****** - Verified Buyer
4.5
I have been using the "Mr. Coffee Smart Wifi-Enabled WeMo 10-Cup" for about a week now.First and foremost, the coffee tastes great (I use either Peets Major Dickenson or "El Cieleno") ground coffee with paper filters.The device is slightly larger than the Mr. Coffee traditional brewer and pot it replaced but still easily fits on the counter top and underneath the cabinet. The tray for the coffee grounds is on the right and there is a disc filter which is hinged (making disposing of used grounds relatively easy). The water reservoir is on the left and is removable. The lid just sits on top and is not hinged and this might be bothersome for some. As noted the carafe is doubled walled and there is not hot plate. It my test the coffee was hot for over 6 hours! I did not experience any "leak" issues as reported in other reviews, but I will say it's a "slow" pour compared to other coffee pots.I have made coffee using the following scenarios:1) Pressed the "brew" button. Worked as expected. No issues. No leaks. Coffee tasted great!2) Via the WeMo App. The setup was quick and easy. The app is not particularly difficult or sophisticated, nor does it need to be. If you trigger it to make coffee and the water reservoir is empty you get an error message indicating "Refill Water". The font size and color could be bigger and darker, but admittedly, this is nit-picking. The app works just fine and sends a message to your phone when the coffee is ready. You can easily schedule when to start brewing coffee and save the calendar schedule. Basic but good!3) Via ITFFF & Alexa - After installing the correct "recipe" from ITFFF asking "Alexa, trigger brew coffee" Alexa responds with a message has been sent to ITFFF. Once the coffee is ready, a message is sent to your phone. Setup was relatively easy although I did initially have to download ITFFF and had to specifically search for the correct applet. The one I found and used is by "freebsdgirl". Really was very easy, thank you "freebsdgirl".4) Via ITFFF & Fitbit. While searching for applets I came across one named "Start brewing coffee when your FitBit Registers you're awake". I cannot underscore the value of this applet. This applet is phenomenal! After setting it up and ensuring my FitBit is charged it makes coffee when I wake up! Fantastic. Have had only one issue. Took a nap on Sunday afternoon (after I already prepped the machine for Monday morning) and alas it registered when I awoke and made coffee at 4PM. Oh well. FitBit seems to really know the difference between going to the bathroom in the middle of the night vs. truly being awake so thus far I've not seen any coffee brewed at 3AM.Overall this is a great coffee brewing machine, with great technology, at a reasonable price!!!!Makes good coffee. I have some comments on the ergonomics, though. First, the design is not the best for setting this up and making it easy to fill the coffee basket and water reservoir. The basket itself slides into the side, so you'll need clearance on the right side to slide it out, say at least 6 inches. Once you have the basket out, to insert a coffee filter, you have to flip up a cover that contains a place for a water filter. This makes it a rather cumbersome thing to fill with coffee grounds, as the bottom of the basket is not flat at all. It wobbles something else, and tips over easily. A fairly noticeable annoyance. On the left side is the water reservoir, it is very narrow, and you have to pour water very carefully and steadily to avoid spilling it all over. So doing these two things each time you want coffee is something you need to be prepared for, if you are impatient like me. Last gripe is the decanter. It has a very tight cap on it, and this screws on, and you need this to brew. To get your coffee, you have to press a button while turning it to pour. Coffee comes out very slowly, in a drizzle. Ok, I brew a lot of coffee, so this takes an extra 20-30 seconds it should not take. You could just screw off the top but it's on really tight and you risk getting hot coffee steam that way too.Now, about the Wemo functionality. It is nice to take a tablet and load the app, and then have this handy when you want to trigger the maker to brew. It does work. Sometimes the app freezes, like it did on me this morning. So it's not perfect. I do think that will upgrades to the app it will be better as this get adopted more.I actually like my new maker, despite the drawbacks. The coffee comes out really good. Wish they had made the set up easier. My old Mr Coffee that was 20 bucks took me no time at all to set up and refill. This takes me at least 4 times as long. So the convenience of remote triggering is offset by the time it takes to set up.For the past several years, I've been making my morning coffee with a Keurig, using the "my k-cup" filter. For almost that entire time, I experienced daily frustration when brewing and drinking my coffee: splashes all over the countertop from the Keurig, a sludge at the bottom of my coffee cup, and floating coffee grounds in my morning coffee, just to name a few. I finally "upgraded" to the WeMo coffee maker by Mr. Coffee and I could not be happier. There are a few key advantages to this coffee maker that have really sold me on it:1) A great-tasting, hot cup of coffee. The included, stainless steel coffee pot keeps my coffee hot for hours -- I typically brew well before waking up and still manage to pour a hot cup of coffee in the morning. The flavor of the coffee, which is brewed using a Mr. Coffee reusable filter, is far superior to what my Keurig produced. The coffee is sludge-free, with a clean and crisp flavor that is so, so refreshing.2) Push notifications! This is a really minor thing, but waking up to a "Coffee's ready!" notification in the morning is somehow reassuring.3) Variable scheduling. To me, this is the biggest feature of the WeMo version of this Mr. Coffee coffee maker. Most machines only allow you to set a single scheduled brewing time for every day of the week. With the WeMo app, I can schedule a different brew time for each day of the week, depending on what's going on that day. I brew earlier Monday-Friday and later on the weekends. It's a small feature with big value.The coffee maker earns four of five stars from me. This is a really, really great product, but I've deducted one star because it's not HomeKit-compatible. I'd really love to have Siri brew my coffee or set a "scene" in the iOS 10 Home app so that I could brew coffee and utilize my other smart home gadgets in the morning all at once.
