Customer Reviews

Capresso MT500 10 Cup Electronic Coffeemaker

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Having been sorely disappointed with the Cuisinart Grind & Brew, I moved on to the Capresso MT500. I have not been disappointed.

Aside from being a superior coffee maker, the MT500 is a sleek, elegant appliance that looks great on any kitchen counter.

The keypad is simple and easy to use, and includes a digital clock for 24-hour programmability (a key must-have for me). The unit has a 3-5 cup small batch setting for fast and efficient brewing of smaller quantities (another must-have for me).

Perhaps most importantly, the unit brews very satisfactorily hot coffee, unlike the Grind & Brew, which I found luke warm (less than 170F). The thermal carafe does an excellent job of keeping unused coffee hot, particularly when you pre-heat it with hot water.

My only criticism would be that fill-level is inconveniently positioned and somewhat hard to read.

All in all, I'm very pleased with every aspect of the MT500.

I love coffee! Unfortunately, for most of my life,
I have been drinking brew from the likes of Mr. Coffee.
Their machines, and most others in their
price range, provide adequate flavored coffee that is
never delivered hot out of the machine.


The ULTIMATE Question


Is there a PERFECT coffee machine in the $100-$200
range and is such a machine possible?

My needs were simple. I needed a maker that brews
piping hot coffee, does it quickly and effectively,
and is easy to operate and clean.

Based on recommendations I received from coffee
drinkers on many Internet discussion forums, I
decided to spend about $170 for the Capresso MT500.

The machine is certainly beautiful, but not without
design flaws, mainly the way your carafe must sit
pinpointed beneath the filter cup to avoid overflow.
I am not also very keen on the placement of the water
level meter. I have to pull the machine out from its
resting place and turn it just to see how much water
I have poured in.

The included Gold-tone filter basket is coned shaped
rather than round, which suits me fine as its deepness
allows more coffee capacity with less of a chance of
grinds spilling into the brew.

You really not need to even read the instructions to
figure out how to use the Capresso MT500 within minutes
out of the box, though not doing so would mean it was
not primed properly.

Does this coffee maker produce piping hot coffee?
Well, that depends....

The first thing I was instructed to do after plugging
in the Capresso MT500 for the first time was to install
the charcoal filter and run 6 cups of water through
the machine to activate. The water that came out into
the carafe was piping hot!

The problem is, those of us that only make a few cups
of coffee in the morning (I use 3 cups of water), are
going to be disappointed. The temperature of my
cup of coffee was lukewarm. The instructions even
suggest that if you are going to make 3-4 cups of
coffee that you should rinse the carafe with hot
water first.

This is a major disappointment.

On the other hand, I must say that the Capresso MT500
produced the absolute best coffee I have ever had. I
could not believe the smoothness of the flavor. It's
the same kind of coffee you would expect from a good restaurant.

I'm not quite sure if the secret to the Capresso's
great tasting coffee is the way it brews or the fact
that it has a charcoal filter that removes the impurities
from the water. I suppose in the end it doesn't matter. Coffee tastes damn good!

Though the Capresso MT500 comes with a single charcoal
filter, I would suggest stocking up on more. Amazon.com
sells Capresso 4440.90 3-pack Charcoal Water Filters for
about $10.


In Conclusion


I'm not exactly a happy camper over the Capresso MT500
for the simple fact that it can't produce piping hot
coffee for anything under approx. 6 cups. I am going
to go out on a limb and say that perhaps because of the
shortened brewing time, there is probably no coffee maker
in existence that can produce piping hot brew for a few.

On the other hand the Capresso MT500 produces outstanding,
flavorful, heavenly-smooth coffee that I have not been
able to bring to my home using something similar to Mr. Coffee.

UPDATE: I returned the Capresso MT500 to the retailer.
I just purchased a Technivorm KB-741 which is
identical in price to the Capresso, but rated at 125 watts
makes VERY HOT coffee in small amounts. I am in heaven!

It's not mentioned anywhere here but this unit requires charcoal filters that are replaced every couple of months. Only found this out after giving it as a gift to my parents. A web search only turned up a 2-3 sites that sold them so I don't think they're very common. I would recommend that you purchase a goodly supply with the coffee maker. Amazon sells them as "Capresso 4440.90 3-pack Charcoal Water Filters" in case you're trying to hunt them down.

I purchased the Capresso MT500 and find it is far superior to
any I've used before. It brews my coffee within 5 minutes and
I've found it very hot even with the cream I add. The water I
use in it is from my reverse osmosis dispenser which takes the
place of the charcoal inserts needed. Even after 4 hours the
coffee is still hot. I love great coffee and this coffeemaker
is the best--its also a joy to use.

Well, my wife and I read all the reviews about the ups and downs of this coffee maker, and still decided to buy. That was one year ago. After well over 500 pots of coffee, we still LOVE this machine! It has never leaked (as many have claimed) because of brew basket to carafe alignment problems. The slightly-lower-than-North-American brewing temperature of 175 degrees DOES make a difference to the taste, as does the charcoal filter, the stainless steel heating elements, and the stainless steel carafe. Pre-heating the carafe suits my wife better--I'd rather wake up to it all premade!

