Featured in this article
Best Drip Coffee Maker OverallFellow Aiden Precision Coffee MakerRead more$400
Fellow
Best Small-Batch Coffee MakerRatio Four Small-Batch Brewer (Series 2)Read more$279
Ratio
Best Buy-It-for-Life Coffee MakerMoccamaster KBGV Select Coffee MakerRead more$369 $329 (11% off)-Reviewer-Photo-SOURCE-Matthew-Korfhage.jpg)
Amazon
Best Drip Coffee Maker Under $100Zojirushi Zutto 5-Cup Drip CoffeemakerRead more$90 $73 (19% off)Amazon
Drip coffee has undergone a quiet revolution. The technology behind the best drip coffee makers has evolved rapidly in the past decade, transforming drip coffee machines from a break-room necessity to home office luxury. The best coffee machines now exercise tight control of time and temperature, borrowing techniques from third-wave café pour-overs to create beautiful, gentle, aromatic extraction without the burn or bitterness. Besides, filtered coffee is good for you. As a longtime booster for drip coffee, I'm loving this moment. Drip is now, uh, drip.
But despite their newfound sophistication, most of the best coffee makers on this list have a lower difficulty rating than your toaster oven. My top pick, the Fellow Aiden (8/10, WIRED Recommends), is a powerful machine that can account for your local elevation and has special recipes for individual coffee beans, but it's so easy to use, you could give it as a gift to your analog dad. My favorite full-flavored, single-mug device—the newest version of the Ratio Four (8/10, WIRED Recommends)—has only a single button. Without having devoted any effort to its brewing, you can sip your drip coffee at home and say, “Man, I really taste the lychee notes in this natural-process Gesha.” Or just enjoy the delicious, delicious joe.
I've also begun reckoning with plastic. Nearly all drip coffee makers, including most of our top picks, contain plastic somewhere in their brew path. This may lead to a very small amount of microplastics in your coffee, even if you've filtered your water. The Ratio Eight Series 2 ($799) and SimplyGoodCoffee plastic-free brewer ($480) are two of the only coffee makers I've seen without any contact between plastic and hot water.
After jittering myself up by testing more than two dozen drip coffee makers over the past year, these are my favorite fully automated immersion-brew coffee makers that make flavorful drip, pour-over coffee, or something splendidly in between. If you prefer your caffeine in smaller cups, see our guide to the Best Espresso Machines or the Best AeroPress. Also check out our other coffee coverage, including Best Cold-Brew Devices, Best Latte and Cappuccino Machines, and Best French Press, and stock up on beans with the Best Coffee Subscriptions.
Update June 2026: I tested and added the SimplyGoodCoffee plastic-free brewer, added context on microplastics for multiple brewers, and reassessed the Ratio Eight as a plastic-free pick. I also refreshed prices and descriptions, updated several models, and added new context throughout.
Table of ContentsAccordionItemContainerButtonLargeChevron- Compare Top Coffee Makers at a Glance
- How We Test and Select Coffee Machines
- Do Expensive Drip Coffee Makers Make Better Coffee?
- Is SCA Certification Important for Coffee Makers?
- Why a Coffee “Bloom” Is Important to Drip Coffee Makers
- How Big Is an 8-Cup Machine?
- Honorable Mentions
- Also Tested
Best Drip Coffee Maker Overall
- Photograph: Huckberry
- Photograph: Pete Cottell
- Photograph: Pete Cottell
Fellow
Aiden Precision Coffee Maker
$400Fellow
$400Amazon
$400Quince
The Fellow Aiden (8/10, WIRED Recommends), an austerely minimalist black or white box from which wild perfection emerges, looks like it was designed by Stanley Kubrick. Even amid a recent flood of drip-machine innovation, the Aiden set a new benchmark upon its release in 2024—bullseyeing that delicate intersection between a truly great cup of coffee and an easy cup of coffee. The Aiden offers plenty of gee-whiz customization for the geeks, from lightness of roast to brewing temp to bloom duration and even local elevation.
But those who just want to press a button and get mind-bendingly good coffee will be able to do so. Just select Guided Brew on the LED menu, choose anywhere from 5 to 50 ounces of coffee, pop in a color-coded basket that takes standard paper filters, and add the amount of coffee the Aiden asks for. Boom: perfection, brewed at 200 degrees Fahrenheit. WIRED contributing reviewer Pete Cottell attests that he used to put creamer in his coffee every day but has since stopped. Coffee from his Aiden is just too good.
That said, you can also get way into the weeds on brewing tweaks, if you’d like. Early iterations of the Fellow phone app didn’t do much, but these days, you can customize anything you’d like and build a library of brew recipes. Note that in addition to pour-over–style or drip options, the Aiden’s excellent cold brew is sui generis, mixing a hot coffee bloom with a Japanese-style slow-drip method to make a thin-bodied but vexingly aromatic cold brew in about 90 minutes. (It arrives room temp, so you’ll then need ice or a fridge.) The Fellow’s wizardry does not come cheap, granted. But for that, it can feel like actual magic. Note, however, that there are BPA-plastic components in the brew path.
