Tl;DR: The Best Grind and Brew Coffee Maker is the Gevi 4-in-1.
This is my roundup of the best grind and brew coffee makers.
I have owned several drip coffee makers and spent an entire day going through people’s experiences with these types of coffee machines online to put together this roundup.
The main conclusion from this research is that most grind and brew coffee makers are pretty terrible.
Therefore I’ll also run you through a list of machines to avoid as well as giving you my recommendations for the best machines of this type.
Let’s get started.
Top Picks
Best Overall: Gevi 4 in 1
Cheapest I Can Recommend: Breville Grind Control
One to Avoid: Cuisinart DGB-900BC Grind and Brew
Another one to Avoid: Capresso 488.05 Team Pro Plus Coffee Maker
(Basically, all grind and brew coffee makers apart from the Gevi 4 in 1 and the Breville Grind Control are not worth buying)
Best Overall: Gevi 4-in-1
Best Overall
The Gevi 4-in-1 allows you to control every single aspect of your brewing. This unparalleled level of control means that it can make by far the best coffee of any grind and brew coffee maker.
Quality of Coffee
The Gevi 4-in-1 gives you unparalleled control over every brewing variable meaning that the ceiling for its coffee quality is far higher than any other grind and brew machine.
The machine lets you control the following parts of your brewing:
- Ground coffee dose (to the nearest 0.1 gram)
- Brewing ratio (to the nearest whole number)
- Grind size (51 settings)
- Brewing temperature (to the nearest degree Celsius)
- Brewing speed (to the nearest 3 ml/second)
This is a ridiculously high level of brewing control, rivalled only by the highest-end commercial machines.
Since brewing control is the main determinant over coffee quality potential, you can only say that the Gevi 4-in-1 has the potential to make far better coffee than any other domestic grind and brew machine.
Coffee Quality Rating: 9/10
Ease of Use and Cleaning
The machine is easy to use considering its vast functionalities. In fact, many users of the Gevi claim that the machine was really good at teaching them how different brewing variables affect their coffee.
The Gevi allows you to control the entire machine on a touchscreen control panel.
I really like how the Gevi’s touchscreen presents all the brewing variables.
The machine gives you an exact measurement for each variable, rather than by arbitrary scales (from “1-10”, for example).
This both helps beginners understand what all these variables mean (the machine does an excellent job of presenting this in a newbie-friendly way) and helps more experienced coffee makers fine-tune their brew as precisely as possible.
The machine’s removable water tank, drip tray and glass carafe make it easy enough to clean. I particularly like that its carafe is machine washable.
Since the machine has a white (clearly Apple-inspired) finish, it will need quite a lot of wiping down to keep it looking clean.
The fact that it can only make three servings at a time means that it would be a pain to make coffee for a lot of people with this machine.
Ease of Use and Cleaning Rating: 9/10
Design and Build Quality
The machine’s internal and external build quality is flawless.
The machine has a really luxurious design, clearly inspired by Apple.
It is the only grind and brew machine that is touchscreen operated and the touch screen is excellently built in both its responsiveness and layout.
Extensive testing (by others, I should note) reveals that the machine actually hits the fine brewing variables that you programme. Such fine brewing control is only possible if the manufacturers hold back no expense on the machine’s internal components.
It is the only grind and brew machine I could find online which didn’t have repeated complaints from users of its grinder clogging up.
It really does feel like no compromise has been spared when designing and building the Gevi 4-in-1.
Design and Build Rating: 10/10
Value For Money
Despite the Gevi 4 in 1’s outstanding quality, I still don’t think a drip coffee machine should ever cost as much as this machine does.
The machine is still just a fancy fully automated V60 brewer.
While it is the best possible version of such a machine, you can still buy a regular V60 brewer for around 5% of the price of this machine and (with a bit of practice) brew a similar standard coffee.
Value for Money Rating: 4/10
Pros & Cons
Gevi 4-in-1 Pros
Offers unparalleled brewing control meaning it has the potential to make better coffee than any other grind and brew machine.
Its touchscreen is a joy to use. It explains complicated brewing variables in terms that a newbie can understand.
