We Tested 16 Coffee Makers That Cost $150 (or Less)—Here Are Our Favorites

When I was a barista, my day used to begin by brewing batch after batch of drip coffee, getting things just right for customers. Now that I work from home, I'm just brewing for myself, and oftentimes just in the morning. That’s it. Instead of tweaking my brew recipe throughout the day, tasting as I go, I need a brewer that’s going to reliably do a good job, which can be difficult to find at an affordable price point.

This review is split into two parts: the best automatic drip coffee makers (if you have more to spend) and the best models for $150 or less. Some excellent brewers fall into this more inexpensive category (although the Specialty Coffee Association’s or SCA's list of recommended brewers only includes two under $150), but there are also a lot of clunkers. I specifically want to talk about what to look for in a more cost-effective brewer and the features sub-par brewers use to disguise their shortcomings. To find the best inexpensive coffee makers, we tested 16 models—evaluating their brew quality and usability. 

The Winners, at a Glance

The Best Inexpensive Programmable Coffee Maker

Zojirushi Dome Programmable Coffee Maker

Orig. $150 $120 at Amazon $150 at Walmart $150 at Wayfair

Zojirushi’s dome-style spray head saturated coffee more evenly than other less powerful brewers we tested, and even though it took a while to get up to the ideal brew temperature, it still made good coffee with every batch. This is a great model for anyone looking for an inexpensive coffee maker with an automated timer, though the cup quality did drop off from our top pick.

The Best No-Frills Budget-Friendly Coffee Maker

Zojirushi Dome Brew Classic Coffee Maker

$113 at Amazon $113 at Wayfair View on Kohls.com

If you’re looking for a no-fuss coffee maker that makes good brews at an affordable price, the Zojirushi Dome Classic delivers. Like its programmable sibling, it uses a dome-style spray head to saturate the grounds, and its boiler was able to reach ideal brew temperatures (even though it took a few minutes to get going).

The Tests

• Dark Roast Brew Test: We brewed a dark roast coffee using the SCA Gold Cup Ratio of 60 grams of coffee for every liter of water and assessed the flavor of the resulting cup. We also used a thermocouple in the coffee grounds to track brew temperatures, assessed how even the grounds were saturated by the sprayhead, and took a Total Dissolved Solids reading using a coffee refractometer to check for consistency between each brewer. 
• Light Roast Brew Test: We brewed a light roast coffee using the SCA Gold Cup Ratio of 60 grams of coffee for every liter of water and assessed the flavor of the resulting cup. We also used a thermocouple in the coffee grounds to track brew temperatures, assessed how even the grounds were saturated by the sprayhead, and took a Total Dissolved Solids reading using a coffee refractometer to check for consistency between each brewer. 
• Cleanup and Usability Tests: We tested how each carafe poured, how easy water reservoirs were to fill, how intuitive the controls were, and any preset functions. We also cleaned each brewer by hand to see if any model had factors that made one easier to clean than the other. 

What We Learned

Brew Time Affected Flavor

All of the best-performing coffee makers in both reviews could brew a full batch in under six minutes due to their high-wattage boilers. Cheaper brewers struggled to finish brewing in under eight minutes, with some models taking over 10 minutes for a liter-sized batch. Quick brew times are essential, as the longer a brew cycle goes the more it pulls bitter, dry flavors into the finished coffee. Only the Bonavita Metropolitan [now discontinued] and Simply Good could brew quickly enough in this price range, but the Zojirushi Dome Classic came in second place, finishing in around seven minutes each time. Faster brews were noticeably sweeter tasting, except when the brewer had a poor spray head design (more on that in a bit). 

Temperature Stability Was Essential

Coffee extraction is affected by temperature, as higher temperatures will extract more bitterness, and temperatures that are too low brew sour coffee. To track the brewing temperature, I placed both probes of a thermocouple into the coffee bed to see how quickly each brewer could reach the ideal 195ºF to 205ºF temperature range and if they could hold that temperature consistently. 

Brewing temperature changes over time and varies from model to model, and many of the cheaper coffee makers (like the Braun BrewSense and Hamilton Beach) started the brew cycle with water that wasn’t hot enough (around the 170-180°F range) but then spiked to boiling towards the very last minute of their already long brew cycle. This resulted in coffee that was over-extracted and bitter. Higher-end models with more powerful boilers were able to keep the temperature consistent throughout the brewing cycle, between 195 to 205°F, producing balanced, well-extracted coffee. Our top pick, the Bonavita, got up to temperature (around 196°F) quickly, and stayed between 195-205°F during the entire brew cycle without any weird temperature spikes or deviations. Somewhere between those two categories of brewers was the pair from Zojirushi: both reached 200ºF, but it took around three minutes for this to happen. The resulting coffee outperformed any other cheaper brewer, but it was still flat compared to the Bonavita. 

