Senseo Coffee Maker
The Senseo 7810 Single Serve Gourmet Coffee Machine is one of the most popular one cup coffee makers on the market. It strikes the perfect balance between a cheaper unit like a Hamilton Beach coffee maker on the one hand, and a more expensive heavy duty Keurig coffee maker on the other. Unlike the Hamilton Beach units, you can trust the durability of this Senseo. I know people who have had their Senseo coffee makers for 6 or 7 years and have never had any problems. Of course those people are coffee fanatics who know how to take care of coffee makers (ie. by descaling, or cleaning with water-vinegar mix to clear out calcium buildups now and then). But in any case, that`s a long life for an affordable little coffee maker!
One of the impressive things about this coffee maker is its speed. Once you fill the resevoir, it takes just 90 seconds to heat up the water. Then you push one more button, and it takes a mere 60 seconds to make your coffee. So if you have ever hesitated to buy a single serve coffee maker because you thought you could only drink coffee alone, think again. You can easily have two coffees ready just 60 seconds apart from each other, since the resevoir on this coffee maker holds 20 onces, enough for 5 small 4 oz. coffees, or enough for at least a couple 8 oz. or 10 oz. coffees (I personally love a good 10 ounce mug full!). All you need is to have a supply of Senseo coffee pods on hand.
The one complaint that often arises about Senseo coffee makers is that the pod size is too small, so that one pod won`t give you a large size coffee, you would need to use pods. So that is something to factor in when thinking about the cost of pods and how economical the Senseo HD7810 would be.
Learn more about the Senseo HD7810
Filed under: Hamilton Beach Coffee Maker
This is another great one cup coffee maker from Hamilton Beach. Unlike the Hamilton Beach Personal Cup One Cup Pod Brewer this one is good because it can fit a taller mug and not just a short one, so you can enjoy a taller coffee. The catch to that is that it may require 2 Senseo coffee pods to make a coffee strong enough to fill that tall mug and still taste great. But this unit does include 18 free Senseo coffee cops, which makes up for that to a certain extent.
This Stay or Go Pod Brewer brews coffee a little faster than the One Cup POD Brewer. That alone is worth the extra $10 in price. That actually makes it 50% more expensive than the One Cup Pod Brewer, but hey $30 isn`t that much more than $20. If it was a difference between a $100 unit and a $150 unit, that would be a bigger deal.
One thing to note about this Hamilton Beach coffee maker is that it does not include a travel mug, even though it includes 18 free coffee pods. I don`t quite understand the logic there. But these days you can always head over to the dollar store and grab yourself a cheap $1 mug and use that as your portable travel mug. Like the One Cup Pod Brewer, this unit is made of mostly plastic and is not as durable as a more expensive unit. But that could make it perfect for travel or other situations in which your coffee maker -no matter how much you paid for it- will take a beating.
The bottom line is that for such an inexpensive single serve coffee maker, this one makes great coffee, brews quickly, and can make large 14 oz coffees. And you get 18 free Senseo coffee pods. For $30 it`s a no-brainer, unless you really want a super durable high quality unit. In which case I`d recommend a Keurig coffee maker.
Learn more about the Hamilton Beach Personal Cup Stay or Go POD Brewer
Filed under: Hamilton Beach Coffee Maker
The Hamilton Beach Personal Cup One Cup Pod Brewer is a great little coffee maker and great value for money. Despite its cheap price it still makes good coffee on par with a lot of single cup coffee makers in the $100+ range. It lets you use one pod or two pods at a time, if you like a stronger cup of coffee. The coffee pods it uses are Senseo Pods rather than keurig k-cups. That`s a good thing because Senseo pods are a bit cheaper than Keurig K Cups.
Even though this cheap little Personal Cup pod brewer makes great coffee, it is still a cheap little unit. It kind of feels flimsy and I have the feeling that it won` be ultra-durable and last for years and years. And it also doesn`t have a detachable water resevoir, so you have to just open up the resevoir and pour the water inside the unit. This can be a little tricky depending on the placement of the coffee maker. You may have to slide it away from the wall of other appliances to give yourself space to gain access to the resevoir. One other technical thing to note is that the Hamilton Beach Personal Cup One Cup Pod Brewer fits a short mug, but is not big enough to fit a tall mug.
This makes a great little travel coffee maker because of its small size and light weight. And its also good to have as an additional unit for those times when you just need to make a single cup of coffee, if you already have a bigger and ritzier unit to use when preparing coffee for multiple people. The bottom line is, for a mere $20 it`s a great value!
Learn more about the The Hamilton Beach Personal Cup One Cup Pod Brewer
Posted on November 2nd, 2011 by singleserver
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