Café – Smart Drip 10-Cup Coffee Maker with WiFi – Brushed Stainless

Quality coffee maker. Very quiet, quick brew time, great tasting coffee and nice looking!
Color is more matte dark grey than black.
Would recommend.

CAFÉ drip coffee maker has a very attractive design that will make an impact to any modern kitchen countertop. While a cheap drip coffee maker can fulfill the basic need of drip pot of coffee only a smart coffee machine like this one that has precision temperature control, stainless steel vacuum carafe and app/voice controlled and certified for gold cup performance will ensure your coffee tastes delicious in the morning.
Package: Machine is packaged well above standards like a gift box with 2 handles for easy carrying and will be a great gifting options to any home. Box opens up like a high end consumer product. Inside the box, it comes coffee maker, thermal carafe, brew basket, mesh filter, carbon filter, measuring spoon and user manual.
Setup: It’s fast and easy to setup. Just rinse the thermal carafe, filters before first use, download the smarthq app on your ios or android device, create your account and connect appliance. Select Café and countertop appliances->coffee maker and follow the instructions by pressing and hold temperature button and the auto brew butoon until the wifi icon flashes. Once you login the credentials, your coffee maker will automatically set the time on the machine. You can also set manually but this is a better option for daylight savings and clock reset when you disconnect the machine and to reconnect.
This coffee machine design is very attractive with stainless steel finish with brushed accent handles and very well compliments the kitchen countertop and gives a very modern high end look. It has buttons on the front with a easy to read LCD clock on the front with CAFÉ logo at the bottom in brushed copper color. Each button has long and short press button that has 2 functions. You can select different strength by pressing the button. Gold, Light, Medium and Bold. Gold strength brews the coffee to highest quality and the temperature is preset and cannot be changed. We liked the flavor of gold strength compared to bold as the machine uses set parameters compared to user selection whereas for other strength like mild or bold you can set the temperature from 185F – 205F using the temperature button.
Option to auto brew is available as button on the machine or from the app or from voice to brew controls using Alexa or google smart devices. Yes this is a useful smart feature if you want to have your coffee brew before you wake up from the bed. We tried this option and really liked the convenience.
Compared to other cheap coffee machines, this has the insulated thermal carafe that maintains the temperature of the coffee and keeps it hot for hours. Also, you select the brew size from 1 to 10 cups and it makes a full pot in less than 7 minutes. This machine has safety features and will not brew if it doesn’t detect the carafe and also its cool to touch. Make sure top of the carafe is engaged with the drip stop lever on the brew basket, if not brewing will not start. You won’t feel the temperature of the coffee by just touching the carafe outside even if its 200F coffee inside.
It brews a great tasting coffee at 185 to 205F which is the secret for the best tasting coffee as it brews evenly, saturating all the coffee grounds in the brew basket with hot water that helps to increase the taste of coffee compared to other brands on the market. Only suggestion is to use the paper filter which is optional but it will save lot of time in cleaning.

One feature my wife appreciates is the convenient power cord storage that keeps kitchen countertop free of clutter with hanging wires when not in use.
Pros: Easy to use smart coffee maker with Voice to brew controls, precision temperature control, SCA certified for gold cup performance, Brew selection from 1 to 10 cups, stainless steel vacuum carafe that stores coffee temperature for hours, attractive design with cool brushed copper trims & handles, Auto brew programmable, easy to clean.
Overall, if flavor is your priority then this machine is the winner as it brews the best tasting coffee that I tried. If you can invest on latest and greatest smart devices for your smart home, then this device will not disappoint you.

I haven’t had a drip coffee maker since my college days. I currently have a french press, pour over, and a pod coffee maker.
I honestly never liked the flavor of drip coffee makers. The cafe coffee maker bucks the trend by letting you choose the intensity of the coffee.
The main body of the coffee maker houses the water tank, the coffee filter housing, the base, and the controls. The carafe is the only separate component.
Off the bat, the one thing I love is the reusable filter. This saves you from having to buy those paper filters that never fit right, or collapse the moment the hot water drips down. The filter also has a handle for easy removal after use.
The water tank can hold about 10 cups of coffee which is nice when you have guests over.
Setting up the machine is simple. You can set up the time, the wifi and you’re all set.
So now to the brewing. I did an initial cleaning to boil the internal components because you honestly can never be too safe.
I got some of my favorite Brazilian coffee beans from my grinder and added the grounds into the filter, and chose the special “GOLD” setting. This setting chooses everything for you including temperature and boldness. I figure, why not…
The coffee tasted great. It was bold with a little extra flavor. It extracted a lot of flavor from the grounds. Out of curiosity I brewed a second cup using another batch of the same Brazilian coffee, but this time I set up everything from the strength and temp (Bold and 200 degrees).
I could immediately tell the difference between my personal setting and the gold setting. I think I found my default setting in the gold setting.
Clean up was as easy as throwing out the used grounds and cleaning the filter and carafe.
All in all, the maker looks modern, beautiful, and the coffee tastes amazing. It’s easy to use and easy to clean.

The first thing you notice about this high-end coffee maker is how stunning it looks. The steel and the copper along with the design leaves no question that this is a high quality machine. It’s practically an art piece next to most other kitchen appliances. Even the box it comes in puts other packaging to shame.
The first thing you’ll taste though is the coffee, and that really is the most important feature of a coffee maker. Brewing at the pre-programmed ‘Gold’ setting (you can also select your own strength and temp if you choose), I can honestly say it was the best cup of home made coffee I’ve ever had. I normally don’t drink straight black coffee, even though I love the smell of it, but decided to try my first cup that way to get a good sampling. It was honestly so good I drank the entire cup that way. There’s even a small charcoal water filter that goes in the water reservoir to really get that water clean.
I also feel I need to add in my wife’s thoughts, as her immediate family owned and ran a small coffee shop for over 25 years and she is definitely much more of a connoisseur. In her opinion, she agrees that this does make a great cup of coffee, but also follows that up by saying that has more to do with the quality of the coffee bean/grind itself than the coffee maker when it comes to the drip style maker. Having said that she does concede that this drip machine works better than any we’ve had before, even if only marginally.
Another thing it does really well though is keep the coffee tasting good if you don’t drink it immediately. That’s because there’s no hot plate. No burnt coffee taste from prolonged heating. The design of the carafe keeps it hot for quite some time without the need to keep a heater on it.
It also has wi-fi functionality which is cool to say about a coffee maker, and it makes sure you always have the correct time, but otherwise not really necessary.
There are negatives though when it comes to this coffee maker that I’m not really a fan of.
1. You still have to use the carafe even if you only want to brew a single cup of coffee. My wife and I don’t always get to our coffee at the same time, so having to use the carafe for individual cups multiple times in one morning is inconvenient at best.
2. The way the carafe is designed the coffee pours out a bit slow and you have to tip it quite a ways before it starts to pour. I also found that I have to remove the lid to get all the coffee out.
3. The water reservoir is non-removable. Not a major flaw, but it does make it slightly more inconvenient when filling it up.
4. It’s not very intuitive when it comes to the controls. You definitely couldn’t use this without fully reading the manual first. It reminds me of how old car stereo clocks work where you have to press a button, turn the knob to select one thing, press a button again, turn the knob again to select the next thing then press a button again.
Overall it is a great coffee maker, and based on its own merits it still deserves 5 stars. It looks beautiful in the kitchen and it makes great coffee, and that’s what’s most important when getting this machine.