This machine gets a steady diet of Starbucks coffees, ground fresh every morning. Simply superb!
Why whine about charcoal filters when they work? The machine even tells you when to replace them! Three packages will last you a year, and can be ordered here on Amazon. The only small thing is that the brew basket's o-ring now needs replacing, as it will leak coffee when you remove the carafe. 25 cents for an o- ring will take care of that.
Our advice--BUY THIS MACHINE--IT WILL SPOIL YOU FOR ANY OTHER!!

The MT 500 not only looks great, but it makes great coffee that is piping hot. If you are only making three to five cups press the 3-5 button, and it slows down the brewing time to produce coffee that will burn your mouth if you drink it right out of the pot. I forgot I made coffee the other day, old timers I guess, and poured myself a very hot cup after two hours! I have had no problem with coffee pouring all over the counter as I have read in some reviews. You do want to purchase extra water filters. My old Cuisinart "Grind and Brew" water filters would not fit. The MT 500 puts my old Cuisinart to shame. I always hated cleaning the many parts, and the water build up in the grinder always bugged me, plus the grinder sound would scare the crap out of me in the morning. You can't go wrong with the MT 500, it is worth every penny.

I have been using a coffee press for the past few years because I wasn't all that impressed with the automatic coffee makers and their "feature" of constantly heating the coffee once it has been brewed. I really hate the smell of coffee that has been left on a heater. I basically resigned myself to using a coffee press and placing this in a Thermos to keep hot. This works very well for me, but I recently visited a friend who had a coffee maker that brewed into a carafe. Duh!



I did a pretty extensive review on the web and narrowed my choices to the Zojirushi EC-BD15 and the Capresso MT500. The Zojirushi is too tall to fit under my kitchen cabinets and I knew my wife wouldn't want a coffee maker anywhere but tucked discreetly under a cabinet (she hates coffee, which is o.k. because that leaves more for me). I bought the Capresso MT500 even though I had read that the coffee wasn't that hot for smaller brew sizes and that the lid was a bit funky.



I followed the directions and preheated the carafe and brewed a pot using the 3-5 cup setting. The coffee came out great and was very hot. The second cup, about 2 hours later was definitely hot enough, and this was even after adding a lot of half and half from the fridge. So no complaints from me about the ability of the unit to make hot coffee, or the ability to keep that coffee hot.



I have read some negative reviews about the lid, some mentioning that the "dot" on the lid is hard to see. I can see it just fine and don't have a problem with that. The flanges on the lid are a little on the thin side, but I don't think this will be a problem because I don't plan on cranking hard on the lid to close it. I do think I will buy a spare lid as a backup because if the lid breaks then you can't make any coffee (depending on just how the lid breaks).



I did not install the charcoal filter because I use RO water. Plus, I don't want to pay for what looks to be a fairly overpriced sack of charcoal. I just turned the filter light off (per the instructions) and haven't given this another thought. If you really need filtered water then I think there are other options that are cheaper in the long run.



So, nothing all too negative about this coffee maker. It looks great (I got the silver coffee holder model #441) and does a very good job.

I read a few of the reviews here and still bought this item a few months back. It replaced a very finicky Grind N Brew from Cuisinart that choked and spurted and hated my water.

Anyway, this coffee maker is superb. Don't worry about ratings of plastic body -- they spent the money on the pump -- the most vital part of the machine. The other worry about it pumping coffee all over your counter is a bit accurate. I have done the "capresso jiggle" every morning since it flooded my counter and have had no worries. Capresso DOES need to fix the issue where if you dont have the top of the caraffe just so right under the filter drop that it will back up and flood your kitchen. YUCK.

But once that is worked out in your routine, i highly recommend this item. In fact, i'd say it blows the competition away.

The coffee stays hot for hours. The machine can work through all 10 cups of coffee at just under 2 minutes. FAST. The pumping and gurgling that is usually louder in a cheaper Krups or Mr. Coffee is a bit quieter here. You want it to do something to the coffee so don't expect a church mouse. It looks great. It IS great!

Caring about coffee, we decided to follow the reviews and the recommendation from the Wall Street Journal. The coffeemaker never worked consistently, a fairly temperamental piece of equipment, the coffee never tasted all that great, and we ended up replacing it, after a year, with a cheaper automatic maker. If the coffee maker is going to be twice as expensive, at the least it should be as good as coffee makers that are half the price.

I hate this coffeemaker! The coffee never comes out hot enough. I've tried heating the carafe with hot water beforehand and everything. After six months of disappointing coffee every weekend, I finally added hot water (knowing that is a no, no) to the tank. Voila! We had hot coffee that weekend. However, when I called the Capresso service department to ask if that's o.k., the woman shrieked in my ear that I was going to break the machine. She made me test out how hot the water is coming into the carafe. It came in at 175 degrees F., which is within Capresso's range of 170 - 180 degrees. Having read many reviews on the different coffeemakers, I am going to purchase a machine that gets closer to the 200 degree temperature. I can't believe I wasted $170 on this machine!