Why Showerhead Design Mattered

A well-designed spray head acts as a water dispersion tool, making sure that the entire brew bed is evenly wet, which is important because you want your coffee grounds to be uniformly extracted. You can tell a showerhead is well-designed when, after you’re done brewing, you open the brew basket and the brew bed is flat without any noticeable craters or deep depressions. 

That’s harder to achieve than it sounds. Some of the spray heads seemed narrow in design, with many of the water holes concentrated in the middle, like the Simply Good brewer. This resulted in a brew basket that had a noticeable crater in the middle and grounds creeping up the sides of the brew bed. Because the grounds weren't evenly saturated, the coffee was both sour and bitter tasting—under-extracted from the edges and over-extracted from the center, even though the brewer met our brew time and temperature goals. 

Thermal Carafes Were Ideal But Pricey

In previous tests, we highly recommended coffee makers with a thermal carafe over ones with glass carafes and hot plates. Hot plates can continue to cook the coffee when a glass carafe is left on them for too long, causing a chemical change that creates more bitterness and sourness. The one issue with thermal carafes? They’re expensive. Our original (inexpensive) top pick was a Bonavita brewer with a thermal carafe, but shortly after publication the price well exceeded our maximum threshold of $150. While all of our update picks feature a glass carafe, they also brew better coffee than the thermal carafe options in the same price range. It’s a bit of a trade-off, but in the end, we would rather suggest a better-tasting brewer than one that can keep mediocre coffee fresher for longer. 

Analyzing The Coffee Makers' Features

Some of the buttons or features on these machines were incredibly helpful. For example, a "bloom" setting, like on the Bonavita model, saturated coffee beans with a bit of hot water, releasing carbon dioxide before brewing (carbon dioxide can act as a sort of shield around coffee beans, making it harder to extract flavor). Other features like choosing the number of cups you want to brew, while not very useful, were innocuous enough and didn't affect brew quality. This was initially confusing to us, but we realized these machines were attempting to slow down the water flow for smaller batches of coffee. Essentially, they're decreasing how quickly the water pulses or moves through the machine to increase the contact time of the grounds and the water.

But some machines added buttons that weren’t helpful and promised different flavor profiles without explaining how they would achieve them. We were particularly curious about coffee makers that boasted they could brew “bolder” or "richer" coffee, which showed up on a number of the sub-$100 models, including those from Ninja, Braun, Cuisinart, and Black + Decker. We did some research online and couldn’t find anyone who had tested or written about this. We then asked Steve Rhinehart, e-commerce manager at Acaia and former brand manager at Prima Coffee Equipment, what he thought about these features. He guessed it was an issue of time and thought the brewers were extending their brew cycles so that the water would stay in contact with the grounds longer, but he wasn’t 100% sure. 

So, we did a run with the Braun BrewSense using the “bolder” setting and noticed that the brew time was indeed longer (10 minutes and 46 seconds versus the nine minutes and 32 seconds it took for a standard brewing cycle). However, what we think is being interpreted as a “bolder” flavor is actually over-extraction. So yes, technically, this coffee is “stronger” because the water stays in contact with the grounds for an increased amount of time. But in this case, we'd argue stronger isn’t necessarily better and suggest avoiding these types of features. There are other ways you can manipulate the strength of your coffee to deliver a tasty cup—like adjusting your coffee-to-water ratio or grinding finer, which we’ll talk about more below in the FAQ section.

Why Are Coffee Makers So Expensive?

There are a few things that add moolah to a coffee maker's price tag. The first is power: pricier machines often have higher wattages, which means they brew faster. Expensive machines also often have heating coils that wrap around the water chamber, bringing water to temperature quickly, while cheaper machines often sport horseshoe-shaped heating elements that are more sluggish. Temperature controls are another feature that distinguishes expensive machines from low-cost ones, as is the shape and material of the spray head and the overall build quality of the coffee maker. You can read more in our deep dive on the differences here.

The Criteria: What to look for in an Inexpensive Coffee Maker

A great, budget-friendly coffee brewer should give drinkers exactly what they need: a machine that can properly extract coffee while being easy to use and clean. The best brewers properly heated water and maintained temperature throughout the length of the brew cycle, made a full pot of coffee in under eight minutes, and had a straightforward, easy-to-use control panel. A good coffee maker should be a cinch to clean, too, and carafes with wide openings are better than something tapered (which requires a bottle brush to scrub).

