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Hey Ryan Chris for Cnet appliances, and right here is the Keurig K500, now this is the new flagship single serving coffee maker from Green Mountain Coffee roasters in the Keurig brands they own, and this is part of the new Keurig 2.0 generation.
And what's new with Keurig 2.0?
Well, the big addition is these K Carafe packs here that are kinda like those view packs from the other year, but they're taller and they're designed to dispense an entire pot's worth of coffee.
You can fill this guy up with coffee from your K cup brewer.
The K 500 works like Keurig brewers of old, and it's not a radically different design from what we've seen before and looks a little bit like the view b700 that we reviewed last year.
It's got a nice color touchscreen that looks good, you can change the color of that menu and you can also change the color of the LED that shines up through the water reservoir so it's going to look nice sitting on your kitchen counter and it's not going to take up quite as much space as the last models you've seen though it's still pretty bulky.
Now all that basic stuff out of the way the real story with Keurig 2.0 is that it's designed to protect the Keurig brand.
The K-Cup patent that made Keurig such a powerful household name in coffee expired back in 2012, and since then there have been a lot of copycat cups.
You see Kroger brand, or even big names like Panera that are putting out K-Cups that aren't Keurig likened K-Cups.
And they get to keep that licensing fee and pass at least some of the savings on to you.
That means that there's a big bite being taken out of Keurig's bottom line.
So these Keurig 2.0 brewers will actually scan the top of your K-Cup to make sure it's a Keurig cup.
Let me show you what that scanner's looking for.
The new generation of K-Cups have this light colored band around the outside as well as the Keurig logo right there on the bottom.
If you look at this K-cup this is actually a cured, approved K-cup that should work in this machine, but it was released before January of 2014.
Doesn't have that band on the outside, this one will not work in a Keurig 2.0 Brewer.
And then of course the, standard Kroger brand known as Shop Blend doesn't have the Keurig logo, doesn't have the ring, this won't work at all.
The Keurig K500 goes on sale next month for a price of $190.
That's not wholly unreasonable.
That's about the same price area that previous Keurig generations have gone on sale for, but there are still less expensive machines out there right now that will offer more flexibility in terms of how you make single serving coffee the.
And the choice winning Bun My Cafe MCU, the Cuisineart XX700 Dessert, these are nice coffee makers that will brew K-cups or cheap bargain branded cups, or even fresh grounds.
This can't do all of that.
This is a step down in term of your options.
So unless your okay with that and really excited at the option of making an entire pot,.
I say skip it and go with another model.
For CNET, I'm Ry Crist.
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