This has been a wonderful upgrade from a 12-cup coffee maker. The system itself is easy to learn and use, it allows several options for brewing, all of which are again easy to learn and use. While I do recommend this brewer, I have one small problem with it. When adding water to the reservoir the lid does not open past 90ish degrees which makes adding the water a bit difficult and awkward. One can easily work around this, but a suggested design improvement would be to let the lid open a bit further, maybe 5 or 10 degrees to allow for full craft to fill the reservoir.
We had an earlier version of the same model for several years. Don’t like the new carafe design. Two things… I prefer the prior hinged (still removable) lid. Secondly, the collar on the new carafe does not allow complete drying. When the carafe is washed and set to dry upside down, water is retained in the collar so that when turned back upright some water drains from the collar.
This Cuisinart was an excellent step up from run of the mill drip coffee makers. The design of this machine is pleasing to look at but the design really shines in the taste of the brew. Using the options available like bold or regular and the charcoal water filter lets you brew 14 cups of quality hot coffee.
My husband owned another brand's most basic coffee maker for at least 25 years, from before we met until about four years ago. The good ole days! It finally died, and we bought the exact same basic brand three times in the past four years. One was indeed our fault for accidentally breaking the carafe...and replacing that was the same price as the whole coffee maker. I was tired of running out once a year to buy a coffee maker so we invested in the Cuisinart. We unpacked it and marveled at how streamlined and fancy it looked. So, the first thing I absolutely hate is the automatic shut off, which actually deterred me before from buying a better brand. I am an early riser and the others in my household wake up hours after me. The default shut off is two hours. So it beeps after two hours and I have to go turn it back on. If I wake up at 5am and anyone else in the house sleeps until 9am, that means I have to turn it back on two times. Now, I believe my hubby programmed it to shut off after four hours ONCE, but if you unplug it, well it goes back to the default of two hours. I have always unplugged the coffee maker and toaster when not in use, and I have never forgotten to turn off the coffee maker when leaving the house, so the automatic shut off is something I don't need. Another dislike is the way the water reservoir exists on this; it's very hard to pour the water in. I basically have to pour most of it from the right-back and finish it up in the left-back. Lastly, this brews with some kind of clunking sound. It's extremely loud to me and I'm not even sure if it's normal. All in all, if this coffeemaker can last three years, it will be less of a hassle than buying one per year at 1/3 the cost. I will deal with the cons as long as we get coffee made every day.