Best Coffee Makers

Which is the Best Coffee Maker?

When trying to pick the best drip coffee maker, the options are just about endless.  How many cups?  What kind of carafe?  What kind of filter basket?  Do you need water filtration?  Do you need a display screen?  Questions about particulars abound, as do the questions regarding which coffee brand to start sifting through.  In our quest to bring you the very best coffee brewers, we thought we'd make it easier by breaking it down according to popularity within a brand.  Browse through our selections below based upon manufacturer.  You'll be able to see what the majority of people pick within each brand, as well as get a glimpse into what some of the staff favorites are here at Coffee Home Direct.

Best Cuisinart Coffee Maker

Cuisinart is our top choice for having the best coffee maker.  The Cuisinart motto, to help their customers "Savor the Good Life" is evident in every one of their products, in both the style and design, as well as in the features that are thoughtfully created to make life your life easier and feel more luxurious.  If you want a high quality machine that holds up, that's backed with a fantastic 3-year warranty, and a coffee maker that has a tasteful class and elegance, then we recommend Cuisinart to you.

Our top pick, and the rest of America's top pick within the Cuisinart coffee maker family itself, is the Cuisinart DCC-1200 12-Cup Brew Central coffeemaker.  Not only is it backed with the Cuisinart 3-year warranty that we admire so much, some of our other favorite features include:

• Pause n' Brew feature - grab your own cup whenever you want without interrupting the 12 cup brew cycle
• Keep warm function - one of the few machines that allows you to adjust the temperature of your keep warm setting
• 24 Hour Brew Program - allows you to set your coffee to start automatically brewing at the hour of your choosing, any time within the next 24 hours
• Comes included with a permanent gold tone filter, no need for paper filters and actually brews better tasting coffee with higher aromatic properties than a paper filter would 
• Automatic shut-off - you can program when you want this to kick in (from 0-4 hours) whether you want it to shut off at 30 minutes or 4 hours later.  No longer limited to an inconvenient 2 hour automatic shut off
• Includes a charcoal water filter - not only removes impurities from your water for better tasting coffee, also extends your coffee maker's life by preventing buildup
• Decalcify Notification - another feature to help you help your coffee machine endure 
• 1-4 cup Option - specially designed to adjust the coffee/water ratio if you don't need to brew an entire 12 cup pot

  Best BUNN Coffee Maker

  The BUNN STX Specialty 10-cup thermal coffee maker is one of the best-selling BUNN coffee makers and comes highly recommended from the CHD staff.  It, of course, features the trademark BUNN brew system that heats water to the optimum temperature for boiling water (200 degrees Fahrenheit) first, before the brewing ever begins.  However, this particular coffee maker actually keeps a ready supply of water at this perfect temperature, so no matter when you decide a cup of coffee is in order, the water is ready and your wait time is zero.  In fact, you can brew 10 cups, start to finish, in under three minutes!

  It also offers the sprayhead design unique to BUNN that evenly sprays a shower of water over the coffee grounds, as opposed to dumping water on top and sitting on the grounds while brewing is occurring.  This provides the most even flavor extraction possible and eliminates the opportunity for coffee to become bitter.  We love this particular BUNN coffee maker because of the 10 cup size and because of double wall thermal carafe, which not only means coffee at the perfect temperature for even longer, it also means an unbreakable carafe!  This BUNN coffeemaker is also backed with a 3 year warranty!

  Best Hamilton Beach Coffee Maker

  The top pick at CHD for Hamilton Beach is the 43254 Ensemble 12 cup drip coffee maker.  This visually appealing coffee maker offers you all the basics you should require in your coffee maker, but at a a much more economical price than the previous two coffee makers mentioned, a factor that can be very important to your considerations. 

  The control panel on this drip coffee maker is incredibly easy to use, and we really like and appreciate the simplistic, straightforward style of this machine.  It has a programmable clock and timer for setting coffee brewing to occur whenever you like, in addition to offering the Pause 'n Serve option for grabbing your cup just as soon as you feel like it.  It's backed with a 1 year limited warranty, which is not quite on par with our top two picks, but is a big step ahead of those without a warranty.  It has a unique "non-stick" hot plate and will work with both permanent or paper filters.  Also offers a 2 hour automatic shut off.