SpecsCapacity50 ouncesDimensions9 x 9 x 12 inches (L x W x H)Weight9.6 poundsFeaturesInfinitely programmable, phone app, timer, cold brew, pour-over or drip settings, SCA-certifiedCarafeThermalWarmer?NoWarranty2 yearsWIRED/TIREDAccordionItemContainerButtonLargeChevronWIRED- Brews small batches as well as manual pour-over
- Innovative, excellent cold brew
- Incredibly easy to use
- Backing out of deep menu dives is a chore
- Heavy on the plastic
Best Small-Batch Coffee Maker
- Photograph: Matthew Korfhage
- Photograph: Matthew Korfhage
- Photograph: Matthew Korfhage
- Video: Matthew Korfhage
Ratio
Four Small-Batch Brewer (Series 2)
$279Ratio
$279Seattle Coffee Gear
Ratio did not reinvent the wheel for the second generation of its Ratio Four coffee maker (8/10, WIRED Recommends). It didn't need to. The Ratio Four Series 2 will still do one of two things: It will make one delicious mug of drip coffee. Or it will make two delicious mugs of drip coffee. With nary a knob twiddle or app or even a second button, this svelte modern-minimalist coffee maker with a preternaturally handsome borosilicate glass carafe makes unusually full-bodied drip that unlocks coffee’s natural sweetness as well as, or better than, any coffee maker on this list.
The Four does not offer the wild versatility of our top-pick Aiden. But no other drip coffee machine has insinuated itself into my morning routine so persistently, when I'm not busy testing other coffee machines. No device I know makes single-mug drip coffee that tastes this good with such ease and speed. Just press the device’s sole button for an excellent two-mug brew, or hold the button down for three seconds to optimize the device’s bloom cycle for a one-mug brew. That’s it. That’s the end of the instructions. The Four’s simplicity is its own reward.
This second-generation device, released last fall, fixes a couple of small shortcomings from the original device. The water pump is now whisper-quiet, compared to the audible hum of the previous version. And the button is now less likely to be triggered accidentally. Other tweaks, to the showerhead and brew basket, are more subtle.
A couple of caveats remain. There's no drip stop, so you may have to wipe a couple of stray dribbles if you grab your coffee quickly when the machine stops brewing. You're likely to do so; the coffee comes out at optimal drinking temperature, and there's no warmer or thermal carafe, so you’ll need to drink your delicious coffee immediately. For me, this is more virtue than flaw: I don't like letting coffee oxidize while it cools down to the most flavorful temperature. But if you're a lover of coffee so hot it seems to raise your whole body temperature, know the Four does not offer this. Note there's a small amount of hot-water plastic contact at the housing for the metal showerhead, and in the stock plastic brew basket. A ceramic brew basin like the Kalita Mino ($38) can be substituted, but this will lower final water temperatures, so you'll want to preheat the carafe if you opt for this.
SpecsCapacity20 ouncesDimensions10.6 x 7.5 x 11.5 inches (L x W x H)Weight12 poundsFeaturesBloom cycle, detached/movable reservoirCarafeHandblown glassWarmer?NoWarranty5 yearsWIRED/TIREDAccordionItemContainerButtonLargeChevronWIRED- Excellent, aromatic, full-bodied, small-batch brew
- Newly quiet vibratory pump
- Simple operation, small footprint
- Coffee must be drunk right away
- No drip stop
-Reviewer-Photo-SOURCE-Pete-Cottell.jpg)
Best Buy-It-for-Life Coffee Maker
- Photograph: Matthew Korfhage
- Courtesy of Moccamaster
Moccamaster
KBGV Select Coffee Maker
$369 $329 (11% off)Amazon
Handmade in the Netherlands since 1968, the Technivorm Moccamaster has sat happily on our Buy-It-for-Life guide for a seeming lifetime. Each of its variants is built like a tank, with steel and copper. The warranty goes five years, and it’s fully repairable thereafter, with service centers in the United States that’ll spiff it up for less than $100. Just note that the Moccamaster tends to have more parts than some coffee makers, giving it a some-assembly-required vibe that can take getting used to.
Moccamaster has been a classic exemplar of brewing precision for ages, certainly long before the new wave of precision and fancy drip coffee. It holds brewing temperatures within a variance of 4 degrees Celsius and extracts coffee within extremely tight parameters. Until recently, about half the SCA-certified coffee makers in the world were just different models of Technivorm Moccamaster. Now, it’s more like a third. The KBGV's main distinction is it optimizes itself for multiple batch sizes. The KBT, another popular model, offers a distinctive thermal carafe that's quite effective at keeping large batches hot—though I personally prefer the KBGV for its ability to brew smaller batches optimally. I haven't yet tested it, but, by all accounts, the Cup One offers single-cup brewing to shame Keurig.
A word on plastic: This Moccamaster has a mostly plastic-free brew path, a mix of copper heating elements, glass tubes, silicone grommets, and a stainless steel brew head. However, the brew basin and carafe lid are plastic. This adds up to less plastic in the brew path, but not no plastic.
SpecsCapacity40 ouncesDimensions6.5 x 12.75 x 14 inches (L x W x H)Weight6 poundsFeaturesBloom cycle, full or half-carafe settings, SCA-certified, so many color optionsCarafeBorosilicate glassWarmer?YesWarranty5 years, lifetime low-cost repairsWIRED/TIREDAccordionItemContainerButtonLargeChevronWIRED- Durable, repairable, analog, and built like a tank
- Excellent flavor extraction to SCA certifications
- Isn't it pretty? In that Scandinavian way?
- A lot of parts to put together while brewing
- More plastic than you'd expect
Best Drip Coffee Maker Under $100
Photograph: Matthew KorfhageSave to wishlistSave to wishlistZojirushi
Zutto 5-Cup Drip Coffeemaker
$90 $73 (19% off)Amazon
$100 $90 (10% off)Wayfair
This Zojirushi Zutto is nothing fancy. It’s as wee as a Boston terrier. But among coffee brewers under $100, this five-cup maker stands nearly alone. Unlike many twice its price, this Zojirushi consistently manages a well-extracted cup, complete with a pour-over-style bloom, without hurrying through the brewing process or lingering till it gets bitter.
