Hey, Ryan Crist for CNET here talking today about the Keurig Vue V700 single-serve coffee maker.
This is a coffee maker with a bit of a twist.
Everything that Keurig has done up until this point has been a K-Cup coffee maker, one that brews a cup like this and this was Keurig's proprietary design that they licensed out to other manufacturers but still kept the Keurig name associated with.
The problem is, is that the patent on the K-Cup expired
in 2012, so what Keurig did was they came out with this, and this is called a Vue pack and the Vue pack is a little different than the K-Cup.
The Vue pack is shorter, it's a little fatter and unlike the K-Cup, which gets punctured from the top and the bottom with water going straight through, the Vue pack only gets punctured on the top and what happens is the water goes in, it steeps with the coffee and then it pours out through this little teapot like spout into your drink and supposedly, this spout makes for a little bit better brew, a little stronger.
But one thing I like
best about the Vue pack is that it's recyclable.
K-Cups aren't.
You just peel that top off of the Vue pack and the plastic that's left behind is number 5, which is recyclable in most areas.
Also another perk is that the Vue pack's come in multiple sizes.
You have this one and also in large-sized one and that will give you a really good tasting tall cup of coffee for like a travel mug.
So, how about the Vue itself?
Well, the V700 is a pretty bulky coffee maker as you can see and it's a little bit bloated in design and that's partly
because it's got this nice 74-ounce reservoir here that comes out for easy fill-up.
But one of my problems is, is that you got this kind of symmetrical design and they replicated the bulkiness of the reservoir on the side that doesn't have a reservoir.
So, it feels like a lot of wasted space over here.
That said-- there are some features of the Vue V700 that we like a lot and this little drink tray is one of them.
It's really easy.
You just pull it up and twist it and you get a slightly higher platform for your drink to sit
on and then up here, the sort of showcase feature of the Vue is the touchscreen.
It's a full LCD color touchscreen and it's really easy to use.
It's very responsive, it's very fast and it's very well-designed.
If you want to simplify your drink, it gives you a lot of options and that makes it very easy to use those options to get the exact beverage you want.
So, is the Vue recommended by?
Well, it depends.
If you want to make really good coffee from a pod, we say, yes.
The Vue V700 retails online for about
$200 and that's a pretty comparable price point for other models that do a similar job.
We also enjoyed the Cuisinart SS-700 and really like the Bunn My Cafe MCU.
So, if you're thinking about the Keurig, take a look at those as well.
This is the Keurig Vue V700.
For CNET, I'm Ryan Crist.
