This review is from: Capresso 464.05 CoffeeTeam GS 10-Cup Digital Coffeemaker with Conical Burr GrinderI'm a Top 1000 Reviewer here at Amazon, but haven't reviewed anything in years -- until now. The Capresso 464 compelled me. First things first. This is not my first grind and brew. My old Melitta Mill & Brew, with its faulty plastic latch long since broken had become a drag. For years I had to put a box of chicken stock on top of the grind chamber to keep it shut so it would work! And while it made pretty good coffee, it seemed to waste grounds by spraying them inside the grinder basket. And the daily cleanup ritual had started to make the whole idea of grinding and brewing in one device seem only of marginal value. And yet, the alternatives, including a best-selling Cuisinart model, have notorious bad reviews here at Amazon for being a total chore to clean.Enter the Capresso CoffeeTeam GS, which solves all of my problems with its ingenious design. No longer do you have to measure the coffee. The CoffeeTeam GS will brew from 2 to 10 cups automatically, grinding just the right amount of beans with no guesswork. Cleanup is a breeze. The filter basket swings out and is easily washed. And because the grinding occurs in a separate chamber from the filter basket, there is no wasted coffee.The quality of the coffee is also exactly what I want -- hot, and with the full flavor of the bean preserved by the conical burr grinders. If you want stronger or weaker coffee, it's very easy to do. You can also choose finer or coarser grinds depending on the type of coffee you are using (oily coffee should be coarser, light coffee finer).There are two items that are drawbacks, but I don't mind them so am still giving this five stars. First, the grinder is wake-up-your-wife loud. And it can go for 40 seconds if you are making a full pot. It's not so loud that it hurts your ears, but it is not pleasant, and Capresso would have done well to add some amount of noise insulation. Second, because of the design, a small amount of ground coffee is left in the machine every time. This is an issue in two respects. First, switching from one type of coffee to another is not instantaneous, because invariably there is this overlap. Second, if you leave the machine unused for more than about a week, Capresso recommends cleaning out the coffee chamber and using new coffee. That's because the coffee will get a little more stale with each passing day. But like I said, in my mind these are very minor complaints to a really great product!...This review is from: Capresso 464.05 CoffeeTeam GS 10-Cup Digital Coffeemaker with Conical Burr GrinderI'm writing from the perspective of someone who has owned more grind&brew coffeemakers than the typical coffee addict. This one is as good a grind&brew machine as anyone makes.First, the negatives:- It is definitely loud and long in grinding, as other owners mention. The burr grinding process is wonderfully consistent compared to blade grinding, but it seems to take forever and the noise is enough to wake up the ... sleeping.- It doesn't have a way to dump out the unusued coffee beans if you want to change blends to another bean (though you can still put pre-ground coffee in the basket while there are beans waiting to be ground.)- The carafe does tend to make a sort of "cracking" sound when it sits on the hotplate sometimes.I have owned some of the most popular, and some unusual, grind & brew machines in the past 30+ years, including a very different Capresso long, long ago. There are some models/brands that only have a single grind possibility (no settings), some that require constant cleaning of parts, some that fall apart within the year and don't have even that much warranty, and one that was going to cost an extra $65 to replace the faulty super-recessed lid switch, which died after 4 months, without which it was totally unusable. There's only one of those previous coffeemakers that I'd buy again by choice, and they stopped making it over 20 years ago.This Capresso is well made, nicely packaged, and has all the features I want:- Fineness of grind is controlled with 5 possible settings- Amount of beans ground (from the hopper that holds approx. 2-3 pots of beans) is settable in 2-cup increments from 2 to 10 cups.- "Aroma" (i.e. darkness & flavor) is controlled with 3 settings, which in combination with other controls seems designed to yield every possible preference for "perfect" coffee.- It has automatic shut-off. (One of the much-lower-priced grind&brew machines doesn't have this feature, which I think should be mandatory on coffeemakers considering how many fires are started by overheating appliances.)- It has drip-trip, which is critical as I often don't want to wait for the full pot to brew before I take a cup in the morning.- It's completely programmable. Not only can you set a start time, but you can associate specific settings with the programmed time that are not the same as the current settings.Other pluses that are less quantifiable:- It doesn't seem to cause me to spill water all over the counter in filling it, like the last one I had. I have no idea what design elements affect this, I just know that it happens with some coffeemakers & not others.- It takes some parts in common with the other-brand grind&brew that I last had, which started leaking when brewing. The charcoal filters and basket, at the least, seem in common with many other brands.It cost quite a bit compared to some of the more popular models but, frankly, I'm convinced it's worth the extra investment.--------ADDED 11 MONTHS LATER:I had problems with my coffeemaker (not dripping, though the grinder was fine) just under a year from purchase. I contacted Capresso -- pay attention to their website advisory that Monday morning is the worst time to contact them! Despite the fact that I thought it was just past the warranty expiration, when actually it was just before the...
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