Keurig Supreme Plus Review

Quick Answer: I’d recommend the Keurig K Supreme Plus as it makes the best-tasting coffee of all Keurig coffee makers.

This is my Keurig Supreme Plus review.

I have owned the Keurig K Supreme Plus for just over a year. I also spent half a day researching other users’ experiences of this coffee maker on YouTube, Amazon, and (especially) the Keurig subreddit to put together this review.

Since the Keurig Supreme is one of Keurig’s more expensive machines, I’ll be paying particular attention to whether it can actually make better coffee than cheaper machines and whether it has the build quality necessary to justify its price tag.

I’m also going to look at whether it’s worth paying a touch extra to get the Keurig K Supreme Plus SMART (for more info please see my Keurig K Supreme Plus SMART review) instead of the regular K Supreme Plus.

Should I Buy the Keurig K Supreme Plus (Quick Verdict)?

I’d recommend buying the Keurig K Supreme Plus as it makes the best-tasting coffee out of all Keurig coffee makers and is the easiest to use out of all of Keurig’s larger coffee makers.

Keurig K Supreme Plus Pros

Makes better-tasting coffee than any other Keurig machine.

It’s one of the few Keurig coffee makers to offer 4 oz serving sizes.

Its “pitcher style” water reservoir is easier to fill and clean than coffee makers with flat water reservoirs.

It can make back-to-back coffees much faster than most K-cup coffee makers.

It allows you to save three “favorite” brew settings so you can make a coffee with two button presses.

Keurig K Supreme Plus Cons

It’s not obvious whether its temperature settings actually do anything.

Its pump is prone to deteriorating (like all Keurig machines).

Its descale mode can malfunction.

Overview of Machine

The Keurig K Supreme Plus is one of Keurig’s more premium machines. With the K Supreme Plus, Keurig has tried to improve its entry-level models (such as the Keurig K Mini and Keurig K Slim) by adding the following features:

• An easy-to-carry, “pitcher-style” water tank with a handle
• An extra 4 oz serving size
• Three strength settings
• Three temperature settings
• A brewing system where K-cups are pierced with five needles in the top, rather than a single needle (Keurig calls this “MultiStream Technology”)
• An iced coffee brewing style
• A digital display screen

The table below shows the full specifications of the Keurig K Supreme Plus:

I’m now going to evaluate the Keurig K Supreme Plus across the following criteria:

• Quality of coffee
• Functionalities
• Ease of use and cleaning
• Design and build quality
• Value for money

Quality of Coffee

The Keurig K Supreme Plus makes as good-tasting coffee as you can get with K-cup brewing.

The Keurig Supreme Plus’s superior brewing compared to other Keurig coffee makers is down to the:

• The machine’s relatively large number of strength settings
• Its ability to brew 4 oz and 6 oz serving sizes.

While the K Supreme Plus also boasts MultiStream Technology and added temperature settings, I think that these play a very secondary role in the machine’s excellent coffee.

Additional Strength Settings

The strength settings (also called the “strong” button) on Keurig machines dictate how long the coffee maker brews your coffee. 

Longer contact time between your ground coffee and brewing water means that more of your coffee’s flavorful compounds are extracted into your water, resulting in a tastier and fuller-bodied drink.

The table below shows the Keurig K Supreme Plus’s brewing times when set to brew an 8 oz coffee on its different strength settings. For context, I will also show the brewing times of some of Keurig’s other premium models.

As we can see, the Keurig K Supreme Plus can brew coffee for much longer than any other machine listed here. This is the main reason why it makes the best coffee out of any Keurig coffee maker.

Additional Serving Sizes

The Keurig K Supreme Plus’s addition of a 4 oz serving size also means that it can make a stronger coffee than other Keurig coffee makers.

K-cup pods only hold 10 grams of coffee. This is enough to brew a maximum of 6.5 oz of coffee at the ideal 1:18 ground coffee-to-water ratio.

This means that any serving size over 6 oz brewed with a K-cup will come out watery. 

Lower serving sizes will come out stronger, so I really like the fact that the Supreme Plus allows you to brew a 4 oz serving. The strength of a 4 oz coffee with the Supreme Plus’s strength setting whacked up to full can’t be matched by any other Keurig machine.

Additional Temperature Settings (Less Important)

Although higher brewing temperatures do result in better-tasting coffee (so long as you stay under 205 Fahrenheit ), I see no evidence that the Keurig Supreme Plus’s temperature settings actually change the machine’s brewing temperature.

While I cannot measure the temperature inside the machine’s brewing chamber, coffee comes out of the machine at the same temperature regardless of its temperature setting.

This leads me to believe that the Supreme Plus’s temperature control is so poor that its temperature settings don’t do anything.

MultiStream Technology (Less Important)

The Supreme Plus’s use of five needles to pierce the top of K-cups (“MultiStream Technology”) is supposed to result in a more even extraction.

