Cuisinart Personal Brew 12-cup Coffee Maker with Glass Carafe
This felt like the fanciest of all the machines. I liked how it had a swing-out basket and an integrated coffee scoop that pops right in. But the quality of the coffee was not as good as the winners’. It was also one of the larger machines, so if you need more capacity, this is a good option. However, add an extra scoop because the coffee tasted weaker than the others.
Calphalon 14-Cup Programmable Coffee Maker
Calphalon Programmable 14-Cup Coffee Maker
The Calphalon ran an admirable second to the Braun in terms of flavor, but had neither the features of the Black and Decker, nor the simplicity of the Krups, so it didn’t make the list of top picks. The interface is a little easier to use on the Braun and it also comes with an over-ice feature. Depending on what’s on sale in any given week though, the Calphalon may be a little bit cheaper, which could tip the scales in its favor.
Mr. Coffee 14-Cup Programmable Coffee Maker
Mr. Coffee 14 Cup Programmable Coffee Maker
In parts of the coffee commentariat, Mr. Coffee is a bit of a punching bag, shorthand for mediocre drip coffee. But we’ve tested several of Mr. Coffee’s machines, and they have improved. The coffee from this XL option didn’t hit all the flavor notes that some other machines did, but it was smooth, if a little bit watery. The water temperature as it came off the brewer was notably lower than the Braun, which could account for some of that drop off in flavor. But it’s certainly a big step up from a couple of coffee makers on this list.
Kenmore Drip Coffee Maker
Kenmore 12-Cup Drip Coffee Maker
The Kenmore machine really did draw out good flavor notes in the coffee and had water come out in a few pulses. The water wasn’t quite as hot as the Braun, and the coffee was just a hair duller in taste.
Cheap coffee makers we don’t recommend
This petite Mr. Coffee, new to the latest round of testing, is a super cheap, easy to use plug and play machine. But the shower head didn’t adequately coat the grounds, and there were a number coffee makers that did.
The Ninja has a lot of the bells and whistles of the best cheap coffee makers—two different brew settings, a delay timer, a removable water tank—but it just didn’t make coffee that tasted as good. The flavor was flat, even when set on the ostensibly more robust “bold” setting.
This is a good example of why pinching every penny will eventually come back to bite you if what you’re after is more than C- coffee. At $35 (at the time of writing) this is the cheapest of the cheap coffee makers tested here and it shows. The coffee tasted like hot water and a quick look at the brew basket revealed the coffee had deep channels running through it.
This goes to show brands can have hits and misses. The same name that makes one of our favorites also makes one of the worst. You can’t drink pots of coffee from this many cheap machines and not end up with something really bad eventually. And that’s what came from this Black & Decker. The sludgy coffee tasted like mud, and even the addition of a thermal carafe (the only coffee maker in this story that had one) could not save it.
Can I do anything to make better coffee in my cheap coffee maker?
You sure can. “If possible, weigh both your coffee and your water to control the ratio,” says Biolsi. “A good starting point is a 1:16 coffee to water ratio [in grams], which you can adjust to taste from there.” To put that in concrete terms, for one of these 12-cup coffee makers (which uses 1700 grams of water), you’d want to use 106 grams of coffee. A scale is obviously the best way to measure that, but if you must use a volume measure, you can ballpark it at one cup of whole bean coffee.