It has by far the best grinder on any grind and brew machine.
It brews your coffee at a constant temperature for all but the first few seconds of the brewing process. This creates a very complex final drink.
Gevi 4-in-1 Cons
It can only make three cups of coffee at a time
Very expensive for a drip coffee maker (even an excellent one).
It can only make three cups of coffee at a time
Very expensive for a drip coffee maker (even an excellent one).
Cheapest I Can Recommend: Breville Grind Control
Cheapest I Can Recommend
The Breville grind control’s superb heating system and digital display screen interface mean that you can make a good cup of coffee really easily.
Quality of Coffee
The machine makes good coffee but lacks some of the fine-tuning that the Gevi 4-in-1 has. It definitely sacrifices some of your ability to fine-tune your coffee in favor of making it as easy to use as possible.
The Breville Grind Control has excellent temperature control.
It is the only grind and brew machine to keep your brewing water at a constant temperature of 195-205 Fahrenheit throughout your brewing. This results in a fuller-flavored and bodied coffee.
The machine allows you to control the following brewing variables:
- Grind size (6 settings)
- Brewing ratio (8 settings)
- Serving size (1 – 12 servings)
Unfortunately, the Breville measures brew ratio on an arbitrary scale rather than giving you actual ratios (like how the Gevi does). This does reduce the precision by which you can control your brewing.
While the machine does the basics of brewing very well, it does not let you control the more marginal variables like brewing temperature. bloom time, and brewing speed.
Its coffee quality ceiling is therefore a bit lower than the Gevi 4-in-1.
That being said, it still creates very good coffee by grind and brew standards.
Quality of Coffee Rating: 8/10
Ease of Use and Cleaning
The Breville Grind Control is about as easy to use as grind and brew machines get.
The machine has a large (60 oz) water tank and doses out your coffee and water automatically for you are given the number of servings that you programme it to make and your strength settings.
Therefore, all you need to do to make a coffee is to put a filter in the coffee grounds port and press the buttons corresponding to the type of coffee that you want.
The machine is easy to clean. Out of all its parts that come into direct contact with coffee and water:
- Its coffee grounds port is removable
- Its carafe is removable and machine washable
- Its water tank is removable
- Its drip tray is removable
The only part of the machine that is more of an effort to clean than rinsing in the sink or putting in the dishwasher is descaling its internal pipes. This only needs to be done once every few months, however.
Ease of Use and Cleaning Rating: 9/10
Design and Build Quality
The Breville Grind Control is a well-built machine with the exception of its grinder. Although there is nothing wrong with the way the machine grinds coffee, its grinder does have a tendency to clog up when you grind on too fine of a setting.
The machine’s external parts are well-built. Although there is a lot of plastic used in the machine’s exterior, none of it feels flimsy.
I love the fact that it uses a thermal carafe. This is so much better than machines with glass carafes and hotplates (I would never recommend machines that use glass carafes for reasons that I’ll explain later on in this article).
The machine has an excellent quality heating mechanism, as shown by the fact that it is SCAA-certified.
Only a handful of drip coffee makers that have a heating mechanism that is able to keep your water at a constant temperature during brewing are eligible for this certification.
The only downside of this machine, as far as build quality is concerned, is that its grinder has a tendency to jam up, especially if you grind on its finer settings (1-2).
The grinder can be hard to unclog as it’s attached to the machine (you really need to go at it with a brush for a long time to unclog it).
Unfortunately, if the grinder clogs up then the whole machine is out of use.
My advice would be to never grind finer than setting 3.
To be fair to the Breville, the vast majority of grind and brew machines have this issue with the grinder. The only machine that I could not find people reporting this issue with was the Gevi 4-in-1.
Design and Build Quality Rating: 7/10
Value For Money
The Breville Grind Control is the best value-for-money grind and brew machine.
It does the basics very well and does not see you paying for fancy-looking features that only offer marginal benefits to the machine in reality.
That being said, I still think you can get more for your money by buying a separate drip coffee machine and grinder.
Value For Money Rating: 8/10
Pros & Cons
Breville Grind Control Pros
It keeps your water at a consistent temperature throughout the brewing process. This results in a richly flavored coffee.