Our Favorite Inexpensive Coffee Makers

The Best Inexpensive Coffee Maker

Zojirushi Dome Programmable Coffee Maker

Orig. $150 $120 at Amazon $150 at Walmart $150 at Wayfair

What we liked: Zojirushi's Dome brewers feature spray heads that splash the water against a clear plastic dome; this dispels the water, causing it to gently rain down on the coffee. In every taste test, the Zojirushi Dome brewed sweet coffee with a clean finish, though it was slightly flat compared to the Bonavita. Even with a lower-powered boiler, this brewer was able to reach an ideal temperature of 200ºF (though it took a few minutes to get there), and though brew times hovered around eight minutes, they were still much faster than some of the similarly priced competition. This model has a programmable timer, and it even features a small batch option for one to four cups, a built-in bloom cycle, and an iced coffee setting (though we didn’t test this). It’s a solid choice for anyone looking for good value and who likes their coffee maker to wake up before they do. 

What we didn’t like: Even though we liked the coffee from this brewer, it just wasn’t as vibrant and complex as we would have liked. This is likely because half the brew cycle is spent below 195°F as the brewer is still heating up, and the lower temperature water isn’t able to pull the more dynamic flavors out of the coffee. Still, it’s impressive that a lower-cost brewer with a less powerful boiler is even able to hit these temperatures at all when most of the competition couldn’t. Also, it would’ve been nice to have a thermal carafe, as the coffee started to taste burnt after about 20 minutes on the hot plate. 

Key Specs:

• Materials: Plastic, stainless steel, glass
• Dimensions: 10.75 x 8.13 x 15.25 inches
• Weight: 10.25 pounds
• Average brew time: 6:45
• Capacity: 12-cup 
• Wattage: 1050 watts
• SCA certified: No
• Programmable: Yes

The Best No-Frills Budget-Friendly Coffee Maker

Zojirushi Dome Brew Classic Coffee Maker

$113 at Amazon $113 at Wayfair View on Kohls.com

What we liked: A stripped-down version of its programmable sibling, the Dome Classic has the same dome-shaped showerhead, only with a simple on/off switch instead of a control panel. Because it doesn’t have a bloom cycle, it brewed slightly faster than the programmable version, finishing batches in just under seven minutes. It also was able to reach ideal brew temperatures between 195-205ºF a little quicker as well—though the resulting cups were about equal in flavor quality. If you’re looking for a bare-bones coffee maker that consistently delivers a good cup at a low price point, this brewer fits the bill. 

What we didn’t like: Like the programmable model, this brewer lacks some of the complexity of higher-end coffee makers with more powerful boilers, and we wish it had a thermal carafe.

Key Specs:

• Materials: Plastic, stainless steel, glass
• Dimensions: 10.75 x 8.13 x 15.25 inches
• Weight: 8.8 pounds
• Average brew time: 8:15
• Capacity: 12-cup
• Wattage: 1050 watts
• SCA certified: No
• Programmable: No

The Competition

• Bonavita Metropolitan: While this was our top pick for its fast brew time and delicious coffee, it's been discontinued.
• Braun BrewSense: This was the winner of the budget-friendly category in our 2018 coffee maker testing, but the glass carafe and hot plate baked the coffee, and it took over eight minutes to brew.
• Braun BrewSense with Thermal Carafe: Although this brewer solves the above complaint about the standard Braun BrewSense by switching to a thermal carafe, it still took too long to brew. As of July 2024, it appears to be discontinued.
• Ninja Programmable Brewer: The Ninja has a lot of features (some innocuous, some unhelpful), but the hot plate actually made the coffee hotter than it was when it was first brewed, so the coffee tasted astringent and burnt over time. 
• Cuisinart Programmable Coffee Brewer: The water on this brewer got really hot and the resulting coffee tasted flat and boring. It doesn't have a thermal carafe, so the coffee tasted baked over time. 
• Hamilton Beach Programmable Front-Fill Coffee Maker: The front-fill panel was a nice feature, but the showerhead was mostly concentrated on the center of the brew bed, creating a sunken portion in the middle and leading to uneven extraction.
• BLACK+DECKER 12-Cup Thermal Coffeemaker: The coffee from this brewer tasted flat, which makes sense: the temperature of the coffee immediately after brewing was lower than any other machine, implying that the water never got quite hot enough.
• Mr. Coffee 10-Cup Coffeemaker: Our original budget pick, this brewer was unseated by the Zojirushi models. It brewed bitter coffee that fell flat compared to our top picks, even if we originally liked its thermal carafe and slightly faster brew times. 
• Cuisinart Programmable 12-Cup Coffee Maker: This stylish coffee maker brewed similarly to the Zojirushi models in terms of time and temperature, but the coffee itself tasted bitter and flat. It has been discontinued by Cuisinart.
• Simply Good 8-Cup Coffee Maker: Even though this coffee maker matched the Bonavita for quick brew times and high-brew temps, its centered sprayhead caused water to channel through the center of the grounds, leaving every cup tasting bitter. The filter basket does have a manual drip stop, so people who are willing to tinker can let it fill more evenly before letting it drip through for better extraction, but other brewers outperformed it without needing to tinker. 
• Bonavita 8-Cup Drip Coffee Maker: Our previous winner, this coffee maker is now too pricey for us to call it "inexpensive."
  
