Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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31 of 32 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great coffee, easy operation, and great looks - what more can you ask?, January 31, 2006
After spending a month researching options for pod coffee makers, I settled on the SimpleHuman. The big draws for me were the sleek looks, small footprint, and reputation of the company for good customer service. (I always believe that deserves to be rewarded).
My wife drinks decaf and I drink regular - usually one cup each. Making two cups a day from our Krups thermal carafe was getting to be a real hassle, not to mention grinding beans, etc. I was spending 20 minutes every morning just making two cups of coffee!
For me this was more of a convenience item - little did I know how impressed I would be with the quality of the coffee this little blue and steel machine makes! The Molto coffees that it ships with are great (don't hesitate to order extra when you order the machine, especially the Sumatra Mandheling if you like a really rich, flavorful cup of coffee)
Note that this is NOT an espresso machine - I would compare it to a fresh cup of drip coffee that you would get at a gourmet coffee house, perhaps a little better since it never splashes into an urn and then squirts out into a paper cup, but is dispensed straight from the beans a few inches into your waiting mug.
The design allows you to leave the water tank in place and simply fill it with a pitcher (something I cannot do with my Melitta One:One pod machine) and holds enough for about 5 full sized cups of coffee.
The brew temperature is very consistent at about 185-187 degrees measured at the stream coming from the spout (this is measured without a coffee pod) and consistently delivers just over 8 fl oz for the large size and about 6 oz for the small size (even though it says 5 oz).
I highly recommend this coffee machine if you are the kind of person that gets up and just wants that one really good cup of coffee to get going in the morning, and then maybe another one an hour or so later after a walk or workout, etc. With this machine (or any other pod brewer) you don't have coffee sitting around getting stale in a thermal carafe or urn - it is brewed fresh every time.
In my opinion the only drawback of the Simplehuman is the lack of an ability to make larger than an 8 oz cup. With the regular 9 gram coffee pods, this is not a problem, since the coffee is just right with 8 oz, but companies like Baronet are starting to make 12 gram pods and it would be nice to be able to make a 10 oz cup of coffe for a travel mug or larger "to go" coffee.
Some will complain about the immovable spout, but I find that by removing the grate and drip tray I can easily fit most of my stainless steel travel mugs except for the very tall narrow ones.
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26 of 27 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A great single serving coffee brewer, January 9, 2006
We recently received this coffee brewer as a x-mas gift from a friend. First of all, I am no coffee expert, but I do drink at least one cup a day and usually get them at starbucks. Our old coffee brewer was an all-plastic GE appliance from the 1980s. Therefore, the Simplehuman brewer was a welcomed upgrade.
My wife and I really enjoy using this brewer. The setup was very simple. You have to "prime" the system once and it took about 3 minutes. After that, we made our first cup of home brewed coffee in about 1 minute! It beats driving out to go get starbucks on a lazy morning. The machine was very easy to use. I like the removable water tank which made refilling water really easy. Also, the brewing operation was surprisingly quiet.
In addition, the brewer is really sleek. Kudos on the industrial design. The unit has a small footprint which worked out well in our small kitchen. The unit is mostly stainless steel and very sturdy.
One nice thing to know is that other coffee pods will work with the simplehuman brewer so you don't get stuck with one brand of coffee.
Overall, this was a very nice gift. The coffee tastes great and it is actually fun to use! I highly recommend this for someone looking for a single serve brewer.
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18 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
simplehuman: a suave machine with a couple of peccadilloes, January 31, 2006
simplehuman Coffee Pod Brewer
At coffeepodreview.com, we selected this brewer for our tasting. We really didn't want another klutz of a machine cluttering up our kitchen. The simplehuman seduced us with its slim, sleek design and the Bombay Sapphire-like hue of its water container and LCD display. It comes with two trays to cradle your pods: one deep brown one and one shallower green one to accommodate different builds of pod. We like to keep one for coffee and one for tea so as not to get any cross-contamination of flavors. Like most single serve brewers it comes with settings for a large cup (8 oz) and a small cup (5oz). We aren't ones for diluting our coffee too much and so generally go for the small cup setting, using another pod for another cup if we want more.
Grins: The stylish looks. The instructions are clear and use is simple. Priming is easily done and the water container smoothly removed, filled and replaced for use. Switch it on, lift the lever, pop in a pod, lower the lever, select the size of cup, press the brew button and off you go. We haven't had any trouble so far fitting coffee pods of different brands into the deep brown cradle or tea pods into the green one.
Gripes: It does tend to drip a bit after it has finished. Worst of all, though, if you want your joe to go, you can't get a travel mug underneath the spout.
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