Its digital display screen makes it very easy to use.
It gives you preset quantities of coffee and water. No need to measure out these quantities yourself.
Breville Grind Control Cons
Its grinder can clog up when you grind on too fine a setting.
It does not tell you exactly what your brew ratio is which puts limits on the accuracy by which you can fine-tune your coffee.
Its grinder can clog up when you grind on too fine a setting.
It does not tell you exactly what your brew ratio is which puts limits on the accuracy by which you can fine-tune your coffee.
One to Avoid: Cuisinart DGB-900BC Grind and Brew
I would not recommend getting the Cuisinart DGB-900BC (or any other Cuisinart Grind and Brew machine) because of how regularly its grinder and filter clog up.
Cuisnart machines have a very poorly designed mechanism for moving the ground coffee to your filter. This causes jams in either the grinder, the filter or the chute that connects the two.
Since the grinder and the filter are non-removable, these can be really hard to clean when jammed and put your whole machine out of use.
I found so many reviews on Amazon, the manufacturers’ website, and Reddit about this. Two Redditors summed it up perfectly (thread):
I’d also add to this that the Gevi 4-in-1 is a better alternative than the Sage Oracle as it is also a drip coffee machine (the Sage Oracle is an espresso machine).
One to Avoid: Capresso 488.05 Team Pro Plus Coffee Maker
While the Capresso isn’t as flawed as Cuisinart machines, I think that for the amount of money that it costs, you should be able to get a machine with SCAA certification.
The Capresso is not a cheap machine, so I’m really disappointed that it cannot keep a consistent temperature while brewing.
This failure to keep a consistent temperature means that you’ll always be making a bland-tasting coffee with this machine.
For the Capresso’s price tag, such a performance is unacceptable.
What to Look For in a Grind and Brew Coffee Maker
I’m going to now go through the features that make a grind and brew coffee maker good so you know what you should look out for when shopping around for one.
These are also the factors that I looked at when determining which machines to recommend to you.
Quality of Grinder
You want your grind and brew coffee maker to have a burr grinder with a large number of grind settings and for the grinder to not clog up easily.
The quality of the grinder on your machine can be reduced to three factors:
- Type of grinder (burr vs blade)
- Number of grind settings
- Whether the grinder has a tendency to clog up
I’ll now go through all of these in a bit more detail.
Burr vs Blade Grinder
Burr grinders are preferable to blade grinders because they grind your coffee far more evenly.
Unevenly ground coffee means that more water will run through areas in the coffee bed where coffee is ground coarser than areas where coffee is ground finer.
This will result in bitter, burnt-tasting coffee as the more coarsely ground coffee will become over-extracted because it has too much direct contact time with your brewing water.
A burr grinder grinds your coffee evenly, so you do not need to worry about such over-extraction.
Number of Grind Settings
The more grind size settings that a grinder has, the less difference there will be between each grind setting.
Smaller differences between each grind setting mean that you have more control over your brewing and can really fine-tune the way that your coffee tastes.
Tendency to Clog Up
A common problem among grind and brew coffee machines are that the grinder on the machine has a tendency to clog up.
These grinders can be hard to unclog as you cannot detach them from the machine.
When the grinder clogs up, the whole machine is out of order. A poorly designed grinder that clogs easily is therefore a massive potential point of failure for the machine.
It’s hard to tell by the specs of a grinder whether it is likely to clog up.
I, therefore, trawled through online reviews of all these featured machines to see if this problem regularly came up.
You can see my findings in the table below:
| Gevi 4-in-1 | Breville Grind Control | Cuisinart DGB-900BC | Capresso 488.05 Team Pro Plus Coffee Maker | |
| Type of grinder | Burr | Burr | Burr | Burr |
| Number of grind settings | 51 | 6 | 1 | 3 |
| Tendency to grinder clog up | No | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Coffee Dosing Assistance?
You want a grind-and-brew coffee maker to assist you with getting your dose of ground coffee correct.
This is usually done by having a preset serving amount (usually measured out by the number of cups of coffee that you want to make) that you program the machine to grind.