• Beautiful by Drew Barrymore 14 Cup Programmable Touchscreen Coffee Maker: This brewer’s touch screen was hard to navigate, and it took over 17 minutes to brew a full pot of coffee. It also took over 10 minutes before the brew temperature broke 195ºF, resulting in flat and sour coffee.
• Calphalon 14-Cup Programmable Coffee Maker: Like most of the other cheaper coffee makers, this model took way too long to make coffee and its brew temperatures struggled to reach the ideal range until the last minute or so of the cycle. 
• BUNN GRB Velocity Brew 10-Cup Home Coffee Brewer: This brewer was tricky to operate, as it requires the user to pour cold water in the reservoir up top to trigger the hot water in the boiler to flow out over the coffee. We frequently had overflow issues in the brew basket, and the coffee it brewed was bland.

FAQs

Which coffee filters do you need?

For this review, I used two different types of coffee filters, based on the shape of the brewer: flat bottom filters and the #4 cone filters, both from Melitta. I used bleached filters, mostly because that’s what I had at home, but you can use brown, unbleached filters if you prefer. Some folks report these unbleached filters have a bit of a cardboard taste unless you pre-wet them. 

While I used a paper filter in each brewer, many of the brewers came with a mesh filter. The mesh filter is reusable but will allow more coffee oils through as you brew. Some folks like this—if you’re into French press brewing, this is a good method to get that same heavy body in the cup. A paper filter will produce a cleaner cup since it catches most of the coffee oils.

How can I keep coffee hot?

Invariably, at every cafe I’ve worked at, folks have asked for their coffee to be piping hot. I had a regular customer who’d take a sip and ask us to use the steam wand from the espresso machine to warm their coffee—we obviously didn’t do this because that’d be a huge health code violation. 

I have two tips for keeping coffee hot. One: preheat the carafe. If you have time, run a cycle with just hot water through your brewer and allow it to heat up the machine, including the carafe. You can also heat water in, say, a kettle and then use the hot water to preheat the carafe. 

Two: preheat your mug, especially if you’re drinking out of a ceramic mug. Ceramic absorbs a lot of heat, so if you pour hot coffee into a room-temperature mug, it’ll bring down the temperature of your drink quickly. Ceramic also takes time to warm up, so I usually let the hot water sit in the mug for at least a minute, if not for the duration of the coffee brewing cycle.

Alternatively, you could check out my review of temperature control mugs if you REALLY need your coffee hot for a longer period of time.

How can I make stronger coffee?

Here are some ways you can make your coffee stronger:

• Adjust the ratio of coffee to water: For this review, I used a 1:16 ratio of coffee to water. If you’d like a stronger cup, try a 1:15 or 1:14 ratio and see if that gives you something richer. 
• Grind finer: A finer grind means that the water will move through the coffee slower, extracting more from the brew bed. Be careful with this, though: if you go too fine, the water will move really slowly and might overflow the brew bed. 
• Don’t use pre-ground coffee: I’m constantly surprised by how many people mention loving a “strong brew” but use pre-ground coffee. Coffee aromatics rapidly deteriorate the moment you grind coffee, so you start to lose flavor as soon as you put beans through a grinder. If you’re buying pre-ground coffee at the grocery store, there’s no telling when that coffee was ground. Most of these beans have a “best by” date, but not a roast date. “Best by” dates could be anywhere from six months to two years after roasting.

Why We're the Experts

• Ashley Rodriguez has been in the coffee industry since 2010, having worked as a barista, shop manager, and coffee trainer. She's written many of Serious Eats' coffee-related reviews, including espresso machines and milk frothers. We also regularly consult her on coffee content and equipment, harnessing her expertise as much as possible.
• Jesse Raub was Serious Eats' commerce writer and spent over 15 years working in the specialty coffee industry.
• For this review, we consulted Steve Rhinehart, e-commerce manager at Acaia, and former brand manager at Prima Coffee Equipment.
• To find the best inexpensive coffee makers, we tested 16 brewers. After realizing our favorite brewer, from Bonavita, had changed its price and was now well over $150, we decided to test a handful of inexpensive coffee makers we hadn't previously evaluated—including models from Zojirushi.