There’s no “bold” setting. There’s no timer. The water tank is removable for easy filling, and there’s a built-in carbon filter. The user interface consists of a power switch: When you turn it on, it brews. When it brews your coffee, it tastes good. As with Zojirushi’s beloved rice cookers, the complicated decisions have already been made for you. All you do is drink the nice coffee.
SpecsCapacity25 ouncesDimensions5.9 x 8.9 x 12.6 inches (L x W x H)Weight4 poundsFeaturesBloom cycle, charcoal water filterCarafeGlassWarmer?YesWarranty1 yearWIRED/TIREDAccordionItemContainerButtonLargeChevronWIRED- Quite simply the lowest cost machine that makes coffee this good
- Compact
- As easy to use as easy gets
- Feature set is basically nonexistent
- 25-ounce carafe may be too small for some
A Plastic-Free Drip Coffee Maker
- Photograph: Matthew Korfhage
- Photograph: Matthew Korfhage
- Video: Matthew Korfhage
SimplyGoodCoffee
Plastic-Free Brewer
$480SimplyGoodCoffee
Microplastics are everywhere, probably even in your coffee. Wherever heat is involved, some plastic leaching is likely, according to a study published last year. Coffee from older drip coffee makers showed microplastic levels higher than fruit juice cartons, but multiple orders of magnitude lower than bottled water. Alas, almost every drip coffee maker on the market uses plastic somewhere in its brew path. Over the years, some of that plastic will likely degrade.
The plastic-free brewer from SimplyGoodCoffee, founded in 2022 by former Bonavita CEO Laura Sommers, is a notable exception. Looks-wise, the device is a bit like a Moccamaster crossed with a 1970s industrial power controller. Plastic appears nowhere on the brewer, except at a couple of insulation points, and it doesn't touch water. The carafe and reservoir are borosilicate glass, and most of the rest of the device is stainless steel, except for a few non-petroleum rubber fittings. So if you filter microplastics from your tap water, this machine won't add them back.
I have good news: the resulting coffee is good. The device brews quickly and offers pour-over–style bloom cycles for full and half batches. The coffee tastes light and precise, almost clinically clean, not dissimilar to what you'd get from a Moccamaster. There's less flavor oomph than coffee from a Ratio or an Aiden, but nary an off note. While not SCA-certified, the SimplyGood has been tested to SCA tolerances. So far, so good.
But there are some quirks. Expensive materials mean a high price, which doesn't always lead to a premium feeling. As is the case with the Moccamaster, there are a lot of little parts—but the ones on SimplyGood sometimes fit loosely or ambiguously. The stainless steel lid can grind unnervingly against the thin glass of the carafe. The drip stop is manual, not automatic as with a Moccamaster, which means if you don't remember to slide it on and then off, you'll end up with a mess. You also don't get the long warranty or assured customer service that you'd get from Ratio or Technivorm: SimplyGood's support line shuttles callers among various AI agents. But the trade-off is a drip coffee maker that makes excellent coffee, with truly no plastic contact anywhere. Plastic-haters with a bigger budget might nonetheless opt for the Ratio Eight Series 2 (see below).
SpecsReservoir40 ouncesDimensions13.7 x 7.8 x 14.6 inches (L x W x H)Weight8 poundsFeaturesAdjustable bloom cycle for full or half batches, coffee warmer, manual drip stopCarafeBorosilicate glassWarmer?Automatically on, timed shutoffWarranty5 yearsA premium plastic-free brewer: The Ratio Eight Series 2 ($799) is a beautiful hourglass-shaped coffee maker with lovely walnut trim accents. It stands stately atop the counter like a modern-minimalist sculpture. Like other machines from Ratio, it makes rich and flavorful pour-over–style coffee with carefully modulated temperature settings and a Fibonacci-inspired showerhead that offers some of the fullest extraction of any drip coffee makers I've tested. It does so with no plastic in its brew path, meaning no plastic ever touches hot water. But it's also the most expensive drip coffee maker I've ever recommended, by nearly double. Note, too, that plastic-free brewing does not mean a plastic-free device. The cold-water reservoir is made of plastic to help avoid shattering. The plastic here is not a concern to me, but it may be a problem for you. The molded frame is also plastic to avoid paint or metal oxidation from dampness or steam. Ultimately, if money were no object, this is the brewer I would keep in my home to avoid microplastics in my coffee. It comes with a 5-year warranty from a company with a reputation for standing behind its products. And it's the one I'd expect to endure on my counter for years. One small issue: The stainless-steel brew basket does like to steam up the top of the coffee machine. I tend to wipe this with a cloth.
WIRED/TIREDAccordionItemContainerButtonLargeChevronWIRED- No plastic contact during brewing
- Excellent and clean-tasting coffee, tested to SCA criteria
- Bloom cycle can be optimized to half or full batches
- Not actually SCA-certified
- Drip stop is manual, not automatic
- Customer service an unknown quantity
Best Automated Pour-Over Coffee Maker
Photograph: Matthew KorfhageSave to wishlistSave to wishlistXbloom
Studio Coffee Machine
$599Amazon
$599xBloom
The xBloom Studio (7/10, WIRED Recommends) is essentially an automated version of a priestly single-mug coffee pour-over, customizable in every detail. Using a coffee pod from craft roasters like Heart or Passenger remains as easy as pouring in the fresh coffee beans and scanning a radio frequency identification (RFID) card on each pod. But initially, learning how to brew with your own beans incurred a steep learning curve on the xBloom—requiring a phone app, and some somewhat complicated recipes.