While getting an even coverage of coffee grounds with water is an important part of drip brewing, K-cup pods are so small that you can get an even coverage of ground coffee with just one stream of water.

I, therefore, think that this Multistream Technology is little more than a marketing gimmick by Keurig. This finding has been backed up by my taste testing of the Supreme Plus on its baseline strength setting against the Mini Plus with its “strong” button on.

The coffees from these two machines tasted the same, leading me to believe that Multistream Technology really doesn’t do much to improve your coffee’s flavor, especially compared to brewing time.

Despite the pointlessness of Multistream Technology, I still think that K Supreme Plus makes the best coffee of all Keurig coffee machines.

Quality of Coffee Rating: 9/10

Functionalities

The Keurig Supreme Plus has one of the highest numbers of functionalities of any Keurig coffee maker. A few of these functions (namely its temperature and over-ice settings) aren’t executed all that well, however.

The Keurig Supreme Plus has four key functionalities. These are:

• Five preset serving sizes
• Three strength settings
• Three temperature settings
• An over-ice feature

Of these, I think its preset serving sizes, strength settings, and over-ice feature are really well executed.

Slower brewing (due to additional strength settings) and the ability to make a 4 oz coffee allow the Keurig Supreme Plus to make significantly better coffee than the K Supreme. This is enough to justify the K Supreme Plus’s additional price tag compared to the K Supreme.

The iced coffee feature is really well done and actually makes a coffee that melts your ice less than if you were just to brew a standard 6 oz serving of coffee.

Unfortunately, the Keurig K Supreme Plus’s temperature settings do not make a noticeable difference to how its coffee tastes (I compared the coffee’s temperature and taste across these settings).

Still, executing three of its four features well is impressive.

Functionalities Rating: 8/10

Ease of Use and Cleaning

The Keurig K Supreme Plus’s pitcher-style reservoir, preset serving sizes, and user profiles make it easier to use and clean than most K-cup coffee machines. Some units do shut off mid-descale, however.

Ease of Filling the Machine’s Water Reservoir

The Keurig K Supreme has a tall “pitcher-style” water reservoir with a handle. 

The reservoir’s handle makes it easier to carry than the usual flat water tank. Having the reservoir sit beside the machine makes it easier to remove and reattach than the ones that require you to slide the reservoir up or down the machine.

Ease of Making Coffees

The Supreme’s control panel is really clearly laid out, with every functionality having its own button dedicated to it.

The ease of programming the machine kind of renders its three user profiles a bit redundant. Still, these help you reduce the time it takes to make your coffee even further.

Keurig has clearly improved the K Supreme Plus’s heating system compared to the K Mini Plus and the K Elite. 

The Supreme Plus takes about half the time to heat up as these two machines can brew multiple coffees 15 seconds apart from each other. The other two machines need about a minute’s break between each coffee it makes.

Ease of Cleaning

The Supreme Plus’s “pitcher style” water reservoir is easier to clean than models with flatter reservoirs as you can actually fit your hand to the bottom of the reservoir to sponge clean its bottom corners.

Grime tends to build up in the bottom corners of these water tanks, and this needs to be scrubbed with a sponge to remove it. Not being able to get your hand into the bottom of these water tanks makes cleaning them a lot more difficult, so I’m really happy that the Supreme Plus does not have this problem.

The Supreme Plus has a removable drip tray and K-cup port, so these can be easily cleaned directly in the sink. In fairness, all Keurig coffee makers have this.

The Supreme Plus’s use of five K-cup needles does add to the overall work required to clean the machine.

These needles need to have ground coffee regularly scraped off them with a small sharp instrument (I usually use a toothpick). 

If the machine senses that there are coffee grounds stuck to its needle, it will refuse to brew and I think that this is the culprit of the many complaints online of the machine suddenly stopping working.

Ease of Descaling

Here is a video of someone showing you how to descale the Keurig K Supreme Plus:

Although descaling the machine seems simple enough, I found lots of people complaining online about their struggles trying to descale the machine. These complaints included:

• The machine shuts off during descaling and is rendered unusable because it cannot get out of descale mode (see thread)
• The machine tells you it needs to be descaled far too often (see review)
• The descaling process permanently damages the machine’s pump (see thread)

A lot of Keurig coffee makers seem to have issues with their descale mode, leading some people to prefer models that eschew this feature completely (the Keurig Mini Plus for example).

For such an expensive machine, it’s disappointing that the Keurig Supreme Plus’s descaling system is so fraught with bugs.

Ease of Use and Cleaning Rating: 8/10

Design and Build Quality

The Keurig K Supreme Plus is ergonomically designed, however, its pump is unreliable for such an expensive machine.

External Build Quality

The K Supreme Plus’s exterior is well-designed and built. It feels more weighty and solid than the Keurig K Mini Plus and even the similar-sized Keurig K Elite.

As I’ve mentioned earlier, its water reservoir is really easy to carry around, even when filled to the brim with water. This typifies how the machine was designed with ergonomics and ease of use in mind.

