BUNNBT BT Speed Brew 10-Cup Thermal Carafe Home Coffee Brewer, Black

(Update 2024)I am raising my review to 5 stars. After six years of use, this coffee maker has proven to be great! It still makes piping hot coffee in record time. It still looks and works practically as good as new. See below some of my suggestions. They all still apply, but the little rubber stopper in the lid is still there and working fine! My daughter loves this coffee maker so much that she purchased one. Shortly thereafter, they moved to another state with their nearly new Bunn, still under warranty. When they arrived at their new home and plugged it in it didn't work. I wondered if they forgot to fill it up with water but they swore they did not forget! Still it didn't work. They contacted Bunn and were sent a brand new coffee maker! That's customer service! The new one works great. So I am sold.These things have risen in price exponentially thanks to our wonderful government, imo. But I still recommend this to anyone who wants a good coffee maker that is well made, easy to use and makes excellent coffee. Maybe I should become a dealer! :-) If you need a good coffee maker without a lot of bells and whistles but one that makes good coffee FAST and is covered by good customer service, you won't be disappointed! 5 stars! (End of update)============================I have had this coffee maker for over a year now and am overall very pleased with it. It consistently makes good coffee quickly and piping hot. My family makes several pots a day, so I feel that I have used the machine as much as most people would in two or three years and it is still going strong. At the price, I would expect it to last at least five years or more. We'll see how that works out.The only reason I gave it a four star rating rather than a five star rating is because I feel that Bunn still needs to do some engineering upgrades. I make these suggestions while realizing that there are some limitations due to the fact that the machine pre-heats the water. But just throwing out some ideas from the consumer's point of view that some bright engineers might tackle and that some marketing managers might consider as selling points. Here are this layman's suggestions (slight complaints):1. I like the on/off switch, but I feel that it is ridiculous that you can burn the coffee maker up if you plug it up without filling it with water first. I did not make that mistake and Bunn gives a warning, but it would still be VERY easy to do. There should be an automatic power shut-off that would prevent this automatically if you plug it up empty! Be warned!2. The coffee carafe sometimes drips down the side and from the bottom when pouring. This is a common problem with may coffee pots, and I do not know the solution. Obviously, pouring too fast will cause this; but it also sometimes happens no matter how slowly you pour the coffee. At other times, it pours perfectly. Not really sure what to suggest on this one.3. I really like the design of the stainless steel carafe. It keeps coffee hot a long time, is easy to clean and only has two parts .... or is it three? While washing the lid one day, I discovered that there is a tiny rubber "stopper" or whatever in the center of the lid that will easily come out! I almost didn't notice it and it could easily have been lost. This needs to be changed. I always worry that this little rubber part will get lost by mistake. I think the fact that this will come off the lid so easily when hand washing is crazy!4. The only other suggestion I have is that it would be very nice if this machine had a temporary flow-stop so that you could pour a cup of coffee while it is still making (dripping). This is a real picky suggestion since it only takes a few minutes to make a full pot. But the final few drips seem to take a long time to stop and you will make a small mess if you don't wait. It would be great it you could start pouring coffee when the main flow finishes and then place the pot back to catch the last few drips. Very picky and just a consumer wish list. This is not a real problem, but I always wish the drips would finish! :-)Overall, I would highly recommend this coffee maker. It has many great features that Bunn will point out in their advertising. It works as advertised for me. These comments should be taken just as a few fairly picky suggestions to make this unit even better. If Bunn will introduce some of these suggestions into the next model and send me a free one to test, I'll review it fairly and thoroughly!If you drink coffee by the pot and you need a coffee maker, I can highly recommend this one. I am a satisfied customer so far after over a year and a lot of coffee.

EASY TO CLEANThe reason I originally bought this coffee maker is because I was frustrated about my old Mr Coffee being so hard to clean. Ground coffee would always get into non-removable parts of the thing, and if you didn't clean it out meticulously, it would start to smell funny and affect the taste of the brewed coffee. The instructions inside the lid were to clean the whole thing every month, which involves going in there with rags and Q-tips... Seeing as there's no full-time housewife in my household (I live alone), I don't exactly have time for that sort of thing. Bunn has this problem solved. The only part that has ground coffee in it is the easily removable filter holder, which can go straight into the dishwasher. There is no way for coffee to get into the hard to clean water reservoir. Of course the water reservoir will need cleaning at some point anyway because of lime, but that is both inevitable and a much slower process.VERY FAST & EASY TO USEThe design of these Bunn coffee makers is very clever. You pour in a certain amount of cold water and that exact amount of hot water comes out. Very, very fast. Of course, it's a conjuring trick. The hot water that comes out is not the same water as the cold water you poured in. There's a fixed amount of water always kept at temperature, and when you put in the cold water, it dispenses that amount of hot water, then uses the cold water to replenish the reservoir. This is actually an amazingly clever user interface. The way you set how much coffee to brew is the precise perfectly intuitive way you do it on a traditional coffee maker: it's the amount of water you put in! And as a matter of fact, you don't even have to push any buttons. You pour in the water, and when you close the lid it starts to work. That's it. At first, I was skeptical that you could brew coffee this fast, but it turns out that the only reason traditional coffee makers go so slowly is that that is the fastest they can heat that amount of water using a reasonable amount of current. In fact, brewing the coffee faster works *better*.GOOD COFFEESince it uses very hot water and brews quickly, it's unsurprising that the coffee that comes out is indeed quite good. It might be possible to get a better drip coffee maker for quality, but I think once you are at this point, you are better off investing in a grinder (freshly ground coffee tastes better), better quality and/or fresher beans (coffee goes stale rather fast and comes in many kinds), etc.RELIABILITY?I haven't had this thing very long. It looks exceptionally sturdy for a consumer product, but I cannot vouch for its long-term reliability.