More recently, however, xBloom's makers have added new features while reducing the device's dependence on the phone app. An “auto mode” allows you to choose from a trio of preset brewing recipes (for light, medium, and dark roasts). Unless you want to change the presets, you no longer need the app. Even if you do want to change those presets, you can simply download other users’ shared recipes and set them to one of the three buttons—as opposed to designing your own recipe from scratch. With its new push-button brew mode, the xBloom has served me well as a daily driver to play around with new coffee roasts in a single-mug format. Why would this ever be preferable to pour-over? Repeatability and the option to toggle individual variables without human error or attention lapses.
Supporting the device's utility is a built-in scale and a conical burr grinder that would likely cost $200 by itself. The saved counter space ends up mattering. The xBloom makers also added a lovely little adjunct brewer for loose tea. At the end of 2025, xBloom announced beta testing for even more offline brewing features, though if they've dropped, I haven't noticed.
SpecsReservoir32 ouncesDimensions8 x 6.7 x 16.8 inches (L x W x H)Weight11 poundsFeaturesGrinder and scale, programmable pour-over, manual presets, user-generated programs for download, RFID-scannable bean pods, extra feature for teaCarafeN/A, single-cupWarmer?NoWarranty2 yearsWIRED/TIREDAccordionItemContainerButtonLargeChevronWIRED- Built-in grinder and scale
- Mimics pour-over coffee with near-infinite customization
- Coffee pods are RFID-scannable and optimized for each bean
- Brewing results for each pod depend on the roaster
- Even with presets, there's a learning curve for non-pod coffee
Best Coffee Maker With Thermal Carafe
Photograph: Matthew KorfhageSave to wishlistSave to wishlistRatio
Six Coffee Maker Series 2
$359Ratio
$360Williams-Sonoma
There are many reasons to like the Ratio Six. Its teardrop top and trapezoidal double-stack of brewer and carafe make the device look like it’s been shoplifted from a mid-century design museum. Like its cousin, the Ratio Four, the Six achieves implausibly full-flavored, full-bodied extraction without any particular effort on your part: just the press of a single button. Machine after machine, Ratio makes coffee brewers for lazy people with good taste.
But while I prefer the Four for single servings, the Six is better for batches. The eight-cup brewer’s thermal carafe, updated late last year, is now one of the best around, keeping coffee at optimal drinking temperature for literal hours. Just note that even with an updated design, pouring can get a little drippy when the carafe is almost empty—and there’s something fiddly about the way the filter basket has to be stacked atop the carafe while brewing. But it’s a beautiful machine, and the coffee’s even better.
Note that to avoid any plastic contact while brewing, Ratio suggests using the stainless steel dripper set ($55) from the plastic-free Ratio Eight Series 2. This works, but it's an aftermarket solution and not a perfect aesthetic match.
SpecsReservoir40 ouncesDimensions13.5 x 6.8 x 14.3 inches (L x W x H)Weight7 poundsFeaturesAdjustable bloom cycle for full or half batches, heat-shielded brew chamberCarafeThermalWarmer?NoWarranty5 yearsWIRED/TIREDAccordionItemContainerButtonLargeChevronWIRED- Best-in-class coffee extraction
- Adjustable bloom cycle for full or half batches
- Truly well-insulated thermal carafe
- Stacking the brew chamber can be a bit fussy
- The pour from the thermal carafe is also a bit fussy
- Plastic-free brewing requires buying aftermarket $55 part
Compare the Top 7 Drip Coffee Makers
DeviceDimensionsCapacityBest forWarrantyFellow Aiden ($400)9" x 9" x 12"50 oz.Infinitely programmable for pour-over, drip, and cold brew2 yearsRatio Four ($279)10.6" x 7.5" x 11.5"20 oz.Easy, full-flavored coffee for one or two5 yearsMoccamaster KBGV ($369)6.5" x 12.8" x 14"40 oz.Lasts forever, tastes good5 yearsZojirushi Zutto ($90)5.9" x 8.9" x 12.6"25 oz.Best-tasting budget maker1 yearXbloom Studio ($599)8" x 6.7" x 16.8"Single-cupInfinitely customized robot pour-over2 yearsRatio Six ($359)13.5" x 6.8" x 14.3"40 oz.Excellent flavor, great thermal carafe5 yearsSimplyGoodCoffee Plastic-Free Brewer ($480)13.7" x 7.8" x 14.6"40 oz.Fully plastic-free brewing, clean flavor2 yearsFrequently Asked Questions
How We Tested and Chose the Best Drip Coffee Machines
AccordionItemContainerButtonLargeChevronI've been a drip coffee fan—some might say fanatic—for quite some time. Much of my machine selection comes from personal experience as a coffee writer and reporter for more than a decade. To broaden my selection, I listened to some of the best minds in coffee, including internet bean personalities like James Hoffmann and Lance Hedrick, trusted baristas and roasters, my friend Joel, and countless published lists by credible sources. If it looked good, I tried it. And sometimes, I just took a flyer on an interesting-looking machine.
Curious why you don't see your favorite budget Hamilton Beach or Cuisinart 14-Cup on this list? It's because I focused on a new generation of devices that are moving drip coffee forward in terms of flavor and technical sophistication—adding bloom cycles, dual heating elements, customization, or precise water-temperature control. That said, there are still a couple of budget devices that make actual good coffee. My favorite of these is the Zojirushi Zutto.
