Top positive review
4.0 out of 5 starsKeurig 2.0 Machines Are A Giant Step Backwards- UPDATE: new Firmware Mitigates most of the issues
Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on December 28, 2015
UPDATE: WARRANTY REPLACEMENT BETTER THAN ORIGINAL: REVIEW UPGRADED NOW TO 4 STARS
After referring me to their online videos, two of which were erroneously linked (the link took me to a different video than the one specified) Keurig sent me a replacement unit. I was pleasantly surprised to see that they have significantly upgraded the firmware on this machine (compared to the original K550 2.0 I purchased at Christmas). It is now possible to set and store your K-Cup brewing preferences- temperature and cup size- such that it now mimics the behavior of its predecessor and removes my biggest source of dissatisfaction with it. It still won't let you brew using your own grounds, and it still won't work on any non-Keurig K-cups, and even some early-manufacture Keurig K-cups, and it still doesn't "know" when you have refilled the water reservoir like the older machines did... which is why I'm only giving it 4 stars. Still, the new firmware is a giant step forward, which is to say, almost back to where they were 3-4 years ago. It is slower than our older Keurig, but it is also a bit quieter when brewing.
EDIT- MACHINE COMPLETELY BROKEN. REVIEW DOWNGRADED FROM 2 STARS TO ONE STAR:
This brewer was first used on Christmas day, December 25, 2015. On January 29, 2016, after only 36 days in service, it suddenly stopped working- it groans briefly and then reluctantly dribbles approximately one teaspoon of coffee into the cup. Tried changing the water filter, no help. Tried running just water through, it won't run water through. Just completely broken. I do not believe it's merely a plugged line because the pump doesn't keep trying to run, it just groans once and quits.
I have contacted Keurig Customer Service for repairs or replacement, and I assume they will take care of it. If not, I will return here and so state. However, I now see no reason whatsoever for anyone to buy one of these brewers- in my review below, the only positive point that I could find was that it did, in fact, brew a nice cup of coffee... but since it no longer does even that, I now believe it to be a complete waste of money. The fact that it failed completely after only 36 days in household service indicates that it is a poor quality machine and best avoided. The only reason I have not given this ZERO starts is that Amazon will not let me do that.
ORIGINAL REVIEW BELOW:
I bought a Keurig 2.0 K550 coffee brewer to replace an older Keurig brewer we have had for about 5 years. Although all 3 models of the new 2.0 series seemed to have pretty much the same features, I opted for the top-of-the-line K550 because it has Carafe brewing and I presumed that the top of the line model would have the most, and best, features. I presumed wrong.
Other than the ability to brew a carafe at a time, which doesn't seem very useful to me since any $30 coffee maker will do that- the beauty and the whole point of the Keurigs is the freshness of the single-cup brewing - the K550 is a step backward from our 5-year-old model in every respect.
*The K550 does not have a settable default brew size like my old Keurig did. The only default is 8oz, and you can't change it. If you have an average coffee mug, it holds 10 ounces. So not only did we lose the ability to change the default, the one and only default provided is out of touch with what most Americans drink coffee from- 10 oz mugs. So now, every time we brew a cup of coffee we have to manually select the 10 ounce size. As further proof of how out-of-touch the K550 is, the graphic for the 10-ounce brew size depicts a tall travel mug instead of a household cup or mug. This is just nuts- all of my travel mugs hold 14 to 16 ounces of coffee. 10 ounces is not a travel mug size, it is a normal household mug size. The fact that Keurig doesn't show this reveals either an incredible lack of knowledge on their part, or a deliberate attempt to make the brewer seem more capable than it is- "Oh look, it even brews travel mug sizes!" No, it doesn't. 10 ounces is the K550's maximum single-cup brew size, and that is far short of the capacity of the tall travel mug depicted on the display for that brew size.
*The K550 does not have a settable brewing temperature like my old Keurig did. You get 197 degrees for cups and 192 degrees for carafes. Period. No options.
*The K550 doesn't "know" when you have refilled the water tank like my old Keurig did. Both my old and new Keurigs flash the tank light when it needs refilling, and the K550 screen displays "Please add water." However, my old unit "knew" when water had been added and stopped all "add water" indications on its own, but my new, top-of-the-line K550 doesn't. It keeps flashing and demanding water until you manually press "Continue."
*The only really new feature of the 2.0 models, including my K550, is the draconian DRM, which prevents the machines from brewing non-Keurig K-Cups, and even some of the older Keurig K-cups! So if you have any of these older Keurig K-cups or less-expensive non-Keurig K-cups, you can't use them in the new machines. Even more sinister, Keurig does not tell the truth about this on their support website FAQ. Despite the fact that they have deliberately programmed the 2.0 machines to refuse to operate with anything but late-manufacture Keurig-branded K-cups, they say "we do not guarantee that the 2.0 will work with non-Keurig K-cups." This is simply a deception, to make it appear that some of the non-Keurig or older Keurig K-cups might work... when the reality is that they have gone to considerable effort to make sure that those K-cups will not work. It seems to me that this move is nothing more than an attempt to completely cut out all non-Keurig manufacturers from providing cheaper K-cups, and drive them out of business. Their FAQ goes on to urge customers to call them so they can "help customers to find a Keurig-branded coffee to replace their old non-Keurig K-cups." How kind of them. They act as though they are completely unaware that the non-Keurig K-cups are much cheaper than theirs. This sort of duplicity and deceptiveness is reprehensible, and Keurig should be ashamed of itself in my opinion.
The only way in which my new K550 is NOT a step backward from my older Keurig is that it also brews a good cup of coffee. More expensive coffee, to be sure, and in a much less user-friendly way, to be sure, requiring more manual button pushes to do what my old machine did automatically, but the coffee is still just as good.
I rate this machine at 5 stars for the taste of the coffee (same as the older machines), and zero stars for the customer-hostile decrease in features as well as their deliberate deceptiveness as to why they really released this new 2.0 series: to forcefully eliminate their competitors at the expense of their customers. At this point I'm pondering whether or not to return it for a refund based on its complete lack of meeting reasonable expectations, i.e. providing at least the same features as its predecessors, if not more features.