If you get a machine that does not have this functionality, then you will need to buy a separate scale and will have to grind and weigh your coffee beans in increments if you want to dose accurately.
This gives you both additional work every time you want to make a coffee, and another expense to cover in your scale.
Are Dose Presets Measured by Weight or Time to Grind?
You ideally want a machine that doses out your ground coffee by weight rather than by time to grind.
This is because the finer you set your grinder, the longer it will take to grind a specific amount of coffee.
Therefore grinding half an ounce of coffee will take a grinder different amounts of time depending on its grind size setting.
Time to grind is therefore not a constant variable.
Most machines that have preset ground coffee dosing do this by grind time, since doing it by weight involves the expensive addition of a built-in scale.
A manufacturer of a machine that doses coffee by weight will let you know about this feature since it is both rare and very important to the machine’s overall performance.
Therefore if you are not sure about how it measures your coffee dose, then assume that it is by time to grind.
Machines that dose on an arbitrary scale (i.e. on an abstract scale of 1-10) will almost certainly measure out your coffee by time to grind.
The table below shows how the machines featured in this article dose out your ground coffee:
| Gevi 4-in-1 | Breville Grind Control | Cuisinart DGB-900BC | Capresso 488.05 Team Pro Plus Coffee Maker | |
| Preset coffee dosing | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| How does it measure out your dose | Weight | Time to grind | Time to grind | Time to grind |
Heating mechanism
You want your grind and brew coffee maker to have your brewing water heated to 195-205 Fahrenheit throughout the entire brewing process.
While most machines hit this ideal brewing temperature by the end of brewing, only a few machines heat your water to this temperature by the time it starts brewing.
Machines that do not do this will be brewing your coffee below its ideal brewing temperature for 90% of the brewing process.
Since only a handful of machines keep a consistent temperature throughout the entire brewing process, these machines are certified by the Specialty Coffee Association of America (SCAA)
If a machine is not SCAA certified then you can safely assume that it does not keep a constant temperature throughout brewing.
The table below shows whether the four machines featured in this article brew at the ideal temperature of 195-205 Fahrenheit throughout brewing or not.
| Gevi 4-in-1 | Breville Grind Control | Cuisinart DGB-900BC | Capresso 488.05 Team Pro Plus Coffee Maker | |
| Does it brew at 195-205 Fahrenheit throughout the entire brewing process? | No (but it almost does) | Yes | No | No |
Brew Speed
Drip coffee makers (including grind and brew coffee makers) take between 45-120 seconds to brew a single cup of coffee.
This length of time is scaled up for the volume of coffee that it is brewing. For example, 10 cups of coffee will take 10-20 minutes depending on the brewer.
The longer the machine takes to brew your coffee the better.
While this “longer brewing is better” rule is only true up to a certain point (coffee brewed for an hour will be incredibly bitter), no drip coffee machine gets to the point where a longer brew time makes worse coffee.
Can You Control Brewing Speed (Strength Settings)?
Some machines allow you to programme brewing speed.
Most machines refer to these controls as “strength” settings, since longer brewing times create stronger coffee.
While having a number of strength settings to choose from is nice, I’d pay more attention to a machine’s maximum possible brewing length.
You want to brew drip coffee for as long as a machine will allow, therefore I’d always brew on the maximum strength setting.
The table below shows the brewing speed, and brewing speed controls, of the four machines featured in this article:
| Gevi 4-in-1 | Breville Grind Control | Cuisinart DGB-900BC | Capresso 488.05 Team Pro Plus Coffee Maker | |
| Brewing time (10 oz of coffee – on strongest setting) | 98 seconds | 70 seconds* | 60 seconds* | 55 seconds |
| Number of strength settings | 7 settings | 1 setting** | 3 settings |
* These machines do not offer you 10 oz serving sizes so I scaled down the time to brew from its minimum serving size.
** Although the Breville Grind Control has 8 strength settings, this controls your coffee dose, not your brewing time.
Preset Dosing for Water
You want a machine that doses out your brewing water for you and which gives you as accurate control over your water dosing as possible.
Some machines allow you to control the volume of water that you make your coffee with. They either do this through
- Having preset doses based on the number of cups you want to brew
- They let you specify an exact amount of water to brew with for every coffee that you make.
More basic machines just brew with whatever you put in its water tank.
This means that you need to measure out your water manually or that you just have to eyeball your brew ratios (not ideal).
The table below shows whether the machines featured in this article dose out your water for you and how far they let you control your water dose.
| Gevi 4-in-1 | Breville Grind Control | Cuisinart DGB-900BC | Capresso 488.05 Team Pro Plus Coffee Maker | |
| Automatic water dosing | Yes | Yes | No | No |
| Does the machine let you customize your water dose? | Yes – to the nearest millilitre | No | No | No |
Carafe Quality
Ideally, you want a machine that has a thermal carafe with a spout that does not spill or splutter as you pour.
The carafe is an important part of a grind and brew coffee maker. A poorly designed or built carafe will make the machine an annoyance to use.
Carafes differ from each other in two ways
- They are either made from double-walled insulated metal (thermal) or glass.
- Their spout either allows it to pour cleanly or to spill and splutter while pouring.
Glass vs Thermal Carafe
Carafes will either be made out of a double-walled insulated layer of stainless steel or aluminium (thermal) or out of glass.
Since glass carafes are not insulated, they will usually sit atop a hot plate on the machine to keep the coffee warm.
Thermal carafes are better than glass carafes for several reasons:
- You can take the carafe away from the main body of the machine and your coffee will still stay hot.
- The hot plate that a glass carafe sits on “cooks” the coffee rather than keeping it at a drinking temperature. This means that after about ten minutes of sitting on the hotplate your coffee will taste burnt and bitter.
- The hot plate that a glass carafe sits on is a (very minor) fire hazard.
Spout Quality
I’m always amazed by the number of drip coffee makers that have carafes with poorly designed spouts.
When you pour from these carafes the coffee often splutters and spills rather than coming out in an even stream.
These splutters and splashes make it hard to pour coffee into a mug without making a mess.
It’s impossible to tell how good a carafe is just from its specifications (a manufacturer or retailer is never going to point out a poorly designed spout)
I, therefore, looked at videos of all the machines in use to see if there were any issues with spluttery spouts. You can see my findings in the table below:
| Gevi 4-in-1 | Breville Grind Control | Cuisinart DGB-900BC | Capresso 488.05 Team Pro Plus Coffee Maker | |
| Glass or thermal carafe | Glass | Thermal | Thermal | Both |
| Does it have a spluttery spout? | No | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Can I Use a Super Automatic Espresso Machine for Drip Coffee?
Certain manufacturers (notably Jura and Delonghi), have started making espresso machines that both have built-in grinders and that have modes which allow you to make “drip style” coffee.
This begs the question of whether you are better off buying one of these machines over a grind-and-brew coffee maker for your drip coffee.
I would not recommend buying a super-automatic espresso machine to make drip coffee with.
I would discourage you from doing this for two reasons:
- Super-automatic espresso machines cannot hold enough ground coffee in their brewing mechanism to make a decent drip-style coffee. The drip coffee features are very much a secondary feature. They do not make these types of coffee well.
- Super-automatic espresso machines with drip coffee functionalities are far more expensive than grind and brew coffee makers. With super automatics, you are paying for the intricate espresso brewing mechanism. Drip coffee brewing is far less sophisticated, so if you buy a super-automatic espresso machine just for drip coffee you are getting terrible value for money.
Is a Grind and Brew Coffee Maker Good Value For Money?
No. You will get better value for money by buying a separate grinder and drip coffee machine.
You are charged a significant premium to have your coffee grinder built into your coffee machine.
I would also argue that having your grinder built-in is a bad thing overall as it makes it much harder to unclog your grinder if it blocks up. A blocked grinder will also put your entire coffee machine out of use.
I’d therefore encourage you to buy a separate coffee machine and coffee grinder unless you are really limited in countertop space.
Final Verdict
The best grind and brew coffee maker is the Gevi 4-in-1.
Best Overall
The Gevi 4-in-1 allows you to control every single aspect of your brewing. This unparalleled level of control means that it can make by far the best coffee of any grind and brew coffee maker.