I test each coffee machine first by carefully reading and following the manufacturer's instructions, and then brew both light- and medium-dark-roast coffee according to specifications. I then do the same while adhering to a 1:17 “golden ratio” of water-to-coffee while brewing multiple batch sizes. Then I generally tinker a bit with different roasts and machine settings while putting the machine through its paces, seeing how easy (or hard) it is to get a genuinely good cup of coffee according to different preferences.
But in addition to the evidence of my taste buds, I use probe and infrared thermometers when possible to track brew and final temperatures, plus time brew cycles for various-sized batches. I examine the soaking of the brew bed for signs of uneven extraction.
I also assess ease of use, the little fun features that make you fall in love with a machine, and the quirks or flaws that can make you hate it. Does the carafe hold temperature? Can you time the machine to have coffee ready when you wake up? How easy is it to clean or descale the water reservoir? How's the lid fit? When you've really invested in a device, even the littlest things matter.
But taste is always king, and it's what matters to me most. Amid testing, I also held side-by-side taste tests against other machines I liked, with the same ratios and coffee, to see how they compared. A good cup of coffee never quite seems good enough when it sits on the counter next to truly great coffee.
Do More Expensive Drip Coffee Makers Make Better Coffee?
AccordionItemContainerButtonLargeChevronThe short answer is “often, very much yes.” You've probably noticed that drip coffee makers have gotten a lot more expensive lately, after decades spent racing to the bottom of the market.
The original Mr. Coffee machine was actually a time-saving luxury and a marvel of newfound convenience when it arrived in the 1970s, quickly taking over half the home coffee market share despite costing $250 or more in current dollars. But these days, a basic 12-cup drip coffee machine with a warmer is quite easily had at Walmart for less than $30. So why not just buy that?
You can. But it won't be as good.
Why are cheap coffee makers cheap? Cheap drip coffee makers tend to work a similar way: Coffee is heated till it boils underneath the burner plate. The resulting steam pushes water up through plastic tubes with steam to pour out of a small showerhead over the brewing chamber, until all the water is gone. A couple things happen, alas. First, the water that initially pours into the brewing chamber is too cold. By the end of the pour, it's too hot. Also, since the pour spout is generally a bit small, the grounds will not wet evenly, or extract evenly: Water will tunnel through the middle or the side of the brew basket. (You can see this quite clearly, usually: There's basically a big crater in your coffee grounds after you brew.)
Bad extraction means bad coffee. The result of this uneven extraction is uneven coffee. Different flavors come out of coffee at different times and different temperatures. Especially with lighter roasts and higher-quality coffee—coffee with unique, interesting, aromatic qualities—a cheap coffee maker will be a form of violence. What's more, after you drop the coffee onto the thermal plate, it'll just kinda keep burning. It will taste, perhaps nostalgically, like diner coffee. It'll taste thin, and burnt, and possibly sour. If you're used to this, and that's what you like, these qualities should only cost you $30.
Good extraction makes good coffee. Drip or immersion coffee does not have to taste like burnt rubber. Well-extracted drip coffee can taste round, chocolatey, and deep, without any burnt notes. It can offer aromatics as subtle and fruity as those you'd find in wine: plum, nectarine, and cherry. Since the early 2000s, baristas with twirly mustaches have gotten quite good at coaxing out these flavors with cafe pour-over—using good grinders, tight temperature control, and painstakingly evenly immersed coffee grounds. This usually involves a Chemex or a Kalita Wave conical filter and a tightly controlled gooseneck kettle.
Modern drip machines emulate cafe pour-over. So why are the newer, more expensive drip coffee makers better? They exercise the same control as a good barista in a cafe. They keep the temperature in a tight range. They immerse the coffee evenly. They “bloom” coffee to further aid even extraction. They control time appropriately. They mimic what a skilled barista would do to predictably and beautifully coax the nice flavors out of the coffee, but they stop short before pulling out the nasty flavors.
But seriously. Is expensive always better? Nah. Plenty of expensive coffee makers also make bad or OK coffee, despite their best efforts. That's why I take my time testing each machine. WIRED's top-pick devices make drip coffee better than any other machines I've encountered. Some, like the Technivorm Moccamaster, achieve these results with precise analog engineering. Some, like the Four from Portland coffee maker Ratio, construct ideal temperature curves and ideal extraction using electronic controllers and long-term testing, unlocking good coffee with a single button-press. And some, like the top-pick Fellow Aiden, allow you to customize your brewing parameters for each individual bag of coffee. Wild.
What Is SCA Certification?
AccordionItemContainerButtonLargeChevronA number of the brewers among the favorites are certified by the Specialty Coffee Association (SCA) as “Golden Cup” brewers. What does this mean? Quite a bit, actually.
The Specialty Coffee Association is an international trade group for coffee. Its Golden Cup home-brewer certification is a rigorous testing process designed according to criteria laid out by coffee scientists in the 1950s. An increasingly small number of devices receive and maintain SCA Golden Cup laurels, and these include some of the best brewers in the game. Large brands like Bonavita and Breville may have more resources to devote to certification, but relative newcomers like Ratio and Fellow may also use SCA certification as a way of proving their bona fides.
An SCA brewer must be able to consistently deliver on the following criteria:
Coffee-to-water ratio: The golden ratio for coffee brewing generally is thought to fall between 1:16 and 1:18. This is one gram of coffee for every 16 to 18 grams or milliliters of water. That's around 8 grams of coffee for every 5-ounce cup. This is the strength most prefer, after years of taste testing.
