Moccamaster 53948 KBGV Select 10-Cup Coffee Maker, Matte Black, 40 ounce, 1.25l

Why it's worth it

A handmade Dutch drip brewer with a copper heating element and no screen, clock or app. It hits the temperature range that actually matters for extraction, brews a full pot in four to six minutes, and is designed so you can replace parts instead of the machine.

This machine does one thing and refuses to do anything else. There's a switch. You flip it. Water heats to the range the Specialty Coffee Association considers correct for extraction, and it stays there through the whole cycle — which is exactly where most cheap brewers fail. Owners who've come from generic drip machines describe the jump in flavor as the thing that surprised them most. It tastes closer to a careful pour-over than to what you're used to.

The KBGV Select adds one genuinely useful control: a switch for half or full carafes. Brew a small batch on a machine tuned for a full pot and you get weak, over-fast coffee. This adjusts the flow and the hotplate to match. The hotplate then holds your coffee at a drinkable temperature for about a hundred minutes and shuts itself off, so you don't come back to a scorched half-pot at lunch.

From our review of 7 coffee makers, by Paul Evans, Technical Reviewer

What we like

• +This machine does one thing and refuses to do anything else
• +The KBGV Select adds one genuinely useful control: a switch for half or full carafes
• +Repairability is the quiet argument here
• +One caveat worth being clear about

What to know

• –There's no timer, no auto-start, no clock, nothing to program
• –The plastic parts are the sore spot
• –Cleaning is all by hand, and there are several pieces