Internal Build Quality

The Supreme Plus clearly has a good-quality heating unit. This manifests itself in three ways:

• The Supreme Plus can go from off to brewing in 15 seconds. Compare this to the Keurig Mini Plus’s 40-second heating time.

• The Supreme Plus only needs a 15-second break between each coffee that it makes. Again, the Keurig Mini Plus needs closer to a minute for this.

• The Keurig Supreme Plus is much quieter when brewing compared to all other Keurig coffee makers.

Unfortunately, Keurig has not made these kinds of improvements to K Supreme Plus’s pumping system.

The Supreme Plus’s pump is prone to deterioration, which causes the machine’s serving size to reduce over its lifespan as the machine pumps out less and less water.

This is a problem that plagues all Keurig machines, and is so common that it even has a name on the Keurig subreddit: “half-cupping”.

I hoped that Keurig had fixed this problem for their more expensive K Supreme and K Supreme Plus, but there were so many reports online of these machines having issues with their pumps that they clearly have not.

You can find an example of someone having such a problem below:

“Our unit worked for us for about 9 months before the coffee maker started acting up. The unit would only dispense 2 to 4 ounces. We would just raise the lid and close it, select the size and repeat this process until the coffee cup was full.”

Amazon review, January 2023

Even though I could find a few reports like these online, the Keurig K Supreme Plus’s 4.3 star out of 5 still suggests that most units do not have this issue.

Design and Build Quality Rating: 7/10 

Value For Money

The Keurig K Supreme Plus is a bit pricey for what you get.

While it’s undoubtedly one of the best (if not the best) Keurig coffee makers, I’d still want a bit more reliability if I was spending this much money on a coffee machine.

It’s a decent value by Keurig machine standards, however, I do think that Keurig coffee machines are overpriced generally.

The Keurig Supreme Plus is almost the same price as the Ninja DualBrew Pro, and I think that the latter is a far superior machine.

Value for Money Rating: 6/10

Which is Better, The Keurig K Supreme or Keurig K Supreme Plus?

The Keurig K Supreme Plus is a better coffee maker than the Keurig K Supreme. The K Supreme Plus justifies its extra cost over the K Supreme due to its addition of a 4 oz serving size and an extra strength setting.

As I said earlier, I often use the 4 oz serving size as it allows me to make a much stronger coffee than I ever could with a larger serving size. K-cups do tend to make watery coffee, and having the option of a smaller serving size goes a long way to mitigate this problem

While the K Supreme can make excellent 6 oz coffees, the Supreme Plus’s additional strength setting helps it make a noticeably better 8 oz coffee than the Supreme (I tested this by brewing an 8 oz coffee with the Supreme Plus on its middle and highest strength setting).

Having this 4 oz option, and improved 8 oz coffees, justifies the extra $40 bump up in price from the Keurig K Supreme to the Keurig K Supreme Plus.

You can find out more about the Keurig Supreme in my Keurig K Supreme review.

Which is Better, The Keurig K Supreme or Keurig K Elite?

The Keurig K Supreme Plus is a better coffee maker than the Keurig K Elite. The K Elite uses an outdated heating system which makes it more prone to breaking down than the Supreme Plus.

The big difference between the Keurig K Supreme Plus and the Keurig K Elite is that the Supreme Plus uses a thermocoil heating system, whereas the K Elite heats your water inside a tank within the body of the machine.

The K Supreme Plus therefore only has one pump and heats your water as it’s being pumped. The K Elite has to pump water from its reservoir into its internal heating chamber, and then pump it again to get the machine to dispense it.

As we have seen earlier, Keurig machines’ biggest point of failure is with their pumps. The K Elite needing to pump your water twice during brewing makes it far more likely to break down compared to the Supreme Plus.

It’s well worth paying that little extra for the K Supreme Plus vs K Elite for this added reliability.

Is the Keurig K Supreme Plus SMART Worth It?

I don’t think it’s worth paying extra money for the Keurig K Supreme Plus SMART’s added phone connectivity features (this is what makes it a “smart coffee maker”).

The main benefit of this phone connectivity is that you can program your machine to make a coffee with your phone. 

However, it’s not like you can now make coffee remotely. 

You still need to be present to load your machine with a K-cup and put a mug in its drip tray. You basically just access the machine’s control panel on your phone.

I just don’t see the point of this so I think so long as the Keurig K Supreme Plus is cheaper than the K Supreme Plus SMART then it’s worth sticking to the Supreme Plus.

You can find out more about how the Supreme Plus stacks up against the Supreme Plus in my comparison of the Keurig Supreme vs Keurig Supreme Plus vs Keurig Supreme SMART. 

Final Verdict

I’d recommend buying the Keurig K Supreme Plus as it makes one of the best coffees that you can get from any Keurig coffee maker.

Its coffee quality is a noticeable step up from the Keurig Supreme Plus, and despite its pump and descaling issues, it is still a more reliable machine than the Elite.