Brew temp: Water temperature must remain between 195 and 205 degrees Fahrenheit (90 to 96 degrees Celsius) throughout the brewing process. If it's too hot, the coffee burns or bad flavors come out. Too cold, and the extraction is too weak and the coffee might end up tasting sour. The recommended temperature might be lower in higher-elevation areas, such as Denver.
Brew time: In general, a batch of drip coffee should brew in four to eight minutes in order to get full extraction without overdoing it and risking bitter or acrid flavors. Pour-over coffee tends to brew at the lower end of this scale, around three to five minutes.
Extraction: The SCA tests the extraction achieved by a coffee maker. The ideal strength—the percentage of the brewed liquid that's made up of coffee particles—tends to be 1.15 to 1.35 percent. Extraction is a complicated calculation, but the SCA wants coffee to be 18 to 22 percent extracted. The maximum theoretical extraction is 30 percent, but you don't want this. The bitter flavors come last, and you'd rather leave them in the bean.
The objectivity of these criteria has been questioned a bit recently, given changing tastes over time and different regional preferences. It is true that any coffee machine that can consistently meet these criteria tends to be a pretty well-made machine. But an SCA stamp does not guarantee excellent coffee. (In fact, I've tasted multiple “Golden Cup” brewers I would not recommend.) Likewise, the lack of an SCA stamp doesn't mean bad coffee. Indeed, makers of some of our top picks have privately told me they've moved beyond the SCA's one-size-fits-all criteria, in favor of in-house optimization.
What Is This “Bloom” You Speak Of?
AccordionItemContainerButtonLargeChevronThe “bloom” is a technique from the pour-over brewing method that's recently been adopted in a lot of the best automatic drip coffee makers.
The idea is this: If your coffee is fresh and freshly ground, it's probably gassy. Specifically, there's a bit of carbon dioxide still trapped in the bean that will actually hinder good coffee extraction. Once you add hot water, the carbon dioxide will be in a rush to escape and shoulder out those good coffee flavors from doing the same.
So a bloom is just a poetic name for degassing. Basically, you pour over a small portion of hot water to begin with, then wait 30 seconds or so. The visible bubbling of the carbon dioxide that results is the “bloom.”
Blooming fresh coffee tends to lead to a better and more full-flavored extraction. Weakly extracted coffee is thinner and more sour.
The best modern drip coffee machines now often also offer a bloom cycle, in part because consumers are now more likely to use better, freshly ground beans in their drip coffee. You don't need to bloom stale ground coffee. But that said, it will always taste like stale coffee.
Another technique coffee makers have borrowed from pour-over is agitation, which is to say: stirring up the coffee with water. Many newer machines use a broad showerhead to drip out water unevenly in large droplets. This increases and optimizes coffee extraction by both wetting the coffee grounds evenly and creating more agitation.
How Big Is a Coffee Cup?
AccordionItemContainerButtonLargeChevronThis is a hairy, sticky, no-good question with only uncertainty at its bottom. There's very little standardization in coffee makers, but the answer tends to be that most but not all American drip coffee makers use 5 ounces as a standard serving size. This means a 12-cup coffee maker tends to hold 60 ounces of water in its reservoir.
But some European makers, like Technivorm Moccamaster, roll with 125 milliliters, about 4 ounces. Other coffee makers might have 150-milliliter cups, or 6-ounce cups. To find out the size of each machine's “cup,” you may have to use your own measuring cup or kitchen scale, read the manual very carefully, or have fun with Google.
More Coffee Makers We Like and Love
Photograph: Cavanaugh/OxoOxo Brew 9-Cup Coffee Maker for $250: The 9-cup Oxo (9/10, WIRED Recommends) is a lovely, SCA Golden Cup coffee maker capable of making tasty drip coffee that would please any connoisseur. Five years ago when WIRED reviewed it, it was arguably our favorite batch coffee maker. Alas, the world of drip coffee relentlessly keeps moving forward. It still might be your favorite, given that it costs 40 percent less than my top-pick Aiden and offers a feature that's indispensable for some: a timer that allows you to schedule your brew overnight, so it’s ready when you wake up.
Oxo 12-Cup Coffee Maker for $350: The Oxo 12-Cup Coffee Maker (8/10, WIRED Recommends) is another previous top pick for as a large-batch brewer, and it's still a worthwhile choice. This Oxo is not overtly pretty, but, like the Luxe above, it's SCA-certified, can be set on a delay timer, and can adjust heat and flow rate of its showerhead to account for batches from large to small. Which is to say it wakes up each morning and brews excellence. WIRED contributing reviewer Joe Ray prized, in particular, the machine’s water tank, which operates as a kettle, heating the water precisely before brewing rather than heating up during the brew—a quality quite rare among home brewers.
Photograph: Matthew Korfhage12-Cup Breville Luxe Brewer for $350: Sometimes nothing less than 12 cups will do. WIRED has previously recommended this big-batch 12-Cup brewer as a top pick for those who want good-tasting coffee in large batches. Among the big boys, this Breville Luxe (7/10, WIRED Recommends), the update on the prior Breville Precision Brewer, has the best feature set and the best capabilities. It can reliably make balanced, aromatic 60-ounce batch of coffee thanks to a lot of technical sophistication under its hood: PID temperature control, water sensors, brew algorithms, customizable settings, the same thermocoils and pumps you'd use to make espresso. It also has an excellent cold brew function, which can make real, actual, cold brew overnight or over the course of the day, timed out with a drip stop. Even so, the device has a number of quirks and particularities in terms of water volume, water left in the reservoir, and an entirely different brew mode for small batches that's not well explained in the product documentation. After noticing a lot of frustrated user feedback online, I've moved this down to my honorable mentions despite the machine's many admirable qualities.
Photograph: Matthew KorfhageNinja Hot and Iced XL for $160: Arguably Ninja's top-line coffee maker of the moment, the 12-cup Ninja Hot and Iced XL has many features to like: timed brew for sluggish risers, the ability to choose your batch size from single mug to 12-cup carafe without having to measure water, because the device simply sucks the desired amount out of the tank; options on iced coffee and cold brew. It is what Ninja does: It has the features. The coffee is not as well-extracted as our top picks, whether on classic or rich settings. But at its price, and with its many little conveniences, it may still be the coffee machine you desire. It's best for those who like medium roast or darker, though—it's not a pick for delicate, aromatic light-roast drinkers.
Ninja 12-Cup Programmable Brewer
Photograph: Matthew KorfhageNinja 12-Cup Programmable Brewer for $90: At less than $100, this 12-cup Ninja is a perfectly serviceable brewer with a bloom function, a timer so you can wake up to hot coffee on a hot plate, and a half-batch setting to help optimize your brews. At the same price range, I far prefer a coffee pot from the five-cup Zojirushi Zutto. But if you want to caffeinate an office or community rec room on a budget, this larger budget brewer might still be your choice.
Photograph: Matthew KorfhageNinja Dualbrew Hot & Iced Coffee System for $170: Lordy, this one really does it all. Hot coffee, cold coffee, iced coffee, pod coffee. This machine is designed for the family who can't agree, or the person who wants everything, but only sometimes. It's among WIRED's top-pick pod machines for this wild versatility, and while the drip coffee doesn't stack up to my top picks, it's perfectly good for those more likely to make the occasional carafe from store bags.
Photograph: Matthew KorfhageGevi 10-Cup Touchscreen Brewer for $160: Gevi is a relatively new brand out of China—part of a wave of new appliance makers who've moved from manufacturing expertise to product design. And lately, Gevi has been shaking up a lot of assumptions about what goes in a drip coffee maker and what doesn't. This 10-cup batch brewer, usually on sale around $160, comes with a host of customizable brew settings, a timed-brew delay, and a conical-burr grinder to brew fresh coffee beans—a style of grinder you'd rarely find much below $100 all by itself. The resulting coffee is not at the level of my top picks: The grinder tends to grind too much coffee, and brew times are quite long, a combination that has led to some bitterness unless you adjust your grind to fairly coarse settings. But this Gevi does make brewing drip coffee from fresh coffee beans encouragingly easy and affordable for non-coffee-geeks. If you want a budget coffee maker for pre-ground coffee, though? You should probably get our budget pick five-cup Zojirushi or the 12-cup Ninja instead.
Aarke Coffee Maker With Thermal Carafe for $480: This shiny, SCA-certified Swedish-made system (6/10, WIRED Recommends) is beautiful, in the Swedish modernist sense: It looks like a Turkish tea service has been redesigned into a brand new gasworks. It makes quite lovely coffee. And in a novel twist, the coffee brewer can be paired with the matching flat-burr grinder so the grinder theoretically churns the exact right amount of ground coffee. Alas, this grinder pairing wasn’t quite perfectly calibrated, requiring much tweaking. And though I didn’t have this problem, users online have reported that the grinder jams up very easily—a troubling worry on such an expensive device. I remain nonetheless affectionate.
Other Brewers Tested
Photograph: Matthew KorfhageOxo Brew 8-Cup Coffee Maker With Glass Carafe for $180: I leapt at the chance to try an updated version of Oxo's modern-classic 8-cup coffee maker, now available with a glass carafe and a warmer. When first reviewed in 2020, the Oxo Brew 8-Cup received a rare 9/10 score from WIRED reviewer Joe Ray for its elegant simplicity, its “rainmaker” showerhead meant to mimic the agitation of a pour-over, and a SCA Golden Cup certification attesting that the machine was able to stay within tight temperature and time parameters. Six years later, the coffee flavor and extraction is still amid the upper echelon of drip coffee brewers, at a sub-$200 price that's a bargain in its class. It no longer being a top pick is simply a sign of how far other drip coffee makers have come—including the newer 9-cup and 12-cup machines from Oxo. In particular, I wish Oxo had since updated the 8-Cup's showerhead design to be more in line with its newer machines. The six-hole showerhead erodes pits into the brew bed and causes channeling. This adds up to less even extraction than the newer Oxo machines. It’s not that I don’t like the 8-cup, it's just that I think you should probably get the 9-cup or 12-cup instead.
Mr Coffee Perfect Brew
Photograph: Matthew KorfhageMr. Coffee Perfect Brew for $169: This SCA-certified Mr. Coffee brewer amounts to a giant leap forward for the drip-coffee pioneer. It does indeed make an aromatic and flavorful, if somewhat thin-bodied brew. That said, the controls interface is maddening, and the device tries to do too many things without succeeding at all of them: The cold-brew function, in particular, is just a recipe for lukewarm, watered-down coffee. The tea basket is a pleasant addition, however.
Melitta Vision Luxe 12-Cup
Photograph: Matthew KorfhageMelitta Vision Luxe 12-Cup for $227: This quite large and fetching machine was designed under the Melitta brand by Hong Kong design firm Wabilogic. It’s full of interesting touches like a water reservoir that lights up red when it heats, and a control panel that can swivel for convenience. Alas, I never found a way to get the even extraction I was looking for, and much coffee came out somehow thin but bitter. Worse, the immovable water reservoir stayed constantly humid after brewing—a recipe for either constant cleaning or something worse.
Photograph: Matthew KorfhageGevi 10-Cup Grind-and-Brew for $150: This is a slightly lower-cost version of Gevi's other, more digital 10-cup grind-and-brew device. Both include a built-in conical-burr grinder at a relatively low cost, and making fresh-ground coffee was easy and affordable for many drip coffee lovers. Both also brew similarly, a bit slow and strong, requiring coarser grinds. But at $20 or so more, I recommend Gevi's touchscreen device instead for two reasons: a removable water tank, and a removable top granting access to the grinder to clear beans or jams or change out the burr. The touchscreen device has both. This one has neither.
Photograph: Matthew KorfhageCuisinart Grind and Brew for $250: Cuisinart's new entrant in single-serve, grind-and-brew coffee machines is a bit of a neither-here-nor-there machine that shows why it's so hard to find integrated grinder-brewers. The grinder means it's priced close to the top picks among stand-alone drip brewers that offer delicate and nuanced takes on even pre-ground coffee. But the Cuisinart's integrated grinder has only one setting—which means the only way to adjust flavor is by adjusting brew strength. This makes it not great for the light or lighter-medium roasts favored by third-wave coffee lovers, the very people who tend to be sticklers about having their coffee ground fresh before brewing. The grinder adds a bit of versatility for those who favor medium-dark roasts, and the conical burr grinder is a step up from a blade grinder. But this machine remains a bit of an odd duck.
De’Longhi TrueBrew for $700: Like a lot of De’Longhi espresso machines, this TrueBrew (4/10, WIRED Recommends) is a superautomated machine with a bean reservoir up top. This one makes something akin to drip, grinding and brewing coffee ranging from a dense, 3-ounce-cup “espresso” to a classic mug. But the “espresso” was weak, and the drip coffee was sad, according to contributor Joe Ray. Plus, the machine was just kind of messy and expensive.
GE Café Specialty Drip Coffee Maker for $299: GE is a big name but a less common one in the world of high-quality coffee. This SCA-certified Café Specialty Drip Coffee Maker (4/10, WIRED Recommends) seemed initially promising, according to contributor Joe Ray, but turned out to extract coffee unevenly and led to flat, coppery flavors—a fatal flaw in a premium-priced machine.
Balmuda The Brew for $699: Balmuda is a brand known for lovable design, and this coffee maker (5/10, WIRED Recommends) is no exception: petite and handsome, with a habit of steam-blasting the coffee carafe in advance of brewing and ticking like a clock as the coffee dribbles down. But it brewed weird, wrote contributor Joe Ray, making concentrate at low temperatures then diluting it with extra water. Maybe it’s cute, but the coffee doesn’t taste good unless you do some serious gymnastics. It also costs a steep $700.
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Matthew Korfhage is a staff writer and reviewer on WIRED's Gear team, where he focuses on home and kitchen devices that range from air fryers and coffee machines to space heaters, water filters, and beard trimmers. Before joining WIRED in 2024, he covered food, drink, business, culture, and technology for ... Read MoreProduct Writer & ReviewerTopicskitchenFood and Drinkbuying guidesShoppingCoffee makerscoffeeThe Best Meal Kits of 2026, Tested by a Former Restaurant CriticHere are the best meal kits in 2026, including Martha Stewart’s delivery box, a GLP-1–supportive plan, and a budget-friendly option.Matthew KorfhageThe Best Computer Speakers for Jamming Out in Your Home OfficeThese WIRED-tested computer speakers, from stereo speakers to surround sound, will suit any budget.Simon HillThe Dyson Vacuums Worth BuyingFeeling the pull of a new clean machine? We’ll help you make sense of Dyson’s whirlwind vacuum lineup. Nena Farrell Get Wired With the Best USB-C Cables for Your Phone, Tablet, and LaptopUnravel the tangled world of cords and find the ones you need to charge your gadgets and transfer data.Simon HillThe Best Duffel Bags for Commuters and Chronic OverpackersNeed to schlep some stuff? These field-tested duffels can handle your baggage.Louryn StrampeAll the Best Vacuum Cleaners We’ve Ever TriedLooking for all our top recommended vacuums? Here are our favorites in every style we’ve tested, from stick vacs to robot vacuums. Nena Farrell Quell the Heat With Our Favorite Window Air ConditionersThese are the AC units we’ve trusted to cool our homes for months, if not years.Matthew KorfhageThe Best Smart Rings for Tracking Your Health in 2026A svelte smart ring can track important activity, sleep, and health metrics. Plus—unlike most smartwatches—it doesn’t need to be charged every day.Boutayna Chokrane The Best Wireless Chargers to Refuel Your Phone (or Watch)Stop fumbling for cables in the dark. These WIRED-tested stands and pads will take the hassle out of refueling your phone, wireless earbuds, and watch.Simon HillI Tried 13 of the Most Popular Indoor Gardening SystemsGrow a backyard’s worth of greens and vegetables in your house with a vertical hydroponic garden. Here are a few that might be worth the investment.Kat MerckThe Best Espresso Accessories for Home BaristasA longtime pro barista’s favorite tools for dialing in the perfect shot at home.Pete CottellThe Best Running Shoes for Outpacing All Your TroublesWe logged thousands of test miles to bring you the best running shoes for every pace, ability, and running goal.